Letter to Vice Chancellor of Univ. Nebraska

Thu Mar 20 14:57:29 CST 2003

Friends,

Here is the letter I sent to Dr Paul, Vice Chancellor of the University of Nebraska.  As I have not yet heard from Dr Paul, I am sending my letter to him for everyone who receives TAXACOM to read.  I hope it may stimulate you to write one.

Robin Leech

*********************

16 March 2003

To:          Dr Prem Paul, D.V.M.,

Vice Chancellor for Research

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

RE:                ELIMINATION OF RESEARCH ARM AND COLLECTIONS AT THE UNIVERSTY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN

Dear Dr Paul:

It was in complete disbelief that last week I received word that biological research and collections at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were to be eliminated.  I am writing this letter in the hopes that I may persuade you to cut costs at the University of Nebraska by other means.

Museums and research facilities attached to universities are not only part of our educational system, they are also part of our history, heritage and culture.  

It doesn't matter if the museum/research facilities are botanical, animal or human cultural.  Would you, for example, close a museum and quickly dispose of the contents if there were many Da Vinci, Van Dyke and Brueghel paintings, a Gutenberg Bible, and a few Shakespeare original manuscripts?  I think not.  I think you, and others, would do everything possible to save these historical and cultural masterpieces.  Biology museums and research centres also have irreplaceable masterpieces.  They are called holotypes, paratypes, syntypes, lectotypes, neotypes and many more.  They are the specimens that give us stability in nomenclature, and for knowing about about the flora and fauna around us.  

As a veterinarian, you know that if cattle are dying because one of the plants they are eating contains poisonous metals, you would make a collection of the plants and take them to a botanist to determine if loco weed is present.  How did the botanist come to know and make a positive identification of loco weed.  Partly by experience, partly by checking in the literature, and partly by looking at reference specimens in a museum collection.

My field of study is spider taxonomy and systematics.  Suppose a member of your family - a daughter or son - were bitten by a spider.  If the bite is painful and swollen, and the child vomiting, etc., I know you would want my services for a correct identification in order to give your child the right anti-venin.  How do I come to know about spiders? I came to know spiders the by using collected specimens in museums, and I confirmed the identification of the spider just as the botanist confirmed the loco weed - partly by checking the literature, partly by experience, and partly by looking at reference specimens in a museum collection.

The sciences are very fickle, and very prone to fads.  Let me give two examples.  In the fall of 1963, when I began my graduate studies, if you were a biologist or geologist who believed in Drifting Continents and the theory behind them, and you applied for research funds to confirm your theory that the plants or animals you are studying came from say Asia to North America, you would be denied funds by such august agencies as the NSF in the U.S., and the National Research Council here in Canada.  However, by the fall of 1964, thanks to the work by Drs J. Tuzo Wilson (U of Toronto) and R.E. Folinsbee (U of Alberta), Drifting Continent Theory, followed shortly by Plate Tectonic Theory, became accepted across all the sciences.

In the 1963-65 period, numerical taxonomy hit taxonomic and systematic biology with a big impact.  Numerical taxonomy was seen as the solution to identification and classification for all biology.  Money from the NSF and the NRC and other agencies poured into those institutes that promoted numerical taxonomy.  From our hindsight of almost 40 years, we know that numerical taxonomy cannot be used across biology.  It is one more tool that can be, and is used, for example, in bacteriology.

The newest wave, or fad, is molecular biology.  Instead of becoming one more tool for systematists and other biologists, molecular biology has become an end in itself, much to the detriment of many university research institutes (see articles on this by E.O. Wilson of Harvard University!).

If the entire University of Nebraska faculty and staff were to take a 5-10% cut - as I suggested on TAXACOM - then the University of Nebraska could ride through this difficult financial time, much as I am sure most universities of the world did during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  By doing the financial balancing in this manner, there would still be a biological research arm and collections at the University of Nebraska.  The across-the-board cuts have been done successfully where I worked until I retired (The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Edmonton), and friends in Holland tell me that it has been done there, too.

I realize that the Nebraska State Legislature controls, ultimately, the purse strings of the University of Nebraska, but how you handle diminishing funds is up to you.  You have the pen that can destroy more than 125 years of museum work in a matter of seconds, and at the same time cut off hundreds of thousands of research funds that come annually to your university.  You and this same pen can save everything.  Your choice.

I implore you - do an across-faculty-staff cut in salaries and departmental expense monies, and do not slice off a valuable world-recognized, high-quality facility that houses research, educational, historical and cultural heritage materials and people.  The materials in the University of Nebraska museums are even part of my culture and education up here in Canada.  I have borrowed specimens from there, and I deal with several of the researchers regularly.

Yours sincerely,

Robin Leech, PhD., P.Biol.

Research Associate

Provincial Museum of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta

releech at telusplanet.net.

cc:           Dr Michael Zeleny

                Dr William Splinter

Thomas E. Labedz

Dr Brett Ratcliffe