[Taxacom] ICZN position on Darwinius

[Doug Yanega]

Geoff Read wrote:

>PS. On reading some of the blogging, some by list members, I see blithe
>talk suggesting the publisher start altering the original as a realistic
>solution. Wow! Slippery slope! What if it's done in a less high profile
>situations? How do we know? How do we prove it? And yet another checking
>task for careful taxonomists.
>
>An illustration of a severe problem with electronic pub, IMO.  But maybe
>I'm too untrusting.

If this approach seems untrustworthy, maybe that's because it IS 
untrustworthy - meaning we need to find a better way. Though I'm 
certain to sound like the proverbial broken record, there IS a 
straightforward way to ensure that any digital documents the 
taxonomic community might rely upon *are* an authoritative, original 
version.

ARCHIVE THEM IMMEDIATELY IN A PERMANENTLY-SUPPORTED CENTRAL 
REPOSITORY LIKE GENBANK.

Once again, if we allow anyone to "archive" their own digital 
documents, then we guarantee the entire taxonomic enterprise will 
fail. Half-measures will, I truly believe, be ultimately worthless.

Which do you think will still be readily available to the scientific 
community in, say, 300 years? The digital versions of sequence data 
in Genbank, or the *print* versions? OH, wait...Genbank sequence data 
doesn't HAVE print versions. Are the folks at Genbank insane? I think 
not. In fact, maybe we could learn something really important from 
their example...

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82