[Taxacom] Wikispecies is not a database: part 3 (after thinkingabout it!)

[Stephen Thorpe]

> 1) I think in most cases it's naïve to think that a dollar spent on
> biodiversity informatics is a dollar *not* spent on basic taxonomic
> research.  From what I've seen, the "big" dollars spent on the former come
> from pots that would/could *NOT* have otherwise been re-purposed for
> taxonomic research.  In other words, for the most part, those dollars only
> increased the size of the pie; they did not reduce the size of other slices.

This is worthy of comment, though I am a little confused what Richard  
was using it to argue! So I will take it out of context, and use it to  
explore an avenue of thought:

One could try to argue that bioinformatics initiatives aren't taking  
money away from basic taxonomy because the money comes from different  
budgets and cannot be reallocated. Two responses to this:

(1) at some stage the money was divided up from a bigger pool and  
allocated to each budget. It is at that stage where it could be used  
for something else. I wouldn't say that money saved from multiple  
bioinformatics projects (of a certain kind) all doing the same thing  
has to be redirected to taxonomy - maybe there is something else  
worthwhile that it could be used for? It has to be better than what  
Bob calls the acronyms (and certain other players) rolling it up,  
stuffing it with tobacco, smoking it, and blowing the smoke in our  
faces!

(2) in N.Z. at least, the distinction between bioinformatics and  
taxonomic projects/budgets has become disturbingly blurred in recent  
years. For those of you who don't know, we have the Fauna of New  
Zealand series, which is supposed to be a series of taxonomic  
monographs (i.e., taxonomic revisions). However, as per a previous  
email of mine, there is a disturbing trend now to produce  
'catalogues', padded to the eyeballs with endless appendices, all  
giving the same information in slightly different ways, giving each  
species a "distribution map" with just a great big dot in the middle  
of each collecting code region it is present in, giving images of  
types that are often unidentifiable as species from the images. What  
is worse, is that when we don't have this problem, we instead get a  
"Fauna of New Zealand" contribution that is 90% world phylogeny and  
10% New Zealand fauna (I had to laugh when the author of one of these  
said to me "No, no, no!!! It is 80%-20%!!!" So the particular problem  
in N.Z. at the moment is that public money in a budget for one purpose  
(taxonomy of the fauna) is being manipulated by one or two players  
into both "soft option" bioinformatics and inconclusive global  
phylogenetic work! Worse still, is that after a while, the hard copy  
catalogues get transcribed into online websites (using up further  
funding), and the silly websites don't get updated for years at a  
time!!! Is it any wonder that I have gone Wiki???!!!

Stephen





Quoting Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>:

>
> Thanks, Mike -- VERY well stated!  And I agree completely.
>
> These points stand out for me in particular:
>
>> What is needed is a data model for taxonomic
>> information that can support all sorts of applications,
>> including wikis (as others including Jim Croft have said).
>
> Yes!  I don't know if I said it in my post, but I certainly agree with Jim
> and others (and you) on this point!  That is where I *hope* GNA and it's
> various subcomponents (and the related, emerging CiteBank) are heading.
>
>> All this may sound unnecessarily pedantic, but IT is no
>> different from systematics in that respect!  If one doesn't
>> use the terminology correctly one runs the risk of talking
>> from a dubious orifice...
>
> Being at arguably the most pedantic end of taxonomy (i.e., nomenclature and
> associated rules relating thereto), *and* being fairly well immersed in the
> IT world (more as a prentender, but at least as an astute observer), I must
> say (again) that I agree completely!
>
>> In my opinion (for what it's worth) I think many of the
>> sensible things that have been suggested in this and related
>> discussions (eg, inter alia - better flow of data between
>> grass-roots databases and large aggregators) are not
>> achievable until there are robust standards for storing and
>> manipulating taxonomic data.
>
> Amen, brother! Long live TDWG.
>
>> I would totally sympathise with anyone who groans at my
>> mention of "standards" - but I don't see any getting away
>> from that in the end.  So rather than numerous competing
>> high-level money-sapping aggregation projects, it would be
>> better (if harder to fund) to put resources into developing
>> such standards.
>
> I agree, of course, but want to briefly intercept the inevitable (and
> equally true) retort that more money needs to be put into basic taxonoxmic
> research. Speaking as someone who just returned from 2.5 weeks in the field,
> home for 2 days, and leaving in 1 hour for another 2 weeks in the field -- I
> would say that the basic taxonomy stuff is in FAR more desperate need of
> allocated dollars than either standards development or aggregation projects.
> Having said this, I want to point out WHY I think that money spent on data
> standards development (and such) is not well spent (at least in some cases).
>
> 1) I think in most cases it's naïve to think that a dollar spent on
> biodiversity informatics is a dollar *not* spent on basic taxonomic
> research.  From what I've seen, the "big" dollars spent on the former come
> from pots that would/could *NOT* have otherwise been re-purposed for
> taxonomic research.  In other words, for the most part, those dollars only
> increased the size of the pie; they did not reduce the size of other slices.
>
> 2) I almost always agree with Bob Mesibov, but while it's true that the
> narrow slice of humanity actually on the front lines of taxonomic research
> generally operate in their context-senstive world (i.e., fish-nerds and
> bug-nerds seldom overlap), we have to remember that this is, in fact, a
> narrow slice of humanity.  The information-access initiatives being
> discussed here, while certainly helpful to taxonomists, are not necessarily
> directed primarily at them.  The *rest* of the world doesn't see the
> divisions that we do in history & practice among workers in different
> taxonomic groups. They want the 'OLs (COL, EOL, TOL, etc.) to find what
> they're looking for -- no matter whether it's the fish they ate for dinner,
> or the bug that bit their child on the foot.  These sort of data
> "coordinators" (I see Google as an aggregator, but the 'OLs usually add more
> structured value) help bring the importance of biodiversity into the minds
> of the people who elect our leaders (in many funder countries, anyway).
> Many people suggest (and I would agree) that this sort of coordination among
> practitioners is a lot of the reason why physicists get funding on the scale
> needed for building something like the LHC and ISS; while we scavenge for
> relative pennies.
>
> Crap.  I should have spent the past 20 minutes packing.....
>
> ("sometimes wonder how some of you manage to get anything else done!")
>
> :-)
>
> Aloha,
> Rich
>
>
>
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