[Taxacom] taxonomic "vandalism?"

Fri Oct 6 02:16:33 CDT 2017

Two things:

First, I don't think there is a neutral position here.

To give an analogy: if I fall asleep in a public place with my wallet lying unsecured next to me, then I am doing something very stupid. However, if someone takes the wallet, criminal law would still consider them a thief, with all the usual penalties. The Code would let them keep the wallet. Neither of those is a neutral position.

Second, I don't think it's fair to say that most of the contentious descriptions are based on data carelessly left lying around by herpetologists. Most of these "descriptions" were pre-emptive and based on things like allopatric distributions in field guides, mitochondrial phylogeographic studies (neither of which by themselves justify new species descriptions) or weakly supported nodes in major supermatrix phylogenies (for genera). Many of the resulting names are of course just synonyms, but some turn out to be the oldest available names when someone else later does the work leading to recognition of the taxon as valid. In most of these cases, there is no case to be made that earlier workers were negligent, or even overly slow, in naming something: the name preceded the evidence.

Cheers,

Wolfgang

--
Dr. Wolfgang Wüster  -  Senior Lecturer
School of Biological Sciences
Bangor University
Environment Centre Wales
Bangor LL57  2UW
Wales, UK

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________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of Ivie, Michael <mivie at montana.edu>
Sent: 06 October 2017 02:28
To: Doug Yanega; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] taxonomic "vandalism?"

Not even close, Doug, what you quote out of context is not part of the Code, see the intro to the Appendeces.  The Code itself is neutral, and applies equally to any situation, immoral or not.

Mike
__________________________________________________
Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D., F.R.E.S.

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________________________________________
From: Taxacom [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] on behalf of Doug Yanega [dyanega at ucr.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2017 6:47 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] taxonomic "vandalism?"

On 10/5/17 5:20 PM, Michael A. Ivie wrote:
> Blaming the Code is equivalent to blaming the victim.  The Code is
> equally available to both the "victim" and the "vandal."  It is
> neutral and blameless.
>
Actually, no, the Code is not neutral about this; it does take a clear
stance on this exact issue, in Appendix A:

"2. A zoologist should not publish a new name if he or she has reason to
believe that another person has already recognized the same taxon and
intends to establish a name for it (or that the taxon is to be named in
a posthumous work). A zoologist in such a position should communicate
with the other person (or their representatives) and only feel free to
establish a new name if that person has failed to do so in a reasonable
period (not less than a year)."

Stealing other's intellectual property may not make your name
unavailable, but it DOES violate the explicit text of the Code, above.
When we asked for opinions from the taxonomic community whether this
passage and the others in Appendix A should be made part of the
legislative text (e.g., replace the term "should not" with "must not",
and make availability contingent upon compliance), we got a lukewarm
response from a handful of people. Evidently, and counterintuitively,
taxonomists don't care enough about intellectual property to WANT any
rules protecting it (or, at least, not enough to write letters
indicating their concern). Otherwise, they should have written letters
to the Commission when we openly pleaded with them to do so, about this
EXACT problem, just a few years ago.

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
Doug's Personal Page - University of California, Riverside<http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html>
cache.ucr.edu
Home of "Curious Scientific Names", along with assorted links to entomology, ecology, biodiversity, reference sites, utilities, and a little entertainment.

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         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

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