[Taxacom] Dishonorable people as species names

[JF Mate]

The article is a naive, retrospective view of history and science
which is best ignored. Also it is hard to see how this is "a problem
in the field" or how advance in the science will be achieved by a "...
decision to no longer publicly honor human rights violators..." when
the author can only come up with a handful of really old examples out
of millions of names. They are historical accidents and scrubbing
history is at best difficult, and at worst a dangerous path with an
ignoble past.

There is no doubt that naming species after individuals carries the
risk that said people willl be found out to be less than deserving in
the future. We can all agree on Hitler, but only now in retrospective,
whereas in 1933 it was probably no different to naming the species
after a queen or king. Also, as Kenneth says, there is a very wide
grey area regarding the definition of "awful people", in particular if
we cast our gaze into the past. Are we now expected to constantly
re-write history against the ever changing check-list of the
undeserving whilst our moral and social conventions change through
time?

The author makes the dubious observation that the position of not
applying the moral ideas of the present "ignores that there were large
numbers of people who opposed those awful actions at the time..." but
this also ignores that morality and social conventions evolve
gradually and that at the time many different positions jostled for
pre-eminence. If one wants to look to the past and retain the gems you
have to be willing to confront the muck you will have to dig through.
I can read and appreciate Kipling, Lovecraft or Woolf and at the same
time reject their social perspectives which were very much rooted in
the past. This means nuance, circumspection and empathy for our less
enlightened past.

A particularly worrying paragraph distils the real idea of the
article: "Taxonomists have a role to play in who society decides to
publicly honor, which is a small but real contributor to problems with
diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM." Are we expected to name
species based on what they did, but also how morally deserving they
might be now and in the future as well as on checklists? Since this is
an opinion, and I have no position to endanger I will say it outright,
this is a daft article written without paying attention to logic,
stability or what science is about. If we want to avoid similar cases
in the future we can stop using patronyms and the problem is solved,
but this is not the author´s intent of course.

J



On Sat, 9 Nov 2019 at 07:38, Geoff Read via Taxacom
<taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>
> It's a  tricky one.
>
> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-should-stop-naming-species-after-awful-people/
>
> also the originator:
> https://twitter.com/WhySharksMatter/status/1192790203037040647
>
> --
> Geoffrey B. Read, Ph.D.
> Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
> gread at actrix.gen.nz
>
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