
A Few Bad Scientists Are Threatening to Topple Taxonomy - artsandsci
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-big-ugly-problem-heart-of-taxonomy-180964629/?no-ist
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jessaustin
These two Australian dudes are awful, no doubt, but the whole "you might get
the wrong antivenin" disaster scenario is a reach. How many people go to the
hospital with a scientific name? If I ever get bit, I'll bring the the remains
of the snake with me, and the nurse will say, "Yep, looks like a copperhead."

Academia's blockchain-like pyramid of citations is charming, IMHO. The
researchers who matter, know what's going on. Citing these bozos, would be a
pretty good bozo indicator in and of itself.

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contingo
It's a reach to imagine your scenario applies to snakebite emergencies
generally. Copperheads are large, distinctive snakes, their nomenclature is
stable and in the temperate zones where they live, there are a relatively
limited number of other venomous species to distinguish, hence you being so
assured of supplying remains for a nurse to casually ID. In contrast, many
tropical habitats, where snakebites are much more of a problem, have a much,
much higher venomous snake species diversity (particularly of those small,
fast elusive ones you barely glimpse), and questions about ID and species
relationships are correspondingly more confusing.

It's not so much about always turning up with a scientific name. The whole
effort from doctor-patient communication, to animal control, to the
production, supply and procurement of specific antivenins, needs to be
conducted within as stable and precise nomenclatural framework as possible.

Snakes are just one example here, there are many examples of research
programmes being derailed by faulty taxonomy, with big impacts on everything
from crop production to theoretical work in ecology.

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vacri
> _particularly of those small, fast elusive ones you barely glimpse_

How is taxonomy going to help you if you don't get enough identification time
and don't have enough herpetology to identify the snake's species and genus in
the first place? The vast majority of people don't use taxonomic terms:
"Doctor, can you help me? I have a _canis familiaris_ bite..."

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contingo
Read my paragraph number two?

If you have absolutely no information about what bit you, diagnostics look at
habitat, bitemark characteristics, venom reaction, and of course serological
tests / enzyme immunological assay can be conclusive. Taxonomy is critical
generally, if the patient doesn't have an ID it's not as if taxonomy becomes
irrelevant.

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Vinnl
> That definition leaves room for what few would call science: self-
> publishing. (...) “No other field of science, other than taxonomy, is
> subject to allowing people to self-publish.”

Actually, the sharing of non-peer-reviewed works (preprints) is fairly common
in STEM, and is spreading to other disciplines [0]. The main difference is
that they usually on to be peer-reviewed - although not always.

That said, I'm not sure if the solution would be to only allow peer-reviewed
work in the taxonomy, as defining what is proper peer review is difficult as
well. For example, there are plenty of predatory journals that will arrange a
rather symbolic peer review process for you as long as you pay.

But it's an interesting problem, to say the least.

[0] [https://cos.io/about/news/six-new-preprint-services-join-
gro...](https://cos.io/about/news/six-new-preprint-services-join-growing-
community-across-disciplines-accelerate-scholarly-communication/)

~~~
MereInterest
While sharing of pre-prints is commonly done, nothing official is ever done
based on non-reviewed studies. If they are later published, then the pre-
prints are treated equivalently, because they have the same data. However,
pre-prints that do not make it through peer review, or conclusions that exist
within a pre-print but are removed in the final version, are treated as non-
existent.

It seems reasonable to treat taxonomy with the same rigor. If you can't
convince your peers that you found something new, why should you get the
distinction of making the name for it?

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__MatrixMan__
Maybe these guys are partaking in "taxonomic vandalism" for the wrong reasons,
but I think there might be a place for a reminder that genetic variation,
while not continuous, is far more fine grained than our taxonomies, and that
relying on those taxonomies too heavily might lead to mistakes.

The article points out that:

> this biological classification system has allowed scientists around the
> world to study organisms without confusion or overlap for nearly 300 years.

You have to wonder how the system would look now if 300 years ago they had had
the understanding and techniques (e.g. bioinformatics) that we have today.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Taxonomies certainly do change with genetic data. The big debates are focused
on reconstructing ancestry (phylogenies) but this applies to species
definitions as well. This issue of vandalism is orthogonal to the science of
taxonomy.

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vacri
> _Naming species forms the foundation of biology_

No, it really doesn't. It really, really doesn't. People study biology all the
time and get useful levels of skill without ever being aware of species
classification. Taxonomy is a part of biology, but it's not a foundation of
it. If you want to study physics, you're not going to get very far without
'distance' or 'time', but you can learn heaps of useful biology without ever
uttering a latin phrase.

We, as humans, have a long history of studying biology with little in the way
of taxonomy: hunting and farming. The quoted bit is an annoying premise for
the article, because the whole thing is written as if biology itself is
potentially going to crumble, just to add a bit of needless drama.

~~~
jhbadger
I've moved from environmental biology to biomedical biology in my career.
Certainly biomedical types don't care much about classification. But that's
because they traditionally only deal with humans, rats, monkeys and mice. But
classification really matters once you get beyond that. Hell, biomedical
science is having a crash course in classification due to the current interest
in the microbiome. It really _matters_ if a bacterium is a Firmicute or a
Bacteroidetes.

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mcguire
Science statement of the week:

" _In response to questions about the legitimacy of his journal, Hawkeswood
delivered a string of expletives directed towards his critics, and contended
that Calodema has “heaps of merit.”_ "

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kbutler
The weakness of the scientific names taxonomy isn't so much that people can
get names added too easily, it's that the whole thing is subject to change.

As we learn about the genetics (phylogeny) of plants and animals, they get
renamed from the original morphology-based names/locations.

[https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/articles/dryandra-
banksia/w...](https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/articles/dryandra-
banksia/why_names_change)

Maybe once everything is verified by DNA analysis it will settle down, but
then we will just continue fighting over what degree of mutation comprises a
new species.

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QAPereo
Incredible, and even down to the speech patterns this Hoser fellow sounds like
a pretty typical troll. Unfortunately the herpetologists seem to be not unlike
fairly typical victims of trolls in that they are very much on the back foot
and having to wait on slow bureaucracy. At the end of the day it does sound
like another form of walled garden, this time a restricted herpetological
taxonomic database, is probably going to be the way to go.

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Halved
He hasn't published for a few years as evidenced by this list:

[https://species.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Terrence_Hoser](https://species.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Terrence_Hoser)

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Jtsummers
[http://www.smuggled.com/AJHIP1.htm](http://www.smuggled.com/AJHIP1.htm)

Still publishing.

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evanhr
4 hours in, and nobody went for "if they have trouble with this, wait until
they try cache invalidation…"?

Very disappointed.
[[https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html)]

