[Taxacom] Nomina nuda and genbank?

[Stephen Thorpe]

A relevant point here (that I have tried to make before, several times) is that the Code doesn't completely determine the nomenclature. It leaves some "room for interpretation", though the idea is that in cases of serious disagreement the Commission is petitioned to make a ruling one way or the other. I don't think anyone would want to uphold names made available in Warner Bros. cartoons, so it isn't a problem. There is a more interesting case though, involving a name that may well have been made available in newspaper reports, but I forget the details just now ...

S

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Doug Yanega [dyanega at ucr.edu]
Sent: Saturday, 31 October 2009 12:41 p.m.
To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Nomina nuda and genbank?

Michael Heads wrote:

>If there is a new name, a 'type' (a voucher specimen) and a
>decription (a sequence) it is hardly a nomen nudum. The crucial
>question, at least for plant names, would be whether 'CGATCGAT' can
>be regarded as Latin or not...

It's interesting how fine a balancing act can be required to exclude
certain things that we wish to exclude, while including everything we
DO wish to include. This reminds me of an observation I made years
ago regarding Warner Brothers cartoons depicting the coyote and
roadrunner, and giving them "scientific names." The scripts upon
which those cartoons were based were printed on paper, simultaneously
produced - but the clause in the Code which invalidates them is "must
be issued for the purpose of providing a public and permanent
scientific record" (Art. 8.1.1) - and by judging the *purpose*
(admittedly, not the most objective criterion one could propose), one
can exclude a large number of things - cartoon names included - as
NOT constituting a "published work". Are names listed in GenBank used
with the purpose of providing a permanent scientific record? In one
sense yes, but is that the *same* sense implied by the Code?

Peace,
--

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

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