Taxacom: Removals of offending scientific names

Thu Jun 22 00:52:47 CDT 2023

Please, could we call time on this topic?  

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2023 8:26 AM
To: Scott Thomson <scott.thomson321 at gmail.com>
Cc: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: Removals of offending scientific names

 One could perhaps argue that being reminded of past "villains", via patronyms etc., is actually a good thing! It reminds us of the bad past so that we don't forget and make the same mistakes over again.
I'm not even sure why a patronym, say, Aus hitleri would be considered offensive? It doesn't promote Hitler's ideology in any obvious positive way. Why is it any more offensive than a book on history mentioning Hitler? Surely people don't want Hitler's name to be totally removed from any form of written record? Six million Jews were murdered on the orders of someone who shall not be mentioned!
As Scott has rightly pointed out, there might be some sense in putting greater controls on new patronyms (while leaving past patronyms unaffected). There might indeed be an issue with anyone who created a new Hitler patronym! One suggestion from me would be to require that patronyms are relevant to the new taxon and that the dedication spells this relevance out clearly, possibly with a disclaimer to the effect that the new name does not in any way endorse the personal views or unrelated activities of the person concerned. I'm sure that there must be at least some patronyms out there for people who held extremist views or ended up in prison for heinous crimes, but that is all irrelevant if the patronym was created because they were responsible for some relevant action which resulted in the new species being described.
Stephen
    On Thursday, 22 June 2023 at 04:17:45 pm NZST, Scott Thomson <scott.thomson321 at gmail.com> wrote:  

 One of the problems in this debate, which I acknowledge is difficult to control, is that whenever the debate is started on a specific issue, eg colonialism, it gets expanded to include all other groups who feel they have a gripe against some issue. The pulled in issues may be very real I acknowledge that but they are not necessarily related to the original debate. By attempting to umbrella all the issues under one attempt to get rid of any name that may be offensive to someone achieves two things, it dilutes the points of the original debate, and creates more negative kickback against it. This just makes it more contentious and in all honesty less likely to achieve anything. I liked Neal`s point on left handedness, I am assuming it was tongue in cheek, but it shows how you can find anything that someone will dislike and attempt to attach it to another debate to try for a majority view, this usually backfires as I said, it only attracts more negativity to the original argument. It's basically a me-too approach from a philosophical perspective. I am not referring to the Me-Too movement there, it's another issue. The philosophical me too approach to a debate is the same as the whataboutism approach and the weakest debating techniques, it is doomed to failure. So to those who present these papers calling for this they are all making the same mistake, they are not constraining the argument and excluding the addition of other unrelated issues. To win a debate like this they must take control of the discussion and not allow the possibility of the me too philosophy as an answer, by addressing this and ruling it out in their initial paper, that failure to control the debate dooms their argument every time.

In past discussions of this I have said I have no issue if we as a community draw a line in the sand and say no more patronyms for example, but it cannot be retroactive. Making it retroactive interferes with the primary aim of the code which is stability.
I made this argument, among others against the renaming of the journal Copeia, I warned them that changing the name would cost them in their traction as a publishing entity. No doubt Edward Drinker Cope was not a good person in modern terms, but his name had little to do with the traction the journal had received after decades of usage, changing the name has cost the journal and to draw an analogy to nomenclature, it lost stability.
The majority of end users of taxonomy do not care why a species has a particular name, they just want it to be stable.
Cheers Scott

Em qui., 22 de jun. de 2023 às 00:12, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> escreveu:

 I'm not sure how replacement of such names generates "justice"? It just makes people feel better who dislike the person the name was named after. Again, Roger Waters is a good example. He has 3 patronyms strongly connected with him (Pink Floyd). To some people, he is a human rights advocate. To others, he is an antisemite/Nazi. The existence of a few clear cases, like Hitler, for example, hides the fact that most cases are not at all clear cut. Of course the people who dislike Waters will claim that it is absolutely clear in his case, so then it becomes a heated debate about whether of not it is clear cut, with some people saying yes and others no. Do we really want biological nomenclature to be influenced by such complex and subjective sociopolitical debates? I think not!Stephen
    On Thursday, 22 June 2023 at 03:01:31 pm NZST, Neal Evenhuis via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  

 You’ve got to remove them to replace them. Pure logic. 😉

On Stardate 6/21/23, 4:56 PM, "Taxacom" <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

No one said anything about removing any names. Just replacing them.

Guys, you made and you make the rules. No one stops you from changing them.
You have made worse changes in the rules from a taxonomic and nomenclatural point of view than that in order to serve other interests and agendas.

Whatever change you do in the rules there is always going to be the same number of people who are going to object.

The truth is that the Commission does not really care about those issues on offensive names, as they said in their recent publication.

In the end, it is always the same battle, everywhere: the struggle between conservatism and progress, justice or injustice. And that same struggle has always been resolved in the same way, sooner or later.

But if we are not going to resolve injustice in our little fictional world that no one cares about, where we have all the power to do whatever we want, how we can expect to do the same in the real world where it matters?

At least Roger Waters was able to create a Wall that made sense. Maybe he deserves an eponym because of that.

Sincerely,
Evan

On Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 19:00 Frederick W. Schueler via Taxacom < taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> On 21-Jun-23 5:30 p.m., Neal Evenhuis via Taxacom wrote:
> > but what got me really ticked off is that no one has yet spoken up 
> > for
> another oppressed minority – us left-handers. We are apparently the 
> silent oppressed. We are only 10% of the world’s population and as 
> such are forced to live in a right-handed world. There are loads of 
> derogatory words for left-handedness such as corrie-fisted, southpaw, 
> wrong-hander, maladroit, dubious, awkward, clumsy, and insincere.
>
> * but you can see from the fact that we're on TAXACOM that we're the 
> covert intellectual elite, controlling the world by inserting sinister 
> ideas into public discourse!
>
> fred.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad  Fragile Inheritance 
>Natural History - https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffragileinheritance.ca%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GTl%2B6%2F9wVz1d5ECHsWqNkF2s0gWWQLDvKtDm4G0At0w%3D&reserved=0  FI Newsletter -
> 
>https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclt1233162.benchmarkurl.com%2Fc%2Fv%3Fe%3D15E5037%26c%3D12D10A%26t%3D0%26l%3D53EF5F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2FPbgbt9VEZyB3wmDIxZpQS%2BbMPVWSDScV6juJWamb%2Bw%3D&reserved=0
>06
> Database fund-raiser -
>
> 
>https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclt1233162.bmeurl.co%2FF0DE970%3Futm_source%3DBenchmarkEmail%26utm_camp&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=iak2OxhNmyVuGyd%2F8%2Bz5pgXunjoWgUds%2FAH1h6M%2F84o%3D&reserved=0
>aign=January_-_February_2023
> 2022 annual letter:  https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclt1233162.bmeurl.co%2FEFE49F7&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=hnUBHjVGKHWVYgpfdwjDOJg1tz91GtBG36HWZZLa6QA%3D&reserved=0
> 6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 
>1T0
>    on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain  44.87156° N 75.70095° W
> (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
>
> Send Taxacom mailing list submissions to: taxacom at lists.ku.edu For 
> list information; to subscribe or unsubscribe, visit:
> https://lists.ku.edu/listinfo/taxacom
> You can reach the person managing the list at: 
> taxacom-owner at lists.ku.edu The Taxacom email archive back to 1992 can be searched at:
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftaxacom.markmail.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b57OtyWxrIPM6zx1y%2BLQvGKjXU8xXbaIU3K6dWvISuY%3D&reserved=0
>
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration 
> for about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>
_______________________________________________
Taxacom Mailing List

Send Taxacom mailing list submissions to: taxacom at lists.ku.edu For list information; to subscribe or unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.ku.edu/listinfo/taxacom
You can reach the person managing the list at: taxacom-owner at lists.ku.edu The Taxacom email archive back to 1992 can be searched at: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftaxacom.markmail.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b57OtyWxrIPM6zx1y%2BLQvGKjXU8xXbaIU3K6dWvISuY%3D&reserved=0

Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.
_______________________________________________
Taxacom Mailing List

Send Taxacom mailing list submissions to: taxacom at lists.ku.edu For list information; to subscribe or unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.ku.edu/listinfo/taxacom
You can reach the person managing the list at: taxacom-owner at lists.ku.edu The Taxacom email archive back to 1992 can be searched at: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftaxacom.markmail.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b57OtyWxrIPM6zx1y%2BLQvGKjXU8xXbaIU3K6dWvISuY%3D&reserved=0

Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.

_______________________________________________
Taxacom Mailing List

Send Taxacom mailing list submissions to: taxacom at lists.ku.edu For list information; to subscribe or unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.ku.edu/listinfo/taxacom
You can reach the person managing the list at: taxacom-owner at lists.ku.edu The Taxacom email archive back to 1992 can be searched at: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftaxacom.markmail.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b57OtyWxrIPM6zx1y%2BLQvGKjXU8xXbaIU3K6dWvISuY%3D&reserved=0

Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.

--
Scott Thomson

Centro de Estudos dos Quelônios da Amazônia - CEQUA Petrópolis, Manaus State of Amazonas, 69055-010 Brasil

https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.carettochelys.com%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=JqTZV2e9rGqgBAgwWQF5ZIa9Hp3Nk3xiqIX8rNQtQ30%3D&reserved=0
ORCID: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Forcid.org%2F0000-0003-1279-2722Lattes&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=0eIeRRYGFVa3YNONVTEPRi3kHKe%2BqLkBa1QV6FF9LLs%3D&reserved=0: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flattes.cnpq.br%2F0323517916624728Skype&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=vKughvOzXLSaqZcdOie3ZLE994mzaW7V5CUCtSaj6CU%3D&reserved=0: Faendalimas Mobile Phone Brasil: +55 11 98178 7270Whatsapp: +55 11 98178 7270

_______________________________________________
Taxacom Mailing List

Send Taxacom mailing list submissions to: taxacom at lists.ku.edu For list information; to subscribe or unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.ku.edu/listinfo/taxacom
You can reach the person managing the list at: taxacom-owner at lists.ku.edu The Taxacom email archive back to 1992 can be searched at: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftaxacom.markmail.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca4db993230a34073771208db72e4e959%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230099735072439%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b57OtyWxrIPM6zx1y%2BLQvGKjXU8xXbaIU3K6dWvISuY%3D&reserved=0

Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.