[Taxacom] Unexpectedly wide discrepancies in cited taxon authorities - examples sought

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

From: "David Campbell" <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 12:30 AM

> Older authors often identified a species as new when they merely
> changed the genus, providing one source of confusion about original
> authorship.
> 
> I know at least one major online database has some careless data entry
> producing several listings in which the publication where a name was
> found by the compiler, rather than the actual species author, is
> listed under authorship of the species.

***
It is an inevitable result of the retroactive nature of a Code of
nomenclature that there is a distinction between the historical
reality and the nomenclatural reality. 

In itself there is nothing wrong with authors who took actions 
that at the time were normal (i.e. included themselves as the 
authors of new names of species), but that in the nomenclatural
reality have to be interpreted differently. This also goes for 
contemporary compilers.

All the more reason to stay well away from databases that
compile data by some automatic process. Drawing up a 
database tends to be painstaking work ...

Paul