[Taxacom] Fwd: Nature needs names: 60 new dragonflies from Africa

[Peter Halasz]

Steven,

Naively, I would have to assume you write to this list because you want to
disrupt it and shit on people's achievements. Naively, I would have to
assume you are also happy to get your name known as that of a troll because
you hate your father and want his name muddied as a weird, masochistic form
of revenge. Naively I would assume you are paid to write to this list by
the number of people you frustrate.

This is a cognitive bias called correspondent inference, where you assume
someone's motivations are to do exactly what the results of their actions
are. If someone slams a door and the room goes quiet, then you assume they
slammed the door because they wanted quiet. And John Grehan has already
pointed out how this has plays out for you.

I'm not naive. I assume good faith in peoples actions because to jealously
ascribe motivations of power and money to someone for getting media
attention for their 15 years of work in describing 60 dragonflies is the
most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I find it nonsensical to talk of
getting media attention as if science communication is somehow antithetical
to science.

If you have nothing constructive to say, why say anything at all, unless
your goal is to be a troll or to have a pissing contest over who described
the most species in one publication? If you cannot assume some good faith
of others then I'm certainly not going to do it for you.

If you think the media is too "dodgy" to save the Earth then go work on
your Earth-saving machine in your basement. I'd love to hear about it but I
wouldn't want you to promote yourself by talking about it or showing any
one. So please don't.

Thanks

Peter Halasz