[Taxacom] molecular species description

[Geoffrey Read]

On Sun, August 9, 2009 12:08 pm, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> Hi Geoff,
> I don't actually know anything about you, except that you are based in
> Wellington, N.Z., and Trewick is based at Victoria University,
> Wellington, so you and he could well be friends and/or colleagues, for
> all I know, which is fine, but worth noting.

Well Stephen, I just looked to see. He seems to be still at Massey Uni.,
Palmerston North Campus, not Wellington. Wrong again, eh! Regardless, I've
never met him, he doesn't know me, vice versa. And I won't be alerting him
to your posts either - but my guess is that someone will.

> Far from being
> defamatory, someone who publishes scientific papers must allow those
> papers to be open to criticism, or else science becomes dogmatic
> dictatorship. My point was that if a fellow MOLECULAR taxonomist on
> the same group rates his work (the paper in question) poorly, then
> that is even more telling than just anti-molecular people slagging it
> off. Just empty words without factual basis? I'm not sure whose words
> you mean - mine or the molecular taxonomist I was referring to? If you
> mean mine, well I don't see anything wrong with my stating a fact

A fact? It was tittle-tattle. Some behind the scenes unspecific slagging
off, & of no import. I'm sorry you can't realize that for yourself and
appear to be digging yourself a deeper hole. Stephen, there are limits to
what you can safely write about someone on the record (Taxacom emails are
on the permanent record). Your problem not mine. But find some published
work which comments adversely on the second paper (not the first), thus
supporting your contact's claim, and I'll be happy to read it and make up
my own mind.

Geoff