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

Sun Dec 13 05:03:48 CST 2015

I would like to comment a little on this, I guess also this is relevant to
the other thread on the dragonflies. Personally I agree with the sentiments
of Stephen and Doug on this, in so much as I guess I do admit to having
some part of me that is a romantic notion of taxonomy as a traditional
science steeped in history. As such it is a humble science that promotes
itself by its quality and importance, not with sensationalism.
Traditionally self promoted science was a bit of a freak show, and not what
we as scientists want to portray ourselves as.

That said. To use my last species description as an example, multiple media
releases were done though not by me. One of the authors did media releases
in New Guinea, using the paper as an example of the work being done by the
Museum of Papua New Guinea. An opportunity to explain to the local people
what their museum was about and how important it was. That the work was
being see as world standard. In other words they were reporting to the
people whose tax dollars pay for the museum.

Another of the coauthors did releases in regards to the University of
Canberra and the Piku Project, both also involved. The IAE at UC is a
Centre of Excellence and must justify its funding, media releases assist
with this. Also the Piku Project is a major project in the Kikori funded in
part by businesses and mining. Again media releases show progress and
justification for this funding. So in a nutshell, although I am personally
not that thrilled about the hype of media releases, I think they are a part
of what we do these days.

Therefore, that some people who privately fund research do the same thing,
so long as its done tastefully, I cannot really argue about it.

On Doug's other point of some twitter feed or something listing papers,
effectively, could not Zoobank effectively do that under a twitter account
#Zoobank that does a daily "whats new":

Cheers, Scott

On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 9:41 PM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:

> I wonder if all that effort could be better spent on a global biodiversity
> database which tracks all new taxa as they are published? ZooBank is at
> least something along these vague lines. I'm not sure anybody has an
> interest in all newly described taxa, so it is important that they can
> effectively search for what they are interested in. There are many
> abstracting databases which offer this service to more or less of an
> extent. But then we are away from publicity and back to academia again, but
> maybe that is how it should be?
>
> Stephen
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Sun, 13/12/15, Geoff Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Twitter Fwd: Nature needs names: 60 new
> dragonflies from        Africa
>  To: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>  Received: Sunday, 13 December, 2015, 12:34 PM
>
>
>  Doug,
>
>  Yes #newspecies is quite often used on Twitter as a
>  hashtag.  Not,
>  unfortunately by Zootaxa as yet (hint). Zootaxa nicely tweet
>  individually
>  each of their daily output of new papers just after
>  publication around
>  midday New Zealand time.  ZooKeys tweets but doesn't
>  seem to use
>  #newspecies either.  Maybe someone already runs a
>  new-taxonomy twitter
>  list based on adding to it the biology taxonomy publishers
>  who tweet?  I
>  haven't come across it yet. People follow the biology
>  publishers they are
>  interested in anyway, but it would be a good idea to have a
>  list for the
>  new species publishers.
>
>  An account to follow, @newspecies, which tweeted/retweeted
>  new species
>  papers would be great, but someone would have to dedicate
>  themselves to
>  the work, rather than content accumulating automatically as
>  in a list (and
>  there's a person with a private account sitting on that
>  @newspecies handle
>  already. Same with @taxonomy).
>
>  Geoff
>
>
>  Doug Yanega wrote:
>  "That being said, please do note that I'm explicitly
>  referring to
>   mainstream media and press releases. *In a different
>  context entirely*,
>   I think it would be wonderful to have a visible public
>  place, like a
>   twitter feed with some catchy title like #newspecies, where
>  people DID
>   actually post every single paper published anywhere, to
>  impress upon
>   folks just how much is still being discovered. In the
>  former context,
>   you're effectively trying to shove your discoveries into
>  people's faces,
>   and using loads of hype in the process; in the latter
>  context, only
>   people actively subscribing to that twitter feed will see
>  the constant
>   bombardment (it's "opt-in"), and what they'd be getting
>  *from* that feed
>   is basically hype-free links to the papers (you can't fit a
>  lot of hype
>   into 140 characters!). Having a feed that posts every
>  paper, from all
>   sources, for all taxa from fungi to dinosaurs to insects,
>  would also
>   help level the proverbial playing field, rather than giving
>  exposure
>   only to those researchers/institutions with the resources
>  or inclination
>   to produce and promote press releases"
>
>
>  ________________________________________
>  From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>  on behalf of Doug
>  Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
>  Sent: 12 December 2015 13:28
>  To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Fwd: Nature needs names: 60 new
>  dragonflies from
>  Africa
>
>  As rarely as I may agree with Stephen, in this case he and I
>  perceive
>  the same problem, though I think it might be better
>  explained, and put
>  into perspective.
>
>  [...]
>
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-- 
Scott Thomson
Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo
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