http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...raymond-hoser/
An interesting blog post that came across my facebook page (from a Ph.D. paleontologist, in case anyone was going to use that as an excuse to dismiss it). The gist is, Raymond Hoser decided to use the rules of taxonomy to troll science.
I'm not an enormous fan of the way taxonomy is conducted. Anyone who's ever had to sift through obscure German museum copies of thesises and translate centuries-old Latin documents in the same afternoon will, if they are rational, conclude that taxonomy is hopelessly muddled. The issue is that there isn't really any governing body, nor is there any central repository for this information. All of us who wish to deal with taxonomy in any way are obliged to create our own libraries, which can take an absurd amount of effort--a species can be named anywhere in the world, and it counts. And countries don't have standard definitions of "publication". The reason I singled out Germany is because "publication" there can consist of printing out bound copies fo a thesis and handing them to a number of museums and libraries. You can probably guess how easy those are to get ahold of. America isn't much better, though; unless a thesis is critical to my work I tend to skip over those documents as not worth the effort.
There's also the issue of how to deal with taxonomy now that we have phylogeny and cladistics to deal with. In theory every node of every phylogeny can be considered worth naming--after all, everything coming off a node is, more or less by definition, considered a clade according to that phylogeny. That's essentially what this clown did. On the one hand, this hopelessly muddies the waters and requires countless hours and effort to make the taxonomy make sense. On the other....the man has a point. He's simply being more consistent than many taxonomists are--his body of work is one giant Argument ad Absurdium aimed at the entire field: taken to their logical conclusion, phylogeny and taxonomy, used together, yield his system. The reason his work is so problematic is that there is no objective way to say his names for genera, families, and so forth are less valid than those of anyone else.
Some of the criticisms against Hoser are deplorable as well. "These names are unusable" is just about the stupidest criticism you can level at a taxonomic name. We've abandoned Latin, even Latin plus Greek--now we use Latinized words in names as well. This objection boils down to nothing more than "I don't like it", which is the opposite of scientific criticism. And since Hoser didn't break the rules, his names are legitimate.
Still, Hoser is a plague on biology. Personally, I believe that anyone who calls biologists "truth haters" should be dismissed without further consideration--he's obviously not examining these things rationally, even if the end result doesn't violate any rules. And his methodology is, to say the absolute least, shoddy to the point of unconscionable. I've seen names thrown out before; I've helped to do it. We should be able to do the same for this guy's work--and, after a certain point, we should be allowed to ignore it, given that it's not actual science.
Still, stuff like this is useful for re-evaluating our SOPs in science. Obviously there's a flaw; this guy is obviously both trolling and mentally unballanced. If he got through, it indicates that there is a serious problem that we should fix. The question is, given that past 300 years or so of doing things the way we're doing them now, how can we?
Personally, I'd like the ICZN to establish a central repository of taxonomic names, along with copies of the article (or, for those not in the public domain, at least copies of the abstract and a link to the journal) where the species was named. If possible I'd love to see taxonomists required to submit their works to the ICZN before the name is approved. Yes, this could easily result in personality clashes; however, it would prevent the sort of behavior that Hoser is demonstrating. And given that often these decisions can cost a huge amount of money (by, for example, creating new endangered species via dividing populations previously treated as one species) I think a bit more oversight wouldn't hurt. At the very least, taxonomists should be permitted to offer arguments as to why certain works should be ignored; it's not like merely publishing makes an argument cannon or unquestionable (and naming things IS an argument). We either need to reign in taxonomists to a certain extent, or let them loose to a certain extent. Either way would solve this problem, I think. Though I'd still want a central repositor for all taxonomic names (yes, I know how much effort that would take; I also know how much it would save).
An interesting blog post that came across my facebook page (from a Ph.D. paleontologist, in case anyone was going to use that as an excuse to dismiss it). The gist is, Raymond Hoser decided to use the rules of taxonomy to troll science.
I'm not an enormous fan of the way taxonomy is conducted. Anyone who's ever had to sift through obscure German museum copies of thesises and translate centuries-old Latin documents in the same afternoon will, if they are rational, conclude that taxonomy is hopelessly muddled. The issue is that there isn't really any governing body, nor is there any central repository for this information. All of us who wish to deal with taxonomy in any way are obliged to create our own libraries, which can take an absurd amount of effort--a species can be named anywhere in the world, and it counts. And countries don't have standard definitions of "publication". The reason I singled out Germany is because "publication" there can consist of printing out bound copies fo a thesis and handing them to a number of museums and libraries. You can probably guess how easy those are to get ahold of. America isn't much better, though; unless a thesis is critical to my work I tend to skip over those documents as not worth the effort.
There's also the issue of how to deal with taxonomy now that we have phylogeny and cladistics to deal with. In theory every node of every phylogeny can be considered worth naming--after all, everything coming off a node is, more or less by definition, considered a clade according to that phylogeny. That's essentially what this clown did. On the one hand, this hopelessly muddies the waters and requires countless hours and effort to make the taxonomy make sense. On the other....the man has a point. He's simply being more consistent than many taxonomists are--his body of work is one giant Argument ad Absurdium aimed at the entire field: taken to their logical conclusion, phylogeny and taxonomy, used together, yield his system. The reason his work is so problematic is that there is no objective way to say his names for genera, families, and so forth are less valid than those of anyone else.
Some of the criticisms against Hoser are deplorable as well. "These names are unusable" is just about the stupidest criticism you can level at a taxonomic name. We've abandoned Latin, even Latin plus Greek--now we use Latinized words in names as well. This objection boils down to nothing more than "I don't like it", which is the opposite of scientific criticism. And since Hoser didn't break the rules, his names are legitimate.
Still, Hoser is a plague on biology. Personally, I believe that anyone who calls biologists "truth haters" should be dismissed without further consideration--he's obviously not examining these things rationally, even if the end result doesn't violate any rules. And his methodology is, to say the absolute least, shoddy to the point of unconscionable. I've seen names thrown out before; I've helped to do it. We should be able to do the same for this guy's work--and, after a certain point, we should be allowed to ignore it, given that it's not actual science.
Still, stuff like this is useful for re-evaluating our SOPs in science. Obviously there's a flaw; this guy is obviously both trolling and mentally unballanced. If he got through, it indicates that there is a serious problem that we should fix. The question is, given that past 300 years or so of doing things the way we're doing them now, how can we?
Personally, I'd like the ICZN to establish a central repository of taxonomic names, along with copies of the article (or, for those not in the public domain, at least copies of the abstract and a link to the journal) where the species was named. If possible I'd love to see taxonomists required to submit their works to the ICZN before the name is approved. Yes, this could easily result in personality clashes; however, it would prevent the sort of behavior that Hoser is demonstrating. And given that often these decisions can cost a huge amount of money (by, for example, creating new endangered species via dividing populations previously treated as one species) I think a bit more oversight wouldn't hurt. At the very least, taxonomists should be permitted to offer arguments as to why certain works should be ignored; it's not like merely publishing makes an argument cannon or unquestionable (and naming things IS an argument). We either need to reign in taxonomists to a certain extent, or let them loose to a certain extent. Either way would solve this problem, I think. Though I'd still want a central repositor for all taxonomic names (yes, I know how much effort that would take; I also know how much it would save).
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=269219&goto=newpost
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