uBio & Free taxonomic information

[Richard Pyle]

Doug Yanega wrote:

> In principle, as you well know, taxonomy is more than a library
> exercise; therefore, the product you envision is not something that
> would help the taxonomists as much as it would be a convenient
> interface by which non-taxonomists could extract taxonomic
> information without ever consulting a taxonomist. Meaning, of course,
> that this information would come to them without all of the necessary
> caveats about lack of consensus about various taxonomic opinions -

On the contrary, I think it would do the opposite, and help educate people
about the real nature of the taxonomic business.

> and if you did give them a complete listing including every variant
> classification through history including a given taxon, they wouldn't
> necessarily be happy with it: after all, the main gripe of
> non-taxonomists is the flux in classifications, when all they want is
> a single correct answer.

It all depends on the delivery and presentation.  Instead of listing gobs of
confusing text and literature citations, you could display the "stability"
factor of the name over time, and very quickly give the sense to a lay
person whether the name is currently in the midst controversy, or stabilized
some decades ago. Or, in the case of the Pan-Homo issue, would underscore
how the one reference synonymizing the genera is really just a tiny dot (an
outlier) in a sea of other recent dots that regard the genera as distinct
(as opposed to the current situation, where high-profile media coverage may
give the perception to the layfolk that most scientists believe in the
synonymy, or at best, that it's currently a raging debate of more or less
equal strength on both sides -- neither of which seems very accurate.

> As for why existing global taxonomic initiatives have
> failed, that's a complex issue, but I don't really see how uBio has
> any better odds of success

...except that what they are doing is quite different from other efforts.
It's a totally different approach to the problem, with an eye towards an
(almost) totally different audience.

> - mostly because one of the primary
> reasons these initiatives fail is because they need to have an
> enormous workforce of taxonomists at their foundation, and they
> don't.

...again, this is because their goals were different.

> Who says the technical infrastructure doesn't exist already? I know
> of at least one major research team that has already demonstrated
> their ability to extract information from all existing online
> resources simultaneously via a single query - in essence, fusing all
> existing lists into one big list, from the client's perspective.
> Unless I'm mistaken, that makes your approach look nearly obsolete.

Not really.  The uBio approach is focused on historical literature, not
online lists.  Remember, this is coming from the Library community -- the
folks who have access to vast quantities of published literature, and who
are part of a growing movement to get that literature digitized.  Once
again, this is a different approach.

> To my mind, this is all backwards. What needs funding is the
> development of taxonomic expertise - meaning hundreds or thousands of
> monographic, species-level revisionary works - and *linking* the
> results of all these revisions is secondary.

I certainly agree.  And there's not a snowball's chance in hell (in my
opinion) that uBio's source of money could have been diverted to such
efforts.

> Compiling
> a bunch of taxon names that have not been examined by a competent
> revisor in the last 100 years is not really performing the kind of
> service that the community needs.

I disagree.  Unlike many other sciences, where published papers more than a
few years old represent little more than historical footnotes; the field of
taxonomy is almost unique in that publications spanning the past two and a
half centuries are still VERY relevant to modern research.  Indeed, in some
ways the older the reference, the more important it is (priority & all).
Compiling an index to historical literature saves *US* a lot of time, and
allows us to spend our time focused on things that better harness our
particular skills (e.g., completing the catalog of life).

Anyway.....look folks; it is not my intention to defend what uBio is trying
to do.  It *IS* my intention to ensure that criticisms against it are
legitimate, and not misdirected.

One final point....in my previous post, I slipped up my double-negative when
I wrote:

"But that doesn't mean that the existence and subsequent refinement of such
tools
would be of much greater help to both taxonomists and layfolk, than they
would hurt."

I hope I'm not crucified for this transgression in the same way that Dave's
metaphorical "nickel" comment brought unnecessary wrath upon him.
Obviously, in the above I meant to assert that the tools would do more good
than harm.

Aloha,
Rich