[Taxacom] GBIF, was RE: barcode of life wins Ebbe Nielsen Prize

Tue Jun 29 20:57:02 CDT 2010

Hi Tony

Data aggregation activities are a good idea.     It depends on whether an outfit exists for achieving its avowed ends or for itself.     And it is sometimes good for a flea to ride on an elephant for it can then claim an equal share of the mass.

Lyn

-----Original Message-----
From: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart) 
Sent: Wednesday, 30 June 2010 10:58 AM
To: Craven, Lyn (PI, Black Mountain); kipwill at berkeley.edu; agosti at amnh.org
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: RE: GBIF, was RE: barcode of life wins Ebbe Nielsen Prize

Dear Lyn,

Just for information - GBIF as I understand it is a global scale biodiversity data aggregation initiative. There are also regional / local scale aggregation initiatives such as (e.g. in Australia) OZCAM (for faunal collections) and Australian Virtual Herbarium (for botany), of which your agency, the Australian National Herbarium is a prominent part, and which also - I presume happily - cooperate actively with GBIF. Is your problem with data aggregation activities in general, or just GBIF in particular?

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees
Manager, Divisional Data Centre,
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research,
Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Lyn.Craven at csiro.au
Sent: Wednesday, 30 June 2010 9:21 AM
To: kipwill at berkeley.edu; agosti at amnh.org
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [ExternalEmail] [Taxacom] GBIF, was RE: barcode of life wins Ebbe Nielsen Prize

Kip's posted URLs make for dispiriting reading, but I guess it all reflects our sorry times.

One should not be particularly surprised about GBIF's pouncing on bar-coding.   When GBIF was announced to the world, it was patently obvious that the only benefit the organisation was going to provide would be realised by its office bearers and staff.    It clearly was only going to result in yet another re-arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.     The sooner its funding gets pulled, the better off science will be.

GBIF, unfortunately, is merely smoke and mirrors.

Lyn Craven

******************************

Lyn A. Craven
Australian National Herbarium
CSIRO Plant Industry
GPO Box 1600
Canberra.   ACT   2601
Australia

Phone:  61 (0)2 6246 5122
Fax:      61 (0)2 6246 5249
Email:    lyn.craven at csiro.au
Home page:    http://www.anbg.gov.au/people/craven.lyn.html

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Kipling (Kip) Will
Sent: Tuesday, 29 June 2010 11:24 PM
To: Donat Agosti
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] barcode of life wins Ebbe Nielsen Prize

To follow up on Donat's comments, I offer two important recent critiques of the Barcoding phenomenon:

One that shows how the "enterprise" is using taxonomy while eviscerating the science:

Ebache, M.C. and de Carvalho, M.R.. 2010. Anti-intellectualism in the DNA Barcoding Enterprise. Zoologia, Vol 27, No 2.

http://submission.scielo.br/index.php/zool/article/view/22823

and another that shows that the Social Scientists are not fooled by the
hype:

Larson, M.H. 2007. DNA Barcoding: The Social Frontier. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Vol. 5, No. 8 (Oct., 2007), pp. 437-442 # Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20440731

Kip Will

Donat Agosti wrote:
> In today's GBIF news letter I discovered the announcement of the Ebbe 
> Nielsen Prize winner, Mr. Ratnasingham, credited with the development 
> of the Barcode of Life Data (BOLD) systems.
> <http://tinyurl.com/248w6qu> http://tinyurl.com/248w6qu
> 
>  
> 
> This in itself is fine, but what I find appalling is the statement of 
> the Krishtalka, the chair of the GBIF Science Committee, that states 
> "The impact and strategic significance of BOLD, according to 
> Krishtalka, promises to rival that of Genbank. "BOLD enables a growing 
> number of scientists to both register and access critical genomic data 
> in a common way for complex research and research applications for 
> science and society, both inside and outside the domains of biodiversity science.""
> 
>  
> 
> How comes that BOLD (Advancing species indentification and discovery 
> through the analysis of short, standardized gene regions" wants to 
> compete with GenBank? How does a short sequence compare with a whole 
> genome? Though barcodes make some very important contributions to 
> biology, they can not and will never replace the many gene sequences 
> needed for phylogenetic analysis, the increasing impact of entire 
> genomes, nor all the other information needed to define species, such 
> as the rapidly increasing number of digital online images of taxa in a very simple way.
> 
>  
> 
> May be I misunderstand this statement, but the very way it is written 
> in the press release, this shows a very questionable attitude of 
> GBIF's Science Committee chair, which has little to do with science 
> but rather imperium building of missing far sight.
> 
>  
> 
> Donat Agosti
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
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--
Kipling W. Will
Associate Professor/Insect Systematist
Associate Director,Essig Museum of Entomology

mail to:
137 Mulford Hall
ESPM Dept.- Organisms & Environment Div.
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

phone 510-642-4296
fax 510-643-5438
skype kipwill

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