[Taxacom] Caveat emptor (raw taxanomic data)

[Stephen Thorpe]

Yes, some primary taxonomy is rubbish quality too, but that is another problem 
altogether ...

>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

I absolutely agree 100% - that is why Wikispecies gives explicit references to 
sources for everything (primary sources whenever available), and links to those 
references whenever available

cf. WoRMS , which is usually very reliable, but look at this:
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kerguelenia
cf.
http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=101616
here we have a case in which the relevant primary taxonomist himself last 
updated the WoRMS page, but before his 2010 paper was published, and his edit 
doesn't fully correspond to what came out in his own paper when published! And 
note that there is no explicit citation of the 2010 paper! Note that I have 
alerted him to this, so he may well fix it soon?




________________________________
From: Karl Magnacca <kmagnacca at wesleyan.edu>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Thu, 26 August, 2010 11:44:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Caveat emptor (raw taxanomic data)


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