[Taxacom] Is the Company "YourSpecies" in Barcelona for real or ahoax?

[Doug Yanega]

On 10/22/13 6:50 AM, Ashley Nicholas wrote:
> However, I know not everyone agrees with me -- especially as you can get a star named after yourself just for bragging rights.
That is not true. The official body that governs star designations (the 
IAU) does not recognize any of the many, many companies that sell 
"names" of stars. On the other hand, the official bodies that govern 
organism names (one of which, the ICZN, I can speak for) will recognize 
virtually anything, published by virtually anyone, anywhere, even if it 
isn't a genuinely new species; there are criteria that must be 
fulfilled, but legitimacy is not one of those criteria (heck, you can 
describe a new species as "red with black spots", even if it's actually 
blue with white spots, and the name will still be accepted).

There are, of course, some of us who are unhappy with various 
consequences of this policy, but the point remains: companies like "Your 
Species" (they are not the first - that distinction might go to BIOPAT, 
which started in 1999, and claims to be non-profit) are not presently 
regulated in any way, so everything depends on what the fine print of 
their contract says. Their website, at least, suggests that they don't 
require peer review, so I'm not particularly thrilled.

Sincerely,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82