[Taxacom] Plagiarism & Public Domain

Tue Nov 30 15:13:42 CST 2010

Sorry, Stephen, 

but in the USA the use of any information, regards of whether it is in the Public Domain or not without proper attribution is PLAGIARISM and SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT.  And if committed by a scientist supported by US Government means disbarment for government funds, etc.

Yes, there is a lower level of information which is considered common knowledge, like names, addresses, etc., which do not require attribution. But at least for biological nomenclature, we do maintain a tradition of citing sources, such as Musca domestica Linnaeus, 1758. And the botanists do it even better as they also cite the author and date of the circumscription.

Oh, well ...

Chris

From: Stephen Thorpe 
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 3:32 PM
To: Chris Thompson ; Tony.Rees at csiro.au ; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Mystery taxonomic compilation on the web...

Chris,
You know you are my hero ... the "flyest of the fly", but in this case I must protest at your apparent ignorance of the "wiki" concept! There is simply *no connection* between lack of attribution/plagiarism and the "wiki" concept! These are unrelated and independent of each other. It is very hard to know what you are thinking. Also, we are only talking about the compilation of already published taxonomic data, data that is already in the public domain but scattered, so attribution/plagiarism does not apply, at least not in the usual way.
Stephen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; Tony.Rees at csiro.au; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wed, 1 December, 2010 2:53:30 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Mystery taxonomic compilation on the web...

Yes, that looks like something from Joel, but it illustrate an important issue, the lack of attribution.

This is one of the major problems with the "wiki" concept.

People plagiarizing information, that is, taking information from somewhere else and presenting it without attribution.

Joel Hallan has been doing that for years. But he is only one of many.

We have been try to build a comprehensive SCIENTIFIC database of the species and their names for flies (Diptera) of the World for years. Flies represent about 10% of the known Global biodiversity. Almost from day one back in 1996, when we first went online at what was the Diptera site and the BioSystematic Database of World Diptera, I have been surprised to see the number of people / websites that have harvested our names and not given proper attribution*. Yes, everything is "free" online, but ...

The hallmark of SCIENCE is both peer-review and respect for previous work, which the "wiki" concept and other online entities ignore.

And for the users this means they do not get the best and most up-to-date information.

As they do not know the original sources, where they probably can be BETTER and MORE current information and the QUALITY assessment factors are stripped out.

For example, every record in our now Systema Dipterorum has an indicator telling the user status of the information. For example, whether it has been peer-reviewed and if so, by whom and when. And individual records may also have annotations. This critical information is lost to the user when people simply sweep up the names from our website.

And as this "mystery taxonomic compilation," clearly documents this as it has links to our OBSOLETE old BioSystematic Database of World:
Nomenclator,Biosystematic Database of World Diptera http://198.77.169.80:591/FMPro?-db=names.fp3

That database, while still accessible, is obsolete, not updated since the summer of 2008, before USDA abolished my research program. The more appropriate database is Systema Dipterorum*, accessible at http://www.diptera.org/  and being now served from Copenhagen.

Oh, well ...

Sincerely

Chris Thompson
from home

*For the technically interested, we now have close to a quarter of million names online today, representing what are reported in the literature as some 160,000 species (extant and fossils). And with so many names, there are a few errors which we, ourselves, have made. Hence, I can ever tell the version people have taken by searching for the unique records!

-----Original Message----- From: Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 10:07 PM
To: Tony.Rees at csiro.au ; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Mystery taxonomic compilation on the web...

looks like it is taken from Joel Hallan's Biology Catalogue? At any rate, a
quick glance at areas I know well shows it to be on the right track but not
completely correct or up-to-date ...

________________________________
From: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Tue, 30 November, 2010 1:52:35 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] Mystery taxonomic compilation on the web...

Dear all,

I have just come across this on the web - mildly surprised that I had not found
it before, and was wondering if anyone knows anything of the compiler:

http://mave.tweakdsl.nl/tn/index.html

There seems to be a lot of information contained but no person name responsible
or contact details so far as I can see...

Any advice welcome! particularly from our Dutch colleagues, maybe?

Best regards  - Tony
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