[Taxacom] saturday morning fun

[Stephen Thorpe]

>The assumption that "people are paid in museums and other organisations to 
>digitise and enter data into collections databases"
is often incorrect.  Often they aren't paid, or else they are minimally paid.  
Thus, it becomes a job for student assistants, volunteers, etc., who often don't 
have a good grasp of taxonomy, geography, etc., while more competent taxonomists 
can't find paid employment

I think it is more complicated than this ... yes, the actual work is often done 
by summer students, etc., but if GBIF is giving millions to taxonomists to 
compile checklists, as David has indicated, then that money is going somewhere. 
I suspect that it isn't given directly to independent taxonomists, but to 
taxonomists at institutions where the institution will take half as "overheads", 
and then the taxonomist will get paid to "supervise" the summer students. All 
they need is their "chicks for free" and we have a damn good 80s rock song!!! :)

Stephen



________________________________
From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Tue, 30 November, 2010 11:35:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] saturday morning fun

There seems to be appreciable problems in GBIF's attempts to deal with
homonyms.  Papillina, for example, was used first in Gastropoda and
then in Porifera.  GBIF has apparently harvested the Porifera taxonomy
from one source and data records for the snail from other sources.  I
did try emailing GBIF about it.

Probably the greatest problem is that there's generally no support for
actual taxonomists to check the data for compilations of this sort.
The assumption that "people are paid in museums and other
organisations to digitise and enter data into collections databases"
is often incorrect.  Often they aren't paid, or else they are
minimally paid.  Thus, it becomes a job for student assistants,
volunteers, etc., who often don't have a good grasp of taxonomy,
geography, etc., while more competent taxonomists can't find paid
employment.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
The Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca NY 14850

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