[Taxacom] a biodiversity rant from me [Wheeler et al. 2012]

[Geoff Read]

Others have investigated this common phenomenon - inappropriate citation.
It is irritating when noticed - say when refereeing, but there's not much
to be done about it post publication. More chance of such slipping through
the checking system in groups of multiple citations.

Todd, P. A.; Guest, J. R.; Lu, J.; Chou, L. M. 2010. One in four citations
in marine biology papers is inappropriate. Marine Ecology Progress Series
408: 299-303

Citing sources that do not support the assertion being made can misinform
readers, perpetuate mistakes and deny credit to the researchers who should
have been acknowledged. To quantify citation fidelity in marine biology,
we retrieved 198 papers from 2 recent issues of 33 marine biology
journals. From each paper we randomly selected 1 citation, recovered the
source material, and evaluated its appropriateness. We discovered that the
assertion was ‘clearly supported’ by the citation in only 75.8% of cases,
the support was ‘ambiguous’ in 10.6% of cases and the citation offered ‘no
support’ to the original statement in 6.0% of cases. The remaining 7.6% of
cases were classified as ‘empty’ (citations to secondary sources). We
found no relationship between citation appropriateness and the position of
the assertion in the paper, number of authors, number of references,
article length and Journal Impact Factor. That 1 in 4 citations in marine
biology should be viewed with scepticism is alarming and has important
ramifications for both scholarship and bibliometrics
	http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v408/p299-303/


Geoff

On Wed, March 28, 2012 3:46 pm, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> I am baffled at this new paper:
>  
> DOI:10.1080/14772000.2012.665095
> Mapping the biosphere: exploring species to understand the origin,
> organization and sustainability of biodiversity
> Q. D. Wheeler, S. Knapp, D. W. Stevenson, J. Stevenson, S. D. Blum, B. M.
> Boom, G. G. Borisy, J. L. Buizer, M. R. De Carvalho, A. Cibrian, M. J.
> Donoghue, V. Doyle, E. M. Gerson, C. H. Graham, P. Graves, S. J. Graves,
> R. P. Guralnick, A. L. Hamilton, J. Hanken, W. Law, D. L. Lipscomb, T. E.
> Lovejoy, H. Miller, J. S. Miller, S. Naeem, M. J. Novacek, L. M. Page, N.
> I. Platnick, H. Porter-Morgan, P. H. Raven, M. A. Solis, A. G. Valdecasas,
> S. Van Der Leeuw, A. Vasco, N. Vermeulen, J. Vogel, R. L. Walls, E. O.
> Wilson & J. B. Woolley
>  
> specifically because of the following quote:
> [quote]Given that we know fewer than one quarter of all eukaryote species
> (Chapman, 2009; Costello et al., 2011; Mora et al., 2011), what are the
> chances ...[unquote]
>  
> this gives the Costello et al. (2011) paper a citation (and is the only
> mention of it), but for something that Costello et al. (2011)  DIDN"T
> SAY!!! They said [quote]we predicted that 24-31% to 21-29% more marine and
> terrestrial species remain to be discovered respectively[unquote], i.e. we
> know about three quarters of all species!