[Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections: Science Briefing for Policymakers

[John Grehan]

I admit that I am not acquainted with all the bioinformatics databases out
there so I cannot comment on their worth as such. I have seen over the last
20 years or so a great deal of emphasis on grand bioinformatics schemes but
whether anything of great merit has developed I do not know. Years ago a
colleague said to me that I could not criticize their interpretations
because I was not on site in the field to see their study subject which was
in effect another way of saying that their publications (subject of my
critique) was worthless as a knowledge base. If a researcher's own
publications could be so regarded what about databases?

I have seen online databases created by taxonomic specialists for groups of
their expertise and to that I might ascribe some level of confidence,
always with the caveat that even a specialist can make a mistake and the
unknown status of the quality control measures in place. Such databases
that include distributional information based on specialist research can
also be very useful in biogeographic studies (so again quality of the
source in terms of specialist input is more the issue)

Databases that allow one to see the original labels and specimen are, for
my purposes, potentially most useful. In my little world of ghost moth
research the most useful development was on line imaging, especially
genitalic dissections and names which quickly provided me with information
that I could evaluate. One site, by an amateur, illustrated a dissection
that led me to review a genus and write a note for publication on its
taxonomic status. No grand database, but effective web information
nevertheless.

John Grehan

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 5:24 PM, David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>wrote:

> > The irony seems to be that with the ever greater emphasis on databasing
> > collections there is a corresponding decrease in the value of researchers
> > to work that information.
>
> There are at least two aspects to the problem-a general failure to
> fund basic systematics and a failure to realize that Garbage In,
> Garbage Out applies to bioinformatics.  If all the databases are full
> of whatever was typed by underpaid interns, taxonomically uninformed
> volunteers, etc., then they will only be meaningfully useable by those
> with sufficient taxonomic expertise to figure out the mistakes and
> work around them.   However, the existence of big databases makes it
> look like a lot is there, if you don't look closely.
>
> Collections databases and other bioinformatics are great, if they have
> been done well.  Otherwise, it's biomisinformatics.
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> Collections Assistant
> The Paleontological Research Institution
> 1259 Trumansburg Road
> Ithaca NY 14850
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
> these methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>