Response from NATURE

[Peter Rauch]

I think the issue raised by Henry Gee (and the whole Nature
article) has to do not with the state of taxonomic /
classification / descriptive / interpretive study, but rather
with how the state of study and knowledge is recorded and (more
importantly) disseminated by the taxonomic/systematics/evolution
community for use by _any_ interested party.

Peter

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Geoff Read wrote:
> So physicists (substitute any other science group) might be
> allowed to say 'sorry we haven't solved all problems yet (no
> antigravity, no fusion power, no time travel, whatever) -
> but give us more money now and we'll get there eventually.
> But taxonomists aren't allowed to say 'sorry we haven't
> described all the species out there yet, resolved all the
> relationships. There are rather a lot of them you know -
> give us more money now, ... etc.'
>
> Yeah right.