[Taxacom] DNA barcoding

[Stephen Thorpe]

Just an idea Jim for a book title, if you feel like writing one:

Barcoding: the new religion?
On the 1st day God created the creatures ... in the 21st century He  
created barcoding...

Just being facetious!
Of course, Baacoding of sheep makes perfect sense, but there's enough  
wool being pulled over our eyes as it is! :)

S


Quoting Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>:

> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Stephen  
> Thorpe<s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>> The key point though, is that barcoding actually depends on the
>> continued activity of taxonomists, but there does seem to be a
>> widespread impression that in some covert way, it is starting to "take
>> over"...
>
> That wouldn't have anything to do with the near hysterical evangelism
> of many of the the barcoding proponents with their new-found silver
> bullet, would it?
>
> It will blow over and settle down, just as all the other 'latest
> crazes' have and will do, maybe leaving a useful legacy for taxonomy,
> maybe not. When all the shouting and arm-waving is done, given the the
> purpose of taxonomy and nomenclature is fundamentally communication
> between humans, the 'things' will still need to have pronounceable
> names.  And until someone comes up with a pragmatic better alternative
> to our current Linnaean binomial abominations, we are stuck with them.
>
> I do not have great expectations of gemetic barcoding - in 3-5 years
> whole genome and other tecyhnology will be the new latest craze and
> any identification tool that requires expensive technology will never
> never become universal. If you can not use it in a village in a
> developing country it is not going to be much use on a normal human
> level.  But, very much on the plus side, barcodingt does keep a focus
> on taxonomy and systematics, it will maintain development of
> technologies that will further our research in other areas and if we
> do the curation thing properly it will generate an increasing legacy
> of vouchered documented DNA aliquots that can be used for all manner
> of interesting other things.
>
> Not worried, not even all that excited - it is just another thing, and
> there will certainly be others (I hope).  Just wish people would stop
> being so shrill and agro about it...
>
> jim
>
> --
> _________________
> Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
> http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
> ... in pursuit of the meaning of leaf ...
> ... 'All is leaf' ('Alles ist Blatt') - Goethe
>



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