[Taxacom] molecular species description

[Stephen Thorpe]

> Wrong again, eh!

Wrong about the University he works for - yes. My apologies! Wrong  
again? Well, I have been wrong before now on several occasions, but  
I'm not sure which one(s) you are referring to exactly?

As for someone alerting him to my posts, I'm sure he has copped  
criticism over this particular 1998 work before, and can take it in  
his stride, without getting all worked up about it, eh!

> unspecific slagging off
No, quite specific about the unrepeatability of his methods, and  
nomenclatural problems. Even if subsequent DNA work supports to some  
extent (which it probably would, to some extent) sympatric cryptic  
species, the main problem, I believe, is in trying to associate his  
1998 names with species, cryptic or otherwise, because the types are  
unidentifiable, a neotype designation is not valid, and the methods  
are not repeatable. Leaves us with a bit of a mess.

But as I said when I first mentioned it, 1998 is a while ago now, and  
maybe nobody would use quite those same methods today...

> there are limits to what you can safely write about someone on the record

I don't believe that I did write anything about HIM, I certainly  
didn't intend to! I wrote of having heard a specific criticism about a  
particular piece of work that he put into the public domain in the  
form of a publication. I also made the general point that a subsequent  
publication by an author which tries to back up their own previous  
work cannot in itself be taken as an objective assessment of the  
matter, regardless of who that author is. I make no claims about  
Trewick himself or any work of his that is not directly related to  
that 1998 paper.

Stephen


Quoting Geoffrey Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz>:

>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
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