[Taxacom] Caveat emptor (raw taxanomic data)

[Karl Magnacca]

On Wed, August 25, 2010 11:36 am, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> well I guess that as a major contributor myself to a biodiversity
> information source (Wikispecies) which attempts to be completely
> open and honest about data quality, those others that trade on
> spurious greater authority really annoy me...

The problem is that you never know if a source is reliable until you
actually check out the raw data (type specimens, sequence
chromatograms, etc.) for yourself.  As an example - the last
monograph on one of the groups I'm (trying to) work on was done by
someone with a good reputation who has published many good papers
over many years.  The key uses a lot of vague terms (e.g. "larger"
vs. "smaller"), as was common at the time, so I looked at the types
to figure out what he meant.  Turns out the terms aren't just vague,
but have essentially no resemblance to the actual specimens.  Which
means pretty much throwing out ~200 descriptions and starting from
scratch.  Fun.

Karl
=====================
Karl Magnacca
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Hawaii-Hilo