[Taxacom] Restoring indigenous names

[Stephen Thorpe]

 PS: I don't know about the two authors of this particular proposal, but, in general, I am staggered by the hypocrisy of academics in general who push for these kinds of woke proposals, since, at the same time, they are working within a system which routinely acquires public funding for the primary purpose of maximising institutional revenue, often exaggerating and/or misrepresenting the merits of such projects. Who do they think benefits the most from this? Answer: Rich middle-aged white guys (and rich middle-aged white women). Oh well, all will be forgiven if we use indigenous names for taxa!! Yeah, right ...
    On Wednesday, 4 November 2020, 02:42:16 pm NZDT, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:  
 
  There are off-list emails already going out about this, and not exactly in favour of the proposal! Hopefully, the proposal can simply be ignored, as any changes to biological nomenclature would have to be made at an international level, and they have little reason to take much notice of little old N.Z. Shane Wright's opinion on this matter can hardly be expected to be unbiased. The worry, though, is that this can be seen as another step in a much bigger movement which is gaining traction globally, i.e. tearing down colonialist statues, taking episodes of the 1970s comedy Fawlty Towers off the air, etc. Ironically, I agree with our former deputy-pm, Winston Peters, who is half Maori himself that this "woke culture" is misguided and unhelpful and that every nation makes mistakes in their history, so we should learn from those mistakes but not try to hide them.
Stephen
    On Wednesday, 4 November 2020, 02:20:11 pm NZDT, Geoff Read via Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:  
 
 
Hi all,

My local newspaper pointed out this opinion piece this morning.

Gillman, Len Norman; Wright, Shane Donald. 2020. Restoring indigenous
names in taxonomy. Communications Biology 3(1): 609

Open access https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-01344-y

Certainly there are unfortunate original  names out there.

--
Geoffrey B. Read, Ph.D.
Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
gread at actrix.gen.nz

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