[Taxacom] taxacom NZ Inventory

Tue Nov 16 00:13:03 CST 2010

yes, Penny did a very good job with the Collembola, and had there been someone 
like her for every group, thinks would be pretty near ideal. Part of the reason 
why the N.Z. Collembola list will not easily become out of date is due to the 
lack of anybody actively working on them much. My point was really just about 
sections involving taxa that I know the N.Z. fauna of very well, and seeing 
certain stuff and thinking "where the heck did they get that from???" and not 
being given enough info to be able to verify or refute it. Just one somewhat 
minor example is the longhorn genus Blosyropus which was originally thought to 
be a lepturine, but subsequently found to be a cerambycine. Now I see it listed 
back (WITHOUT COMMENT) as a lepturine again! One step forward, two steps back. 
It would actually change the biogeography of the subfamily a lot if N.Z. had 
native ones ...

so, yes, let me be perfectly clear that there are no problems with the 
Collembola list that I am aware of ...

Stephen

________________________________
From: Penelope Greenslade <p.greenslade at ballarat.edu.au>
To: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>; Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com>; 
Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Tue, 16 November, 2010 7:04:31 PM
Subject: Re: taxacom NZ Inventory

Re: the NZ inventory.  I wrote the chapter on Collembola, a group I have
been working on
for over 40 years. Also I had it refereed by a  younger colleague who
spent about ten years in New Zealand and who
also works on Collembola.  As I reviewed the text again only a few
months ago, it is hardly out of date.  No data
in it has not been published already. Relevant synonyms were included
but certainly only those that relate to New Zealand species. There are 
other web sites that give full synonyms for widespread species so there
was no point in including them all.
For me as an unsalaried researcher to have prepared an electronic
catalogue which allowed continuous updating
would have been impossible because of time and other constraints.  Also
I doubt that I am an exception looking at the list of authors. 
So, I do think that Stephen Thorpe's generalisations were somewhat
overstated.

Penelope Greenslade
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Environmental Management
School of Science and Engineering
University of Ballarat
Mt Helen Campus, University Drive
Mt Helen Victoria Australia
PO Box 663, Ballarat, Victoria 3353, Australia
(61) 03 5327 6205

>>> Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 16/11/2010 9:39 am >>>
>what can you do when there are NO peers

a good example of this is rolling off the presses as we speak, in the
form of 
the NZ Inventory of Biodiversity, and particularly the chapter on
Hexapoda. Each 
of the sections were written by an expert on that particular group
(actually, 
not even that is true, but we won't go there), and they all acted as
peer 
reviewers for each other. But hang on, what does a lepidopterist know
about NZ 
Coleoptera, etc. etc. ??? Not much, and the sections are all just
details on the 
NZ fauna of each group. So, effectively there were no peers, and
nothing much 
for them to review apart from details on groups that they don't know
much about! 
Worse is that there are many records of undescribed taxa etc. given
without any 
indication of the basis for those records, so the records are
effectively 
irrefutable and unverifiable. Is this science? As a hard copy, it is
already out 
of date, so wouldn't it be far better to develop the wiki system for
this kind 
of checklist stuff? I do not particularly value
unverifiable/irrefutable 
information of this kind written in stone. The user is unable to
distinguish 
errors and omissions from "oh, they must know something I don't which
makes what 
they say correct", particularly since it is not a synonymic checklist
...

________________________________
From: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
To: Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com>; Stephen Thorpe 
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Tue, 16 November, 2010 11:22:08 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to

contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"

Thanks, Pete:

Please note that I did add the caveat about peer-review not being
perfect.

Yes, for examples, 

what can you do when there are NO peers, or
what can you do, when all the “peers” believe in the same paradigm,
such as the 
creation “scientists,” who reveiwed a clearly non-scientific paper
on 
creationism and approved its publication.

So, yes, you are correct, in that peer-review when possible set a
MINIMUM 
standard before publication.

And, yes, the most important part of the scientific process is the
subsequent 
testing, re-testing, etc., of published hypotheses. That is, SCIENCE.

Peer-review is the minimal FILTER to save time of real scientists from
having to 
test bogus hypotheses, etc.

Enjoyed your comments. They are very useful to focus our thoughts.

Sincerely,

Chris

From: Peter DeVries 
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 4:36 PM
To: Stephen Thorpe 
Cc: Chris Thompson ; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to

contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"
I am proposing you simply ignore the LOD data that you are unsure
about.

The data you do trust and use is cited in your derivative work.

How many journal reviewers type in the manuscripts lat and long values
to see if 
they are where they are supposed to be?

How many journal reviewers have access to the original data to they can
test the 
validity of an analysis?

- Pete

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
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 ...
>
>
>
>
________________________________
From: Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com>
>To: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
>Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>Sent: Tue, 16 November, 2010 9:41:46 AM
>Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone
to 
>contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"
>
>
>Hi Chris,
>
>The peer review comes in when others decide to cite your contribution
or
>choose not to cite your contribution.
>
>The version can be determined by the date stamp on the record, and
perhaps
>some sort of checksum.
>
>I was thinking of mainly in reference to species occurrence records,
>checklists etc.
>
>However, I have been wondering how someone could responsibly peer
review a
>taxonomic description without access to the specimens?
>
>Also for many taxa there are very few people who could properly review
a
>description.
>
>Often the only living expert is the author.
>
>More often than not, no one dares to really examine and revise the
>description until after the author has died.
>
>- Pete
>
>On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
wrote:
>
>> Sorry, Pete,
>>
>> But while that may appear to be "very democratic," etc., but
>>
>> the hallmark of Science, as opposed to everything, is PEER-REVIEW.
>>
>> Yes, we do know there are problems with peer-review, but it remains
the
>> only mechanism to ensure that the public gets the BEST and most
appropriate
>> SCIENCE. [that has remained true since Henry Oldenburg started
publishing
>> the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1665]
>>
>> And the other thing that peer-review mandates, is version control.
That is,
>> once the process is done, that version becomes a fixed point in the
>> Scientific process.
>>
>> Your approach sound much like the wikipedia, wikispecies, etc.,
where
>> anything can be throw out online and the Public may think it is
Science.
>>
>> Yes, ICZN does not require peer-review. And only the minimal
scientific
>> standards. So, your suggestion would allow everyone to contribute at
least
>> in terms of names and nomenclatural acts once the ICZN recognizes
and it is
>> should digitial / online publication. But it will not serve the
Public well.
>>
>> There is an old adage from the early days of computers, GIGO.
Garbage IN,
>> Garbage OUT. This remain very true today, so SCIENCE needs to be
careful or
>> it will lose its respect from the Public.
>>
>> Oh, well ...
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message----- From: Peter DeVries
>> Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 2:56 PM
>> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
>> Subject: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to
>> contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"
>>
>>
>> On of the features of the semantic web and the Linked Open Data
cloud is
>> that they allow anyone who can post markup data to a web server to
>> contribute.
>>
>> You  simply markup your data at a particular URL and then ping the
semantic
>> web to tell everyone that it is there.
>>
>> http://pingthesemanticweb.com/ 
>>
>> This would allow individual institutions and individuals to
contribute
>> their
>> own data.
>>
>> Very democratic.
>>
>> If you don't agree with a particular contribution then just choose
to
>> ignore
>> it in your analysis.
>>
>> Respectfully,
>>
>> - Pete
>>
>> --
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> Pete DeVries
>> Department of Entomology
>> University of Wisconsin - Madison
>> 445 Russell Laboratories
>> 1630 Linden Drive
>> Madison, WI 53706
>> TaxonConcept Knowledge Base <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> /
GeoSpecies
>> Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
>> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> Taxacom Mailing List
>> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
>> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom 
>>
>> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either
of these
>> methods:
>>
>> (1) http://taxacom.markmail.org 
>>
>> Or (2) a Google search specified as: site:
>> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>Pete DeVries
>Department of Entomology
>University of Wisconsin - Madison
>445 Russell Laboratories
>1630 Linden Drive
>Madison, WI 53706
>TaxonConcept Knowledge Base <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> /
GeoSpecies
>Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
>About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>_______________________________________________
>
>Taxacom Mailing List
>Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
>http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom 
>
>The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
these 
>methods:
>
>(1) http://taxacom.markmail.org 
>
>Or (2) a Google search specified as: 
site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  
>your search terms here
>
> 

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
TaxonConcept Knowledge Base / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom 

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
these methods:

(1) http://taxacom.markmail.org 

Or (2) a Google search specified as: 
site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here