[Taxacom] Survey Results: Dealing with Sensitive Species Occurrence Data

[Anita F. Cholewa]

Regarding data on sensitive species ... Something I have always grappled 
with is how do database holders (museums, herbaria, etc.) decide whether 
a data requester's reasons are honest?  How do we decide on someone 
else's motives?  Oh yes, I'll trust colleagues known to me.   But not 
all scientists or government agents are always honest and sometimes 
scientists and others get carried away by new species (remember the new 
orchid fiasco some years back) and then of course several "amateur" 
naturalists are quite honorable and trustworthy.  How do you decide that 
a data requester deserves to get the sensitive species data?  I didn't 
see this question directly addressed in the questionaire.

AFC
__________
Anita F. Cholewa, Ph.D.
Curator of the herbarium
Bell Museum of Natural History
University of Minnesota
1445 Gortner Ave
ST PAUL MN 55108 USA


taxacom2 at achapman.org wrote:

>Dear all.
>
>Apologies for Cross posting
>
>We would like to thank all those who responded to the Survey on Dealing with
>Sensitive Species Occurrence Data conducted on SurveyMonkey earlier this
>year.  It is obvious from the response that this is an issue of concern to
>many. We would now like to share a summary of the results with you and
>others who may be interested.
>
>The report is now available on the GBIF Web site at
>http://www.gbif.org/prog/digit/sensitive_data/
>
>We are now preparing a draft report with options and recommendations based
>on these results and other discussions and research with the aim of
>developing best practice guidelines for institutions on how they may deal
>with sensitive data (including generalizing, etc.).
>
>The draft document will form the basis of a targeted workshop to be held
>later in 2006. A final document and recommendations will then be produced.
>
>If you have any comments, references to published information on the topic,
>or ideas and suggestions, please do not hesitate to send these to the author
>at sensitive.data at gbif.org or discuss them here on Taxacom
>
>We would also like to receive comments from users of biodiversity information on what restrictions generalization may place on any of their analyses.
>
>regards
>
>Arthur D. Chapman
>Consultant to GBIF on Dealing with Sensitive Species Occurrence Data
>sensitive.data at gbif.org
>
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>  
>