A Few Bad Scientists Are Threatening To Topple Taxonomy (smithsonianmag.com)

From a report: To study life on Earth, you need a system. Ours is Linnaean taxonomy, the model started by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus in 1735. Linnaeus's two-part species names, often Latin-based, consist of both a genus name and a species name, i.e. Homo sapiens. Like a library's Dewey Decimal system for books, this biological classification system has allowed scientists around the world to study organisms without confusion or overlap for nearly 300 years. But, like any library, taxonomy is only as good as its librarians -- and now a few rogue taxonomists are threatening to expose the flaws within the system. Taxonomic vandals, as they're referred to within the field, are those who name scores of new taxa without presenting sufficient evidence for their finds. Like plagiarists trying to pass off others' work as their own, these glory-seeking scientists use others' original research in order to justify their so-called "discoveries." "It's unethical name creation based on other people's work," says Mark Scherz, a herpetologist who recently named a new species of fish-scaled gecko. "It's that lack of ethical sensibility that creates that problem." The goal of taxonomic vandalism is often self-aggrandizement. Even in such an unglamorous field, there is prestige and reward -- and with them, the temptation to misbehave. "If you name a new species, there's some notoriety to it," Thomson says. "You get these people that decide that they just want to name everything, so they can go down in history as having named hundreds and hundreds of species." The problem may be getting worse, thanks to the advent of online publishing and loopholes in the species naming code. With vandals at large, some researchers are less inclined to publish or present their work publicly for fear of being scooped, taxonomists told me. "Now there's a hesitation to present our data publically, and that's how scientists communicate," Thomson says. "The problem that causes is that you don't know who is working on what, and then the scientists start stepping on each other's toes."

Comments

Blockchain to the rescue?

[El Cubano]

I know blockchain is a bit tired at this point, but this sounds like the right sort of application for it. In order to successfully publish you would have to get enough people to accept your contribution. Because, as has been shown time and again, peer-review publications are not acting as the gatekeepers they make themselves out to be.

Re:Blockchain to the rescue?

[El Cubano]

Because, as has been shown time and again, peer-review publications are not acting as the gatekeepers they make themselves out to be.

...because having people reviewing your work in order for it to be accepted has been shown to not work.

Which is not what I said. The problem is not the peer reviewers themselves, it is the publications. There are enough scientific publications who claim to have a robust peer review process, but which have been shown to be far below the standard they claim, as to make them suspect. There have been stories of researches that have used machine-generated nonsense papers as submissions to supposedly peer-reviewed publications where the submissions were accepted.

One of the deficiencies with peer review is that is usually done blind. That does have benefits, when executed properly, but again that is usually the problem. If I trust Dr. Soandso at the University of Nowhere in Particular and he accepts something, then I am more likely to accept it. Versus, a paper that got published after being reviewed (or not reviewed) by an unknown number and population of reviewers of unknown qualification, I would rather base my acceptance on the evaluation done by someone I know and trust. It's not perfect, but I think it has to be better than what we have now.

Re:The Smithsonian Are Bigoted Haters

[GLMDesigns]

I don't know sounds too phallic too me. If you want to be inclusive: How about Homo Flaccid instead? Or Homo Labia. Or Homo FoMe?

Professional society is the correct solution

[LeftCoastThinker]

The best solution is to have a professional society that elects boards to review submissions for official taxonomical names. If it is true that there are just a few bad actors, they can be blacklisted and their names circulated to the media at large, preventing them from claiming the right to name a new "discovery" that they are attempting to hijack from another researcher or group. The society could also publish clear rules about naming and who has the right to name. Once it is clearly delineated, violators can be rightly blacklisted from ever making official, new names.

I suspect, though it is not spelled out in the article that this is likely not much of a problem in the US or Europe, but in other regions of the world where there is less funding and more pressure on scientists to produce results, and less penalty for stealing other people's research.

Re:Professional society is the correct solution

[parkinglot777]

The best solution is to have a professional society that elects boards to review submissions for official taxonomical names. If it is true that there are just a few bad actors, they can be blacklisted and their names circulated to the media at large, preventing them from claiming the right to name a new "discovery" that they are attempting to hijack from another researcher or group. The society could also publish clear rules about naming and who has the right to name. Once it is clearly delineated, violators can be rightly blacklisted from ever making official, new names.

I suspect, though it is not spelled out in the article that this is likely not much of a problem in the US or Europe, but in other regions of the world where there is less funding and more pressure on scientists to produce results, and less penalty for stealing other people's research.

Actually, this conflict of taxonomical naming has been going on for a quite a while already. There is something that TFA doesn't point out and it seems to be quite a red flag to me.

From TFA:

According to the official record of species names, governed by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the snake belongs to the genus Spracklandus. What you don’t know is that almost no taxonomists use that name. Instead, most researchers use the unofficial name that pops up in Wikipedia and most scientific journal articles: Afronaja.

I have searched the word "Spracklandus" related to snake and I found this Conference Paper - January 2015. One interesting point is that the paper is attacking the person who was pushing the word "Spracklandus" to become an official snake genus. Now who is doing the real vandalism??? I don't know...

Re:Professional society is the correct solution

[93 Escort Wagon]

I suspect, though it is not spelled out in the article that this is likely not much of a problem in the US or Europe, but in other regions of the world where there is less funding and more pressure on scientists to produce results, and less penalty for stealing other people's research.

You suspect it is Chinese scientists, in other words. But the article itself is specifically pointing at a couple Australian gentlemen.

Know when to use i.e. (not the browser)

[Provocateur]

Know when to use i.e. and when to use e.g.

e.g.=exempli gratia="For example"
i.e.=id est="that is"

A bad browser e.g. internet explorer

But this crowd can tolerate such things better than this grammar nazi can.

Re:Know when to use i.e. (not the browser)

[theendlessnow]

I believe it is also correct to say:

A bad browser i.e. internet explorer

Perhaps another example would be better:

Another example e.g. A bad president i.e. Donald Trump

Or a clear example e.g. A good farmer e.i.e.i.o. Old MacDonald

Re:Know when to use i.e. (not the browser)

[sexconker]

Know when to use i.e. and when to use e.g.

e.g.=exempli gratia="For example"
i.e.=id est="that is"

A bad browser e.g. internet explorer

But this crowd can tolerate such things better than this grammar nazi can.

"e.g." more closely translates to "example given" or "free example". Neither fits in grammatically with how it's used (i.e., "e.g., whatever"). You'd likely want a colon or perhaps a hyphen instead of the meager comma (which you yourself have omitted). (And fuck your style guide that likes to ignore and collapse punctuation.)

Beyond that, how can you call yourself a Grammar Nazi? Your post is riddled with flaws such as a lack of punctuation and a lack of proper casing.

For example: Rinos

[fahrbot-bot]

For example, the six types of Rinos:

1. White
2. Black
3. Indian
4. Javan
5. Sumatran
6. Republican

The history of taxonomy (systematics)...

[Uncle_Meataxe]

This is an odd post for the Slashdot crowd as systematics is a somewhat esoteric field even among biologists. The truth is that there have always been wars between the "splitters" and the "lumpers," the former happily naming lots of new species while the latter arguing against such foolishness. The thing is that the only people who care about such nuances are the systematists themselves and maybe ecologists who are trying to use their naming system to classify ecosystems, etc. What I've found maddening is that systematists often seemed to care little about the definition of "species." If you have a continuum of organisms with slightly varying morphology, where do you draw species lines? Can they interbreed? Lots of basic biology ignored in the mad dash to name everything. It's a hard problem.

Re:The history of taxonomy (systematics)...

[halivar]

Splitters!!!! *spit*

Re:The history of taxonomy (systematics)...

[Uncle_Meataxe]

You may like to tack some political agenda onto what systematists do but I can tell you that it happens regularly without any thought to environmentalism or politics. Take for example naming species of algae -- an inordinate amount of splitting has been done with species (and subspecies and varieties!). Can you imagine how such splitting could help stop development of *anything*? My experience is that biologists don't tend to do things like systematics for political reasons.

"Life or Death" Situation

[Beerdood]

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of taxonomy in biology, but this is a really incredulous scenario in the first few paragraphs of this article. Was this the best "real-life" scenario the author could come up with where taxonomy somehow results in a potential life-or-death situation?

Before you go rushing to the hospital in search of antivenin, you’re going to want to look up exactly what kind of snake you’re dealing with. But the results are confusing. According to the official record of species names, governed by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the snake belongs to the genus Spracklandus. What you don’t know is that almost no taxonomists use that name. Instead, most researchers use the unofficial name that pops up in Wikipedia and most scientific journal articles: Afronaja. ...This might sound like semantics. But for you, it could mean the difference between life and death.

Seriously, who the hell would walk into a hospital and simply mention the genus of the snake that bit them? Someone mauled by a bear arriving at a hospital wouldn't say a member of the Ursus genus mauled me. Assuming they had enough time to wiki-search the snake while they're rushed to the hospital, they'd barge in with a picture of the snake that bit them and ask for an antidote. If for some reason, the bitten victim is in some sort of delirious Hodor-like state and is unable to communicate any words other than "Spracklandus, Spracklandus , Spracklandus !!", then we'd also have to assume the doctor is unable to research this and gets the wrong snake. And then we'd have to assume that the confirmed snake that bit the patient is visually close enough for the confirmation to be technically the wrong snake, but somehow the anti-venom that's administered is too different to be effective from the actual snake, and the patient dies. And then if this did happen, it would happen once as a freak accident, and policy would change to avoid this scenario from happening in the future.

There's so many levels of unbelievably stupid with this possible scenario. If this is the best worst scenario they can come up with to reassure the readers of the importance of taxonomy - well this leads me to believe it's far less important than I originally assumed.

Re:I just discovered two new species of lizard!

[cirby]

THREE species!

Obligatory XKCD quotes:

[LordHighExecutioner]

Here and there.