[Taxacom] FW: wiki's & peer review

[Kleo Pullin]

--- On Wed, 2/18/09, k kat <koibeatu at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: k kat <koibeatu at hotmail.com>
> Subject: [Taxacom] FW: wiki's & peer review
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 4:19 PM
> > Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 11:39:05 -0800
> > To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
> > From: dyanega at ucr.edu
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Species Pages - purpose
> > 
> > Thomas Simonsen wrote:
...
> > It isn't, as far as I can see, simply a matter of
> access - it's a 
> > matter of review. There are numerous taxonomists who
> are crackpots, 
> > but they are sometimes authorities on their groups,
> and may be 
> > resident in prominent institutions; such individuals
> typically 
> > self-publish to avoid legitimate peer review, 
>  
> I think you have the shoe on the wrong foot there.  
>  
> Legitimate work often needs to be self published to avoid
> the peer review and quashing by crackpots in prominent
> institutions.
>  
> Or you just have to wait until they die.....
>  
> Look how long we had to wait for Continental Drift to be
> accepted.
>  
> First proposed in the 1920's, (1923 I believe) and not
> accepted until the 1960's after the so-called experts in
> prominent institutions were dead and buried.

That's not quite how it happened.  While there had been institutionalized pressure in favor of the, well, "static continent" theory, in fact, from the late 50s through much of the 1960s overwhelming evidenced was gathered independently by numerous working geologists about the age of rocks, paleomagnetism, and seafloor spreading, showing the continents not only drift, but dive and sidle, and various other things that give us the landforms we see in our own little slice of time, made of the rocks created by these processes through time  ....

No one had to die or be buried; many were, in fact, left sitting, because the evidence itself took care of the disbelief or any involvement of a belief system.  Some things just are.  And only plate tectonics could explain how they came to be.


KLP
>  
> Scientists are human.  Many hold tight to their favorite
> dogma and resist change.  Especially if proposed by someone
> younger, or of a gender that feels threatening.
>  
> Wiki's may be an good way to get the word out, as long
> as we use them correctly.
>  
> Incidently, my edits have not been altered, indeed, the
> oversight editor has thanked me for cleaning up a number of
> taxa, especially where the Code was not followed.
>