[Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"

[Stephen Thorpe]

to be clearer, I am not saying that peer review ought to be scrapped

what I am saying is that under some special circumstances, the lack of it isn't 
a good reason to devalue and/or disregard a piece of work. A good example being 
wiki articles which present integrated and user verifiable compilations of 
primary taxonomic data. Such things are arguably better suited to the dynamic ad 
open (=unbiased) wiki system ...




________________________________
From: Wolfgang Wuster <w.wuster at bangor.ac.uk>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Tue, 16 November, 2010 11:57:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to 
contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"

On 15/11/2010 21:04, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> peer review is a pre-publication process, often done under time pressure by
> people who may not be good "details" people
>
> the function of peer review, as I understand it, is just to make sure that
> anything published is up to a MINIMUM standard
>
> surely, the real deal comes after publication, when the publication can be
> scrutinised at length by anybody and everybody in their own time - that is 
when
> the crap gets filtered out ...

The problem here is that, due to the Principle of Priority, taxonomy is 
stuck with the crap that would be laughed out of court in any other field.

Peer review is a minimum requirement in virtually all fields of science 
where an author expects his/her findings to be taken seriously as 
contributions to knowledge. I am mystified why some people seem to think 
that, alone among all sciences, taxonomy should be above the conventions 
that all other scientific disciplines are happy to adhere to.

-- 
Dr. Wolfgang Wüster  -  Lecturer
School of Biological Sciences
Bangor University
Environment Centre Wales
Bangor LL57  2UW
Wales, UK

Tel: +44 1248 382301
Fax: +44 1248 382569
E-mail: w.wuster at bangor.ac.uk
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/~bss166/


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