[Taxacom] Read... and believe...

[Stephen Thorpe]

>Exactly.  And that's the problem
Better clarify for Paul's sake who you are saying has the problem? :) The identifiers or the databases?

It is interesting to note that I certainly know of cases where if I did identify by checking every character against a description/redescription, I would get the WRONG answer! More often though, if descriptions/redescriptions/keys were all I had to go by, I just wouldn't get any confident answer for many identifications. Direct comparison coupled with enough experience to know what is or isn't important is the only way to go ...

Stephen

________________________________________
From: Richard Pyle [deepreef at bishopmuseum.org]
Sent: Saturday, 5 September 2009 9:10 p.m.
To: Stephen Thorpe; fwelter at gwdg.de; TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Read... and believe...

> This is not how identifications work in practice!

Exactly.  And that's the problem.

Aloha,
Rich