[Taxacom] Fwd: Nature needs names: 60 new dragonflies from Africa
Stephen Thorpe
stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
Sun Dec 13 14:50:10 CST 2015
Ian,
Firstly, I wasn't trying to lobby against media coverage for taxonomy, I was just offering my own opinion on the subject. It is all very well to attribute pure motives to those who indulge in such media coverage, i.e. oh they are just trying, against all odds, to raise public awareness of the plight of biodiversity, but:
(1) their motives could just as easily be self interest; and
(2) realistically, the public's awareness isn't going to be raised to any significant extent, and, even if it was, it would still make no significant difference to anything.
So, I was just suggesting that media coverage should be proportional to the significance of the taxonomy, and elevating 60 new dragonflies out of all proportion seems wrong to me.
Cheers,
Stephen
--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 14/12/15, Ian Harrison <iharrison at amnh.org> wrote:
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Fwd: Nature needs names: 60 new dragonflies from Africa
To: "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>, "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Peter Halasz" <list at pengo.org>
Received: Monday, 14 December, 2015, 9:32 AM
Re: "Does anybody
really think that the media coverage is going to help save
the world? It isn't."
Maybe not save the world, but at least raise
some public awareness. To a greater extent or a lesser
extent? - who knows. But to some extent, and, these days,
that has to be a good thing.
To paraphrase Randle McMurphy from One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest - they tried ... at least they
did that.
It seems wrong to
knock them for it.
Ian
Harrison
________________________________________
From: Taxacom [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu]
on behalf of Stephen Thorpe [stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz]
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 8:38 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu;
Peter Halasz
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Fwd:
Nature needs names: 60 new dragonflies from
Africa
>And really,
Stephen? You think that drawing attention to deforestation
is being done by the author for their own benefit? Are you
always a troll?<
Are you
always naive? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
At any rate, media coverage is
a dodgy beast at the best of times. News is more about
"infotainment". No doubt 60 new dragonflies are
more interesting to the public than any number of tiny
beetles which all look the same externally. But so what?
Does anybody really think that the media coverage is going
to help save the world? It isn't.
Stephen
--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 12/12/15, Peter Halasz <list at pengo.org>
wrote:
Subject: Re:
[Taxacom] Fwd: Nature needs names: 60 new dragonflies from
Africa
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Received: Saturday, 12 December, 2015, 2:13
PM
"Hear they found a
new weevil species
in Washington?"
"Oh, I don't care. I
just read about the 60 new dragonfly
species in Africa
so I've heard enough
about insects for the next month."
This is the conversation people don't
have.
Sorry I'm new to
this list and trying to follow along. What
you're saying
is that we should
collectively hold our tongues about 60
newly discovered
dragonflies in Africa
because someone in New Zealand
discovered
95 new
beetles and someone else in Hawaii
discovered 74 more, and
didn't get
any
coverage and what if someone else
discovers, I don't know,
500 new
weevils
in Washington tomorrow and the
public is already so utterly
bored of
hearing about insects because they were
oversaturated by
that African
dragonfly story they glossed over in a
newspaper the other
day that the
newspapers refuse to print the weevil story?
What? Sorry?
There is more
than a single new media outlet. Local media
outlets will be
more interested in local
discoveries. Media about species
discoveries is
NOT limited to a single
twitter feed or hashtag, and it
would be
awful if
it were. Not every media outlet is
being asked to report on
every global
discovery. Media outlets around the world
could easily
accommodate every
one of those three new species per day and it
would be a
drop in the ocean
of all the world's media coverage. The
limiting factor is
not news space or
journalists, it's entomologists who have
interesting stories
to tell about
their discoveries and who can tell those
stories in an
engaging way. The
more stories that get out there, the more news
outlets will
be encouraged
to pursue similar stories.
I don't see why there's such an effort here to
minimize the
discovery or to
shun the news coverage or to require some kind
of ranking of
the most
significant discoveries before the media is allowed to
hear
about it. It's
utterly counter productive and pointless.
I'm sorry that
dragonflies are more popular than beetles,
even if to an
entomologist "This
dragonfly publication is essentially no
different to any
other taxonomic
publication", I'm sorry, but to the rest of
the world 60
new brightly
coloured dragonflies are more interesting than
600 brown
beetles. Regardless
of their relative merits, that's no
reason to not
communicate with the public.
Do as much science
communication as
possible.
Leave it to journalists to decide
what is and is not worth
printing and
what their audience might engage with. Stop
having these
nonsensical
conversations in your head about how people read the
news.
And really, Stephen?
You think that drawing attention to
deforestation is
being done by the author
for their own benefit? Are you
always a
troll?
Peter Halasz
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