[Taxacom] Taxacom Digest, Vol 74, Issue 11
Gary Anweiler
gganweiler at hotmail.com
Wed May 16 14:16:31 CDT 2012
2012
I consider database data a place to start.......leads me to a specimen that
I can correct...the interesting ones that I need to see are usually the ones
that need correcting.
For that reason alone I find the database very valuable......and when I am
done, a little bit more accurate. How does it go..........."caveat
emptor??".
Gary Anweiler
-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-request at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 11:00 AM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Taxacom Digest, Vol 74, Issue 11
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (Doug Yanega)
2. Re: Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues] (Stephen Thorpe)
3. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (David Campbell)
4. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (Stephen Thorpe)
5. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (Walker, Ken)
6. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (Stephen Thorpe)
7. more confusion over Costello et al. (online, 2011)
(Stephen Thorpe)
8. Re: Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues] (Jim Croft)
9. Re: Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues] (Stephen Thorpe)
10. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (John Grehan)
11. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (John Grehan)
12. Re: Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues] (Roger Burks)
13. Re: Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues] (Jim Croft)
14. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (Stephen Thorpe)
15. Re: Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues] (Richard Pyle)
16. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (Bob Mesibov)
17. Prof. KS Manilal honoured with the ?Officer of the Order of
Orange-Nassau? award of the Netherlands. (KP Rajesh)
18. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (David Campbell)
19. Re: Digitizing Science Collections (John Grehan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 10:45:34 -0700
From: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Message-ID: <a06240816cbd83ee4c22b@[138.23.68.6]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
John Grehan wrote:
>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.
Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant
omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things
like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date
formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels
have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical
errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels. A
taxonomic specialist may be able to fix problems with taxon IDs, but
that same person may be ill-equipped to fix problems with label data
(or, even if so, may not have the required time to do this). Any
digitized resources based on verbatim label data (without a quality
control step to confirm each and every record and correct mistakes)
will serve only to propagate such errors. Add to that the potential
for additional errors introduced by data entry personnel, or careless
georeferencing (i.e., use of automated georeferencing protocols,
which have a staggering failure rate), and the locality and phenology
data in most online resources is - simply put - not trustworthy.
It is not very hard to capture specimen data, but it is excruciating
and massively time-consuming to exercise any legitimate measure of
quality control, whether it be taxon IDs or label data. My impression
is that far more people are aware of (and take measures to address)
the taxon ID issue than the label data issue. No one would dispute
that a specimen record filed under the wrong species name is worse
than worthless, but not many people seem to be similarly concerned
about records that place a species in the wrong time or place - if
only because they are unaware how commonly the label data are bad.
That, I feel, is a grave oversight.
Peace,
--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 14:15:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
To: John Longino <jacklongino at gmail.com>, Roderic Page
<r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
Cc: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<1337116505.21231.YahooMailNeo at web114218.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
interesting, but perhaps worth some further thought regarding the fact that
something designed for use by other ant taxonomists has been made available
to everybody ... not just idiotic Wikipedians, but also governmental
biosecurity agencies, etc., realistically both of which could have a
somewhat different slant and expectation of what is on offer from the
databases than?what was?intended. AntWeb/AntCat as an example probably
doesn't highlight the potential problems as much as some other databases, in
part because ants are a relatively small and well curated taxon now in a way
that cannot be said of moths, weevils, flies, or the entirely of marine life
...
?
Stephen
From: John Longino <jacklongino at gmail.com>
To: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
Cc: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>; Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 1:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
Ah yes. Thanks for historical clarification, re silos. So we need another
term.?
re Stephen's query, AntWeb and AntCat resources are designed for other ant
taxonomists. The data are as or more reliable than what you would find in an
arrangement of specimens in a museum or a published catalogue of taxonomic
literature. There is a constant process of curation, and mechanisms for
curators to be alerted to errors. In principle, I find the process to be
much like what goes on in a traditional collection, but with the ability to
have 10 ant curators in the ant wing instead of one. The novelty is having
everything we do be highly visible, like museum displays that allow visitors
to look through the windows at scientists working.?
Jack
On May 15, 2012, at 1:17 AM, Roderic Page wrote:
A few quick comments.
>
>Silos
>
>"Silo" has a negative connotation, perhaps due to Al Gore's 1998 speech
>"The Digital Earth: Understanding our planet in the 21st Century" in which
>he noted that the vast majority of Landsat images hadn't ever been seen:
>
>"Instead, they are stored in electronic silos of data. We used to have an
>agricultural policy where we stored grain in Midwestern silos and let it
>rot while millions of people starved to death. Now we have an insatiable
>hunger for knowledge. Yet a great deal of data remains unused."
>
>Silo in this context is a set of data that is, either by accident or
>design, difficult to access, share and reuse. Obviously, one can use "silo"
>in any way you wish, but if you say "silos are great" don't be surprised if
>most people will assume you are arguing for restricting access to your
>data.
>
>Wikipedia
>
>I've also had rather mixed experiences with Wikipedia. I suspect it's the
>nature of the beast. Anyone who reads Taxacom will see parallels between
>threads on this mailing lists and some of the discussions on Wikipedia. For
>some other thoughts on wikis and Wikipedia seen Jonathan Eisen's recent
>post
>http://phylogenomics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/pluses-and-minuses-if-wikipediafying.html
>and the open access article "Making your database available through
>Wikipedia: the pros and cons" http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkr1195
>
>Evidence
>
>For me the take home message about the WoRMS/Wikipedia issue is not the
>personal foibles of Wikipedia contributors but the lack of access to the
>underlying primary literature. Most taxonomic databases are little more
>than digitised 5x3 index cards with no links to the literature (by which I
>mean digital links that take you to the actual publication). If you only
>have naked lists of names then you end up in a slanging match over which
>list is "authoritative". We all know that taxonomic databases have errors,
>these could be exposed and fixed much more quickly if we linked them to the
>underlying evidence.
>
>Databases
>
>The notion that people make databases in order to get funding has it back
>to front. My sense is that most of the money available for biodiversity
>informatics is for infrastructure rather than content, hence the emphasis
>on developing networks, databases and tools.
>
>Certainly, I've not had any funding for projects like BioStor
>http://biostor.org or iPhylo Linkout http://iphylo.org/linkout. I build
>these because I want to be able to access taxonomic information and link
>that information together. In terms of the bigger picture, if information
>isn't online then effectively it doesn't exist. If we want taxonomic
>information to be relevant then it needs to be online, so the issue becomes
>how to do that most effectively.
>
>Regards
>
>Rod
>
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------
>Roderic Page
>Professor of Taxonomy
>Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
>College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
>Graham Kerr Building
>University of Glasgow
>Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
>Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
>Tel: +44 141 330 4778
>Fax: +44 141 330 2792
>Skype: rdmpage
>AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
>Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
>Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
>Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
>
>
************************************************
John T. (Jack) Longino
Professor, Department of Biology
257 S 1400 E, University of Utah
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
Longino Ant Lab at?https://sites.google.com/site/longinoantlab/
Project LLAMA at https://sites.google.com/site/longinollama/
Ants of Costa Rica on the Web
at?https://sites.google.com/site/longinoantlab/ants-of-costa-rica
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 18:01:35 -0400
From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Message-ID:
<CAN1+Hk8tNn7ZYoVuV90hAm7w=Z1h3NenSTQt_QHfsQ3sSEJeYw at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
> especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
> over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
> work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant
> omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things
> like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date
> formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels
> have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical
> errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels.
I can confirm that mollusk labels have similar issues with similarly
high frequency, though I have not tallied percentages. In fact,
insects may have better than average quality of average data because
fewer specimens survive from the "I picked these up somewhere when my
ship sailed around the world" era. Having a misidentified specimen
with good locality data is far more useful than a correctly identified
specimen with bad locality data, as the identification can be fixed
from the specimen. Someone knowledgeable about the taxon or locality
may be able to recognize that a record is supect, even without
examining the specimen. But all data in a database needs competent
checking to be reliable. And many larger collections will include
items from various sources, of varying reliability for their
localities and identifications.
The problem is compounded when online databases grab information from
varied sources without careful verification or good harmonization
protocols. In particular, homonyms can lead to perfectly good
information from one database being presented wrongly in another one,
which claims that corrections should be referred back to the first
database.
--
Dr. David Campbell
Collections Assistant
The Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca NY 14850
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 15:24:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>,
"TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<1337120656.94680.YahooMailNeo at web114214.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
label data is a huge can of worms for all sorts of reasons! After having
thought the issue through at some length, I have come to the probably rather
unpopular conclusion that it is a bad idea to think that the totality of
label data for any given taxon is a useful thing to have! It is somewhat
analogous to the example of using WoRMS as a source for that squat lobster
article on WP ... given the way the WoRMS page was at the time, it was best
to just not mention it at all! There is a certain irony that it is common
nowadays for scientists to spend money going on collecting tours to get
fresh material of taxa for use in DNA analysis. Actually, it would be better
to go on a collecting tour to gather reliable distributional information for
the taxon! Any distribution map based on the uncritical acceptance of label
data is likely to be problematic, unles the map is so coarse that points
cover a significant proportion of the planet! Even worse is displaying a
distribution map of a tiny subsample of available label data! If you want to
know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go out and measure
it ... carefully!
?
Stephen
________________________________
From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
> Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
> especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
> over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
> work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant
> omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things
> like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date
> formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels
> have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical
> errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels.
I can confirm that mollusk labels have similar issues with similarly
high frequency, though I have not tallied percentages. In fact,
insects may have better than average quality of average data because
fewer specimens survive from the "I picked these up somewhere when my
ship sailed around the world" era.? Having a misidentified specimen
with good locality data is far more useful than a correctly identified
specimen with bad locality data, as the identification can be fixed
from the specimen.? Someone knowledgeable about the taxon or locality
may be able to recognize that a record is supect, even without
examining the specimen.? But all data in a database needs competent
checking to be reliable.? And many larger collections will include
items from various sources, of varying reliability for their
localities and identifications.
The problem is compounded when online databases grab information from
varied sources without careful verification or good harmonization
protocols.? In particular, homonyms can lead to perfectly good
information from one database being presented wrongly in another one,
which claims that corrections should be referred back to the first
database.
--
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
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 09:59:23 +1000
From: "Walker, Ken" <kwalker at museum.vic.gov.au>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>, David Campbell
<pleuronaia at gmail.com>, "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu"
<TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<AB0EB33C73AD494EBB8D722C00B3F6BB01AEA4CC37 at RAKALI.mv.vic.gov.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
I have been following this thread with some interest and increasing
frustration.
We ask for $$millions of public funding to acquire specimens.
We ask for $$millions of public funding to house and curate such specimens.
We ask for $$millions of public funding to staff these collections with
highly trained taxonomists.
Yet we want to block access to the specimen data because it is so poor
(labels or identifications).
We complain about the data transcription problems caused by volunteers and
"minimally trained" people, yet few "highly trained" individuals wish to
devote their careers to data enter and validation.
> If you want to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go
> out and measure it ... carefully!
And, if you want to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you have
to start at "Ground Zero" because nothing from the past is worth using. Why
then do we keep it?
Suck it up! Nothing is perfect. Put it out there "warts and all" and begin
the cleanup using community support. Don't build ivory towers to poor data
sets.
We have all been frustrated at the problems data aggregators display but
aggregators do not create data just display it - the data source is where
the cleanup must begin.
There - I feel better now.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 8:24 AM
To: David Campbell; TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
label data is a huge can of worms for all sorts of reasons! After having
thought the issue through at some length, I have come to the probably rather
unpopular conclusion that it is a bad idea to think that the totality of
label data for any given taxon is a useful thing to have! It is somewhat
analogous to the example of using WoRMS as a source for that squat lobster
article on WP ... given the way the WoRMS page was at the time, it was best
to just not mention it at all! There is a certain irony that it is common
nowadays for scientists to spend money going on collecting tours to get
fresh material of taxa for use in DNA analysis. Actually, it would be better
to go on a collecting tour to gather reliable distributional information for
the taxon! Any distribution map based on the uncritical acceptance of label
data is likely to be problematic, unles the map is so coarse that points
cover a significant proportion of the planet! Even worse is displaying a
distribution map of a tiny subsample of available label data! If you want to
know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go out and measure
it ... carefully!
Stephen
________________________________
From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
> Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
> especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
> over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
> work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant omissions
> or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things like
> abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date formats, or
> handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels have genuine
> errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical errors). I doubt
> such problems are unique to insect labels.
I can confirm that mollusk labels have similar issues with similarly high
frequency, though I have not tallied percentages. In fact, insects may have
better than average quality of average data because fewer specimens survive
from the "I picked these up somewhere when my ship sailed around the world"
era. Having a misidentified specimen with good locality data is far more
useful than a correctly identified specimen with bad locality data, as the
identification can be fixed from the specimen. Someone knowledgeable about
the taxon or locality may be able to recognize that a record is supect, even
without examining the specimen. But all data in a database needs competent
checking to be reliable. And many larger collections will include items
from various sources, of varying reliability for their localities and
identifications.
The problem is compounded when online databases grab information from varied
sources without careful verification or good harmonization protocols. In
particular, homonyms can lead to perfectly good information from one
database being presented wrongly in another one, which claims that
corrections should be referred back to the first database.
--
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 _______________________________________________
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Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
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The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
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(1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
(2) a Google search specified as: site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom
your search terms here
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 17:19:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: "Walker, Ken" <kwalker at museum.vic.gov.au>, David Campbell
<pleuronaia at gmail.com>, "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu"
<TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<1337127567.39397.YahooMailNeo at web114207.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>Nothing is perfect. Put it out there "warts and all" and begin the cleanup
>using community support<
?
yes, if you do *that*, fine, but don't put it out there and pretend that it
*is* (near) perfect! There is a fine line, I know, but some of these
"aggregators" don't seem to have a lot else to promote themselves with other
than "we got the best data, come and get it!" ...
?
Stephen
________________________________
From: "Walker, Ken" <kwalker at museum.vic.gov.au>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; David Campbell
<pleuronaia at gmail.com>; "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu"
<TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 11:59 AM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
I have been following this thread with some interest and increasing
frustration.
We ask for $$millions of public funding to acquire specimens.
We ask for $$millions of public funding to house and curate such specimens.
We ask for $$millions of public funding to staff these collections with
highly trained taxonomists.
Yet we want to block access to the specimen data because it is so poor
(labels or identifications).
We complain about the data transcription problems caused by volunteers and
"minimally trained" people, yet few "highly trained" individuals wish to
devote their careers to data enter and validation.
> If you want to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go
> out and measure it ... carefully!
And, if you want to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you have
to start at "Ground Zero" because nothing from the past is worth using.? Why
then do we keep it?
Suck it up!? Nothing is perfect. Put it out there "warts and all" and begin
the cleanup using community support. Don't build ivory towers to poor data
sets.
We have all been frustrated at the problems data aggregators display but
aggregators do not create data just display it - the data source is where
the cleanup must begin.
There - I feel better now.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 8:24 AM
To: David Campbell; TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
label data is a huge can of worms for all sorts of reasons! After having
thought the issue through at some length, I have come to the probably rather
unpopular conclusion that it is a bad idea to think that the totality of
label data for any given taxon is a useful thing to have! It is somewhat
analogous to the example of using WoRMS as a source for that squat lobster
article on WP ... given the way the WoRMS page was at the time, it was best
to just not mention it at all! There is a certain irony that it is common
nowadays for scientists to spend money going on collecting tours to get
fresh material of taxa for use in DNA analysis. Actually, it would be better
to go on a collecting tour to gather reliable distributional information for
the taxon! Any distribution map based on the uncritical acceptance of label
data is likely to be problematic, unles the map is so coarse that points
cover a significant proportion of the planet! Even worse is displaying
a? distribution map of a tiny subsample of available label data! If you want
to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go out and
measure it ... carefully!
Stephen
________________________________
From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
> Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
> especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
> over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
> work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant omissions
> or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things like
> abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date formats, or
> handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels have genuine
> errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical errors). I doubt
> such problems are unique to insect labels.
I can confirm that mollusk labels have similar issues with similarly high
frequency, though I have not tallied percentages. In fact, insects may have
better than average quality of average data because fewer specimens survive
from the "I picked these up somewhere when my ship sailed around the world"
era.? Having a misidentified specimen with good locality data is far more
useful than a correctly identified specimen with bad locality data, as the
identification can be fixed from the specimen.? Someone knowledgeable about
the taxon or locality may be able to recognize that a record is supect, even
without examining the specimen.? But all data in a database needs competent
checking to be reliable.? And many larger collections will include items
from various sources, of varying reliability for their localities and
identifications.
The problem is compounded when online databases grab information from varied
sources without careful verification or good harmonization protocols.? In
particular, homonyms can lead to perfectly good information from one
database being presented wrongly in another one, which claims that
corrections should be referred back to the first database.
--
Dr. David Campbell
Collections Assistant
The Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca NY 14850
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 18:19:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Subject: [Taxacom] more confusion over Costello et al. (online, 2011)
To: "TAXACOM@ MAILMAN. NHM. KU. EDU" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Cc: "m.costello at auckland.ac.nz" <m.costello at auckland.ac.nz>,
"yves.samyn at naturalsciences.be" <yves.samyn at naturalsciences.be>
Message-ID:
<1337131185.92607.YahooMailNeo at web114212.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
This new paper:
?
Samyn, Y.; De Clerck, O. 2012: No name, no game. European journal of
taxonomy, (10): 1-3. doi: 10.5852/ejt.2012.10
?
cites Costello et al. (online 2011), just for the following issue:
[quote]Contradicting the findings of Joppa et al. (2011) and using a much
broader taxon sampling, which includes many poorly studied groups, Costello
et al. (2011) observe that species description has roughly remained constant
since the second World War, at least for terrestrial species.[unquote]
?
Well I can't say what Costello et al. "observe", but?this is?what they said
(in the abstract): [quote]We found that trends in the rate of description of
580,000 marine and terrestrial species, in the taxonomically authoritative
World Register of Marine Species and Catalogue of Life databases, were
similar until the 1950s. Since then, the relative number of marine to
terrestrial species described per year has increased, reflecting the less
explored nature of the oceans. From the mid-19th century, the cumulative
number of species described has been linear, with the highest number of
species described in the decade of 1900, and fewer species described and
fewer authors active during the World Wars. There were more authors
describing species since the 1960s, indicating greater taxonomic effort.
There were fewer species described per author since the 1920s, suggesting it
has become more difficult to discover new species.[unquote]
?
They (Costello et al.) do say: [quote]Following the World Wars, the number
of species described [per year?]?increased, and continued to increase after
the 1950s for marine, but not other species[unquote]
?
Is it just me, or does none of this make any real sense?? If, as it is
claimed,?it has become more difficult to discover new species (based on
rates of species description), then the number of species described per year
cannot have increased, nor even stayed constant, but must have decreased
significantly!! Since the rate of description of marine species has
allegedly increased, the rate of description of terrestrial species must
have decreased markedly for this to make any sense!!
?
To go back to [quote]There were fewer species described per author since the
1920s, suggesting it has become more difficult to discover new
species.[unquote]. This is surely a confusion? If they meant per year,
rather than per author, then it might be a valid inference, but if they
really do mean per author, then that could just be because there are more
authors, each describing fewer species, which says absolutely nothing about
how hard or otherwise it has become to?discover new species!
?
Again, it must be noted that CoL is least "taxonomically authoritative" for
terrestrial taxa, and this data bias is highly relevant to the present
issue!
?
The real issue here is about citation. You can't just go citing publications
will nilly for things that it isn't even at all clear they?said! Since
citation is used as a value measure for publications (which it shouldn't
be), citations should only be made?after careful consideration ...?
?
Stephen
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 13:22:46 +1000
From: Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
To: Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Message-ID:
<CAAWKeVM2Pa_1nL_n2rjj=JDdRcfYm-Wz5DtizXEFFDc4KvQLgg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
We have tried to address this through cultural change. No-one is
allowed to criticise the database content nor engage in ad hominem
attacks of those who created it (as tempting and therapeutic as this
may be). If you find something not as it should be, you make it so,
something missing, you add it, something superfluous, you remove it.
Or bring it to the attention of someone who can. If you are not
prepared to do these things, you shut your miserable excuse for a face
and keep moving (that is the sort of sensitive supportive people we
are here).
The idea is to turn the database into a sort of zen thing. It is
neither right nor wrong. It just is. A reflection of what we take to
be facts.
It sort of works... people edit stuff, nothing is said, nothing needs
to be said. Every now an again a systemic pattern emerges in the data
or editing, which may result in a documentation upgrade, a bit of
retraining and so on. Complex and technical interpretation sometimes
requires a bit of discussion, but the consensus, sometimes compromise,
is nearly always amicable. Or, maybe it's a case of, yeah, whatever, I
really do not care that much... :)
There is a lot of team trust and respect involved and the operation
seems to be self healing.
It might just be me in cloud cuckoo land, but the notion of
'authority' in or of the database does not loom large. The database is
just what we do. This attude to 'authority' is much the same when it
comes to humans. Maybe it's a southern hemisphere thing. You may
regard yourself as the world authority on genus X, your peers may
agree, but unless you have published something we can read,
understand, believe and document, we really do not care.
jim
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:46 PM, Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com> wrote:
> This brings up some thoughts: "he who is convinced against his will,
> holds his old opinion still" is an old saying that comes to bear here.
> We live in a culture where corrections of mistakes are largely frowned
> upon, because correction carries with it connotations of disrespect
> for the resource and its personnel. Probably we would all like this to
> be otherwise, but many of us reinforce this reality daily. What's
> worse, is that public corrections are even more frowned upon, because
> then every concerned party will know of the original inaccuracy and
> its negative connotation against the entire resource.
>
> Authority is often seen as preferably unassailable, and if it is ever
> successfully assailed, then the authority becomes deprecated in some
> people's eyes. This practice strikes me as contrary to the best
> principles of science, but adherence to these principles is possibly
> beyond the capabilities of general human nature. Rising above that
> might be too much to ask or expect.
>
> Instead, it would be an improvement to many systems if we could
> correct an authority, resource, or editor without earning its eternal
> enmity or creating a situation where the truth is repressed just to
> save face.
>
> Roger
>
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Stephen Thorpe
> <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
>> The good Doug Yanega, in his attempts to reason with the immoveable
>> mountain currently lodged at Wikipedia, argued, I suggest, something
>> along these lines:
>>
>> scientists don't consider online databases to be reliable sources, and
>> will never bother to publish corrections to the inevitable mistakes that
>> such databases contain
>>
>> I do not dispute this, it is spot on, but it does rather raise some wider
>> issues:
>>
>> So, why do scientists create and maintain online databases (e.g. WoRMS,
>> etc.)? Who are they for? Other scientists, or general public? What do
>> other scientists use them for (particularly since they seem not to
>> consider them to be reliable sources)? How should others, like Wikipedia,
>> use these online databases appropriately?
>>
>> My initial, and someone bluntly suggested answers are as follows:
>> Scientists create and maintain online databases primarily because they
>> can get funding to do so. I do not know if?such databases are used much
>> by the scientific community for anything (except perhaps unfortunate
>> guesstimations of global biodiversity!), but, if they are, then
>> scientists?are at least better placed to?notice and ignore errors than
>> the general public are. Perhaps, some such databases need to be reminded
>> that they have a duty to take care and try to make the data as accurate
>> and error free as they possibly can, since others may be relying on it
>> for various purposes?
>>
>> Just a thought, but it could perhaps make for a useful publication if
>> some of us got together and wrote a formal paper outlining how general
>> purpose users, like Wikipedia, of such online taxonomic databases should
>> use such databases, i.e. detail what sort of information/reliability such
>> databases are offering, and what is unrealistic to expect from them. This
>> would include such guidelines as this:
>>
>> the database itself should not be considered to be a reliable source, but
>> merely a pointer to reliable sources. The onus is on the user to verify
>> the offered information against the primary sources. All data offered by
>> the database is, trivially, verifiable against the database itself, but
>> this means little or nothing since the database itself doesn't claim to
>> be a reliable source.
>>
>> Unfortunately, however, I cannot see too many online biodiversity
>> databases being so?modest about what they realistically can or cannot
>> offer. Ironically, it is the bigger aggregators of individual databses
>> that tend to be the ones promising the most, even when many of?their
>> source databases might be more inclined towards modesty ...
>>
>> Stephen
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> 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
--
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~ http://about.me/jrc
'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to
pause and reflect.'
- Mark Twain
'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity.'
?- Robert Frost
Please send URLs, not attachments:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 20:38:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
To: Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>, Roger Burks
<burks.roger at gmail.com>
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<1337139515.88949.YahooMailNeo at web114204.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Jim's?portrait of perfectly calm and objective scientists merely "doing what
they do" without fuss may be correct, but there is still the problem of
aggregators (and idiotic wikipedians) claiming your "authority" for you
(even though you doth protest not one whit of it!), when they cite your
data, or engage in formal partnerships and harvest it for their purposes ...
?
________________________________
From: Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
To: Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
We have tried to address this through cultural change. No-one is
allowed to criticise the database content nor engage in ad hominem
attacks of those who created it (as tempting and therapeutic as this
may be). If you find something not as it should be, you make it so,
something missing, you add it, something superfluous, you remove it.
Or bring it to the attention of someone who can. If you are not
prepared to do these things, you shut your miserable excuse for a face
and keep moving (that is the sort of sensitive supportive people we
are here).
The idea is to turn the database into a sort of zen thing. It is
neither right nor wrong. It just is. A reflection of what we take to
be facts.
It sort of works... people edit stuff, nothing is said, nothing needs
to be said. Every now an again a systemic pattern emerges in the data
or editing, which may result in a documentation upgrade, a bit of
retraining and so on. Complex and technical interpretation sometimes
requires a bit of discussion, but the consensus, sometimes compromise,
is nearly always amicable. Or, maybe it's a case of, yeah, whatever, I
really do not care that much... :)
There is a lot of team trust and respect involved and the operation
seems to be self healing.
It might just be me in cloud cuckoo land, but the notion of
'authority' in or of the database does not loom large. The database is
just what we do. This attude to 'authority' is much the same when it
comes to humans.? Maybe it's a southern hemisphere thing. You may
regard yourself as the world authority on genus X, your peers may
agree, but unless you have published something we can read,
understand, believe and document, we really do not care.
jim
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:46 PM, Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com> wrote:
> This brings up some thoughts: "he who is convinced against his will,
> holds his old opinion still" is an old saying that comes to bear here.
> We live in a culture where corrections of mistakes are largely frowned
> upon, because correction carries with it connotations of disrespect
> for the resource and its personnel. Probably we would all like this to
> be otherwise, but many of us reinforce this reality daily. What's
> worse, is that public corrections are even more frowned upon, because
> then every concerned party will know of the original inaccuracy and
> its negative connotation against the entire resource.
>
> Authority is often seen as preferably unassailable, and if it is ever
> successfully assailed, then the authority becomes deprecated in some
> people's eyes. This practice strikes me as contrary to the best
> principles of science, but adherence to these principles is possibly
> beyond the capabilities of general human nature. Rising above that
> might be too much to ask or expect.
>
> Instead, it would be an improvement to many systems if we could
> correct an authority, resource, or editor without earning its eternal
> enmity or creating a situation where the truth is repressed just to
> save face.
>
> Roger
>
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Stephen Thorpe
> <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
>> The good Doug Yanega, in his attempts to reason with the immoveable
>> mountain currently lodged at Wikipedia, argued, I suggest, something
>> along these lines:
>>
>> scientists don't consider online databases to be reliable sources, and
>> will never bother to publish corrections to the inevitable mistakes that
>> such databases contain
>>
>> I do not dispute this, it is spot on, but it does rather raise some wider
>> issues:
>>
>> So, why do scientists create and maintain online databases (e.g. WoRMS,
>> etc.)? Who are they for? Other scientists, or general public? What do
>> other scientists use them for (particularly since they seem not to
>> consider them to be reliable sources)? How should others, like Wikipedia,
>> use these online databases appropriately?
>>
>> My initial, and someone bluntly suggested answers are as follows:
>> Scientists create and maintain online databases primarily because they
>> can get funding to do so. I do not know if?such databases are used much
>> by the scientific community for anything (except perhaps unfortunate
>> guesstimations of global biodiversity!), but, if they are, then
>> scientists?are at least better placed to?notice and ignore errors than
>> the general public are. Perhaps, some such databases need to be reminded
>> that they have a duty to take care and try to make the data as accurate
>> and error free as they possibly can, since others may be relying on it
>> for various purposes?
>>
>> Just a thought, but it could perhaps make for a useful publication if
>> some of us got together and wrote a formal paper outlining how general
>> purpose users, like Wikipedia, of such online taxonomic databases should
>> use such databases, i.e. detail what sort of information/reliability such
>> databases are offering, and what is unrealistic to expect from them. This
>> would include such guidelines as this:
>>
>> the database itself should not be considered to be a reliable source, but
>> merely a pointer to reliable sources. The onus is on the user to verify
>> the offered information against the primary sources. All data offered by
>> the database is, trivially, verifiable against the database itself, but
>> this means little or nothing since the database itself doesn't claim to
>> be a reliable source.
>>
>> Unfortunately, however, I cannot see too many online biodiversity
>> databases being so?modest about what they realistically can or cannot
>> offer. Ironically, it is the bigger aggregators of individual databses
>> that tend to be the ones promising the most, even when many of?their
>> source databases might be more inclined towards modesty ...
>>
>> Stephen
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> 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
--
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~ http://about.me/jrc
'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to
pause and reflect.'
- Mark Twain
'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity.'
?- Robert Frost
Please send URLs, not attachments:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
_______________________________________________
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
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 00:20:51 -0400
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
Cc: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Message-ID:
<CADN0ud0Q0FX-aasZ5z9qCaDyy0bR3DgVDNQPOeFCSdaT+aKjKA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
All the problems and limitations outlined below and in other postings are
the very reason why seeing the original data labels is desirable - to be
then in a position to make a judgement.
John Grehan
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 1:45 PM, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:
> John Grehan wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
> especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
> over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
> work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant
> omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things
> like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date
> formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels
> have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical
> errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels. A
> taxonomic specialist may be able to fix problems with taxon IDs, but
> that same person may be ill-equipped to fix problems with label data
> (or, even if so, may not have the required time to do this). Any
> digitized resources based on verbatim label data (without a quality
> control step to confirm each and every record and correct mistakes)
> will serve only to propagate such errors. Add to that the potential
> for additional errors introduced by data entry personnel, or careless
> georeferencing (i.e., use of automated georeferencing protocols,
> which have a staggering failure rate), and the locality and phenology
> data in most online resources is - simply put - not trustworthy.
>
> It is not very hard to capture specimen data, but it is excruciating
> and massively time-consuming to exercise any legitimate measure of
> quality control, whether it be taxon IDs or label data. My impression
> is that far more people are aware of (and take measures to address)
> the taxon ID issue than the label data issue. No one would dispute
> that a specimen record filed under the wrong species name is worse
> than worthless, but not many people seem to be similarly concerned
> about records that place a species in the wrong time or place - if
> only because they are unaware how commonly the label data are bad.
> That, I feel, is a grave oversight.
>
> Peace,
> --
>
> Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
> http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
> "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
> is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> 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
>
------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 00:23:14 -0400
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<CADN0ud17Oq5aL-nBbj70HLvXoLQ33XhPH7RhVKtn3LZbptHcMA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Going out an personally recording the distribution is not always feasible.
Hence using label data from specimens is sometimes the only practical
option. In a current revision of a ghost moth genus in Latin America I do
not have the $ to collect specimens from the wild and so have to rely on
specimens collected by others.
John Grehan
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>wrote:
> label data is a huge can of worms for all sorts of reasons! After having
> thought the issue through at some length, I have come to the probably
> rather unpopular conclusion that it is a bad idea to think that the
> totality of label data for any given taxon is a useful thing to have! It
> is
> somewhat analogous to the example of using WoRMS as a source for that
> squat
> lobster article on WP ... given the way the WoRMS page was at the time, it
> was best to just not mention it at all! There is a certain irony that it
> is
> common nowadays for scientists to spend money going on collecting tours to
> get fresh material of taxa for use in DNA analysis. Actually, it would be
> better to go on a collecting tour to gather reliable distributional
> information for the taxon! Any distribution map based on the uncritical
> acceptance of label data is likely to be problematic, unles the map is so
> coarse that points cover a significant proportion of the planet! Even
> worse
> is displaying a
> distribution map of a tiny subsample of available label data! If you want
> to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go out and
> measure it ... carefully!
>
> Stephen
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
> To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 10:01 AM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
>
> > Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
> > especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
> > over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
> > work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant
> > omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things
> > like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date
> > formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels
> > have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical
> > errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels.
>
> I can confirm that mollusk labels have similar issues with similarly
> high frequency, though I have not tallied percentages. In fact,
> insects may have better than average quality of average data because
> fewer specimens survive from the "I picked these up somewhere when my
> ship sailed around the world" era. Having a misidentified specimen
> with good locality data is far more useful than a correctly identified
> specimen with bad locality data, as the identification can be fixed
> from the specimen. Someone knowledgeable about the taxon or locality
> may be able to recognize that a record is supect, even without
> examining the specimen. But all data in a database needs competent
> checking to be reliable. And many larger collections will include
> items from various sources, of varying reliability for their
> localities and identifications.
>
> The problem is compounded when online databases grab information from
> varied sources without careful verification or good harmonization
> protocols. In particular, homonyms can lead to perfectly good
> information from one database being presented wrongly in another one,
> which claims that corrections should be referred back to the first
> database.
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> Collections Assistant
> The Paleontological Research Institution
> 1259 Trumansburg Road
> Ithaca NY 14850
>
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>
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------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 00:39:33 -0400
From: Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
To: Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Message-ID:
<CALRWL0aELQVAgvh09v+Zy7AEkYjaFwqSkXNF25mtuLPMzn024Q at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Well if this holds true consistently, then this approach should be a
positive model for a great deal of future work. The first reaction in
a scientific setting should not be "who is he to question the king?"
whenever someone brings any little minor inaccuracy to light. Even
when I am a world authority on something, I can be wrong. Others share
this shortcoming.
Roger
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have tried to address this through cultural change. No-one is
> allowed to criticise the database content nor engage in ad hominem
> attacks of those who created it (as tempting and therapeutic as this
> may be). If you find something not as it should be, you make it so,
> something missing, you add it, something superfluous, you remove it.
> Or bring it to the attention of someone who can. If you are not
> prepared to do these things, you shut your miserable excuse for a face
> and keep moving (that is the sort of sensitive supportive people we
> are here).
>
> The idea is to turn the database into a sort of zen thing. It is
> neither right nor wrong. It just is. A reflection of what we take to
> be facts.
>
> It sort of works... people edit stuff, nothing is said, nothing needs
> to be said. Every now an again a systemic pattern emerges in the data
> or editing, which may result in a documentation upgrade, a bit of
> retraining and so on. Complex and technical interpretation sometimes
> requires a bit of discussion, but the consensus, sometimes compromise,
> is nearly always amicable. Or, maybe it's a case of, yeah, whatever, I
> really do not care that much... :)
>
> There is a lot of team trust and respect involved and the operation
> seems to be self healing.
>
> It might just be me in cloud cuckoo land, but the notion of
> 'authority' in or of the database does not loom large. The database is
> just what we do. This attude to 'authority' is much the same when it
> comes to humans. ?Maybe it's a southern hemisphere thing. You may
> regard yourself as the world authority on genus X, your peers may
> agree, but unless you have published something we can read,
> understand, believe and document, we really do not care.
>
> jim
>
> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:46 PM, Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> This brings up some thoughts: "he who is convinced against his will,
>> holds his old opinion still" is an old saying that comes to bear here.
>> We live in a culture where corrections of mistakes are largely frowned
>> upon, because correction carries with it connotations of disrespect
>> for the resource and its personnel. Probably we would all like this to
>> be otherwise, but many of us reinforce this reality daily. What's
>> worse, is that public corrections are even more frowned upon, because
>> then every concerned party will know of the original inaccuracy and
>> its negative connotation against the entire resource.
>>
>> Authority is often seen as preferably unassailable, and if it is ever
>> successfully assailed, then the authority becomes deprecated in some
>> people's eyes. This practice strikes me as contrary to the best
>> principles of science, but adherence to these principles is possibly
>> beyond the capabilities of general human nature. Rising above that
>> might be too much to ask or expect.
>>
>> Instead, it would be an improvement to many systems if we could
>> correct an authority, resource, or editor without earning its eternal
>> enmity or creating a situation where the truth is repressed just to
>> save face.
>>
>> Roger
------------------------------
Message: 13
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 14:47:58 +1000
From: Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
To: Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Message-ID:
<CAAWKeVNkOYixA_jZ8AZZ5ya6swxuZbfrDjk2c-wXc72+VnPZ3g at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
We don't have a taxonomic 'King' as such... he refers to himself as
Herr Uberallepflanzennamenfuhrer...
jim
On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well if this holds true consistently, then this approach should be a
> positive model for a great deal of future work. The first reaction in
> a scientific setting should not be "who is he to question the king?"
> whenever someone brings any little minor inaccuracy to light. Even
> when I am a world authority on something, I can be wrong. Others share
> this shortcoming.
>
> Roger
>
> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We have tried to address this through cultural change. No-one is
>> allowed to criticise the database content nor engage in ad hominem
>> attacks of those who created it (as tempting and therapeutic as this
>> may be). If you find something not as it should be, you make it so,
>> something missing, you add it, something superfluous, you remove it.
>> Or bring it to the attention of someone who can. If you are not
>> prepared to do these things, you shut your miserable excuse for a face
>> and keep moving (that is the sort of sensitive supportive people we
>> are here).
>>
>> The idea is to turn the database into a sort of zen thing. It is
>> neither right nor wrong. It just is. A reflection of what we take to
>> be facts.
>>
>> It sort of works... people edit stuff, nothing is said, nothing needs
>> to be said. Every now an again a systemic pattern emerges in the data
>> or editing, which may result in a documentation upgrade, a bit of
>> retraining and so on. Complex and technical interpretation sometimes
>> requires a bit of discussion, but the consensus, sometimes compromise,
>> is nearly always amicable. Or, maybe it's a case of, yeah, whatever, I
>> really do not care that much... :)
>>
>> There is a lot of team trust and respect involved and the operation
>> seems to be self healing.
>>
>> It might just be me in cloud cuckoo land, but the notion of
>> 'authority' in or of the database does not loom large. The database is
>> just what we do. This attude to 'authority' is much the same when it
>> comes to humans. ?Maybe it's a southern hemisphere thing. You may
>> regard yourself as the world authority on genus X, your peers may
>> agree, but unless you have published something we can read,
>> understand, believe and document, we really do not care.
>>
>> jim
>>
>> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:46 PM, Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> This brings up some thoughts: "he who is convinced against his will,
>>> holds his old opinion still" is an old saying that comes to bear here.
>>> We live in a culture where corrections of mistakes are largely frowned
>>> upon, because correction carries with it connotations of disrespect
>>> for the resource and its personnel. Probably we would all like this to
>>> be otherwise, but many of us reinforce this reality daily. What's
>>> worse, is that public corrections are even more frowned upon, because
>>> then every concerned party will know of the original inaccuracy and
>>> its negative connotation against the entire resource.
>>>
>>> Authority is often seen as preferably unassailable, and if it is ever
>>> successfully assailed, then the authority becomes deprecated in some
>>> people's eyes. This practice strikes me as contrary to the best
>>> principles of science, but adherence to these principles is possibly
>>> beyond the capabilities of general human nature. Rising above that
>>> might be too much to ask or expect.
>>>
>>> Instead, it would be an improvement to many systems if we could
>>> correct an authority, resource, or editor without earning its eternal
>>> enmity or creating a situation where the truth is repressed just to
>>> save face.
>>>
>>> Roger
--
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~ http://about.me/jrc
'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to
pause and reflect.'
- Mark Twain
'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity.'
?- Robert Frost
Please send URLs, not attachments:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
------------------------------
Message: 14
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 21:48:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
Cc: "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<1337143685.15341.YahooMailNeo at web114215.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
note that I am?primarily arguing against the *uncritical* use of label data
(which happens), and suggesting that in cases of doubt, the only way to
settle it is to go out into the field and verify presence/absence
?
for an example of how not to do it, see p. 11 in:
Matthews, E.G. 2003: Ulomotypus Broun a member of the new subfamily
Palorinae, with remarks on Aphtora Bates and Demtrius Broun (Coleoptera,
Tenebrionidae). New Zealand entomologist, 26: 7?14.
http://www.ento.org.nz/nzentomologist/abstract.php?volume_issue=j26_1&first_page=7
not really the fault of the Australian author, but the peer review editorial
process should have picked it up. Yes, a single specimen of Ulomotypus
laevigatus (a fairly large flightless beetle) is labelled as being from
Whangarei (north of the North Island), while all others are from the South
Island, but to simply list it without comment is hardly helpful! For some
other taxa in Hymenoptera or Diptera, for example, such a distribution
pattern could be?a genuine consequence?of small sample size (so it is not
"objectively" a red flag), but this is most unlikely in the present case,
and simple mislabelling will be to blame. An N.Z. entomologist might be able
to see this as an obvious case of mislabelling, but not so others, so at
least some sort of comment was warranted. This is a case of "too much
objectivity", instead of utilising genuine local knowledge and?judgement
with the fauna...
Stephen
________________________________
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 4:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
Going out an personally recording the distribution is not always feasible.
Hence using label data from specimens is sometimes the only practical
option. In a current revision of a ghost moth genus in Latin America I do
not have the $ to collect specimens from the wild and so have to rely on
specimens collected by others.
John Grehan
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:
label data is a huge can of worms for all sorts of reasons! After having
thought the issue through at some length, I have come to the probably rather
unpopular conclusion that it is a bad idea to think that the totality of
label data for any given taxon is a useful thing to have! It is somewhat
analogous to the example of using WoRMS as a source for that squat lobster
article on WP ... given the way the WoRMS page was at the time, it was best
to just not mention it at all! There is a certain irony that it is common
nowadays for scientists to spend money going on collecting tours to get
fresh material of taxa for use in DNA analysis. Actually, it would be better
to go on a collecting tour to gather reliable distributional information for
the taxon! Any distribution map based on the uncritical acceptance of label
data is likely to be problematic, unles the map is so coarse that points
cover a significant proportion of the planet! Even worse is displaying a
>?distribution map of a tiny subsample of available label data! If you want
>to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go out and
>measure it ... carefully!
>?
>Stephen
>
>
>________________________________
>From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
>To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 10:01 AM
>Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
>
>
>> Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
>> especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
>> over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
>> work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant
>> omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things
>> like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date
>> formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels
>> have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical
>> errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels.
>
>I can confirm that mollusk labels have similar issues with similarly
>high frequency, though I have not tallied percentages. In fact,
>insects may have better than average quality of average data because
>fewer specimens survive from the "I picked these up somewhere when my
>ship sailed around the world" era.? Having a misidentified specimen
>with good locality data is far more useful than a correctly identified
>specimen with bad locality data, as the identification can be fixed
>from the specimen.? Someone knowledgeable about the taxon or locality
>may be able to recognize that a record is supect, even without
>examining the specimen.? But all data in a database needs competent
>checking to be reliable.? And many larger collections will include
>items from various sources, of varying reliability for their
>localities and identifications.
>
>The problem is compounded when online databases grab information from
>varied sources without careful verification or good harmonization
>protocols.? In particular, homonyms can lead to perfectly good
>information from one database being presented wrongly in another one,
>which claims that corrections should be referred back to the first
>database.
>
>--
>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
>_______________________________________________
>
>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
>
------------------------------
Message: 15
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 21:09:41 -1000
From: Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]
To: "'Stephen Thorpe'" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>, "'John Longino'"
<jacklongino at gmail.com>, "'Roderic Page'" <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
Cc: 'taxacom' <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID: <000f01cd3332$de1d5ca0$9a5815e0$@bishopmuseum.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> because ants are a relatively small and well curated taxon now in a way
that
> cannot be said of moths, weevils, flies, or the entirely of marine life
...
...except fishes...which also have excellent online databases (Catalog of
Fishes; Fishbase) that are used routinely by scientists, young students,
regular folk, government agencies, etc., etc....
This message is only intended for the addressee named above. Its contents
may be privileged or otherwise protected. Any unauthorized use, disclosure
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message do not necessarily represent the views of the Bishop Museum.
------------------------------
Message: 16
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 17:53:36 +1000
From: Bob Mesibov <mesibov at southcom.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: TAXACOM <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID: <20120516175336.042553e1.mesibov at southcom.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Excellent discussion so far, can't add much to what's already been said so
well.
With some qualifications and warnings, I recently put online 10000+ specimen
records for native Australian millipedes:
http://www.polydesmida.info/millipedesofaustralia/localities.html
I'm confident there are errors in these, but rather than warn users to
beware, I've just given the record source in the CSV, including the
identifier's name, and spelled out the following:
"The CSV and KML files are made available here with a Creative Commons
license (attribution + non-commercial, by-nc). You are welcome to use or
copy the locality records for non-commercial purposes. Please cite the
Millipedes of Australia URL in your work, together with the date you
accessed the information. Note that each CSV and KML file has the date of
the most recent compilation in the filename, as in
'agathodesmus_30-March-2012.csv'. Please make sure you cite this date when
re-using the records.
If you notice any errors or other problems in the records, please let me
know by email (mesibov (at) southcom (dot) com (dot) au). The CSV files have
been generated from databases which contain more information than has been
included here."
The compilation date is a reminder that the data set is a work in progress.
I've just found another error, this time in the publication I used as a
source. The author either misquoted the locality label or relied on an
inaccurate one. I'll fix the data shortly and re-date the CSV and KML files.
--
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
Ph: (03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
Webpage: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/?articleID=570
------------------------------
Message: 17
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 13:55:31 +0530
From: KP Rajesh <drkprajesh at gmail.com>
Subject: [Taxacom] Prof. KS Manilal honoured with the ?Officer of the
Order of Orange-Nassau? award of the Netherlands.
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Message-ID:
<CA+m4qOPWNXmXcog6oM0-7wN7EboynDb5XCZEvyLSeOexdmAGzg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Dear All
This is to share the joy of the greatest honour bestowed upon a Botanist!
Prof. KS Manilal was recently honoured with the ?Officer of the Order
of Orange-Nassau? award (Dutch: Orde van Oranje-Nassau), of the
Netherlands. He is the first Asian and botanist selected for this
highest honour of the Netherlands. The Order is a chivalry order open
to "everyone who have earned special merits for society". These are
people who deserve appreciation and recognition from society for the
special way in which they have carried out their activities.
Prof. K S Manilal was nominated for this honour for his commendable
contributions on the monumental book Hortus Malabaricus published by
Hendrik van Rheede during 1678-1693 from Amsterdam. He translated this
12 volume Latin book to English and Malayalam, which took more than 30
years.
The honour was conferred on Prof. Manilal at a formal gathering held
at the Vasco da Gama hall of Taj Gate Way Hotel, Calicut on 1st May
2012 (the very next day after the National Day of the Netherlands), by
the Consul General in Mumbai of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ms.
Marijke A. van Drunen Littel.
The meeting was inaugurated by the Minister of the Government of
Kerala Dr. M.K.Muneer and addressed by senior academics such as Prof.
Dr. C.K. Ramachandran (Professor Emeritus, Modern Medicine, Calicut
Medical College), Prof. Dr. M.G.S. Narayanan (Director, Centre for
Heritage Studies, Kerala Government, Cochin & former Secretary, Indian
Council of Historical Research) and Dr. Indira Balachandran (Director,
Centre for Ayurvedic Medicinal Plants Research and Indigenous
Medicine, Kottakkal).
To mark the occasion a new showy Arundina orchid was named as A.
manilaliana by Dr. C. Sathish Kumar, noted orchidologist and a student
colleague of Prof. Manilal. The function was attended by a good
gathering of Prof. Manilal's friends who appreciate this unique
intangible heritage of Hortus Malabaricus shared by the Netherlands
and India.
Video Link
http://youtu.be/BMwAAWRRpWI
News coverage
http://www.mathrubhumi.com/english/story.php?id=123212
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/article3369010.ece?textsize=small&test=2
Some useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Orange-Nassau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._S._Manilal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortus_Malabaricus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_van_Rheede
email: manilalks at yahoo.co.uk
KP Rajesh
------------------------------
Message: 18
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 09:52:20 -0400
From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<CAN1+Hk96HP=fZR4jOELprohhC0sc5AM8d-i6T5xNXD79MLwjkw at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> We ask for $$millions of public funding to acquire specimens.
> We ask for $$millions of public funding to house and curate such
> specimens.
> We ask for $$millions of public funding to staff these collections with
> highly trained taxonomists.
> Yet we want to block access to the specimen data because it is so poor
> (labels or identifications).
> We complain about the data transcription problems caused by volunteers and
> "minimally trained" people, yet few "highly trained" individuals wish to
> devote their careers to data enter and validation.
I support access to specimen data. But compilations with no access to
the underlying specimen data are not especially reliable, and not all
online databases have easy ways to submit corrections. (Of course,
making it easy for anyone to change what it says is not a good idea,
either-the corrections should be carefully checked, too.) Making
specimen data available is one way to allow people to check it; the
problem is uncritical acceptance of poor data and lack of support for
making it better.
Although we may ask for lots of funding, in my experience we don't get it.
Given the number of highly trained individuals who leave taxonomy
because they can't get employment, I suspect that there may be more
people interested in data validation than expected. It's not
necessary to devote a whole career to data validation in order to help
substantially. If reviewing data were regarded as a reasonable part
of a job, worthy of funding, and if the databases readily accepted
input suggestions, then one could contribute a lot simply in the
course of regular taxonomic work. But if there's no support for
regular taxonomic work, and if the databases are difficult to correct,
poorly documented, etc., and if contributing to the databases is
assumed to be something that taxonomists can do for free in their
spare time, then there's little hope for improvement.
Even if the highly trained individuals don't want to do the data
validation, no one else can. I can figure out the vast majority of
mollusk labels I see because I have a good idea of what genus
something may have been assigned to, because I've seen enough
Latinized binomials to have a good guess at likely possibilities,
because I've got an idea of what the possible localities are and know
a fair number of historic and current geographic names, and because
I've seen a lot of bad handwriting from the past 200 years.
Additionally, I know about major resources such as the Index Animalium
and even online databases. Some of those are easier to learn than
others, but it takes time and interest.
--
Dr. David Campbell
Collections Assistant
The Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca NY 14850
------------------------------
Message: 19
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 11:07:39 -0400
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Message-ID:
<CADN0ud102jRPEHjZ1pSpdUOpCYeandQjg+d0O-m5xFVGzCZawQ at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
While geographically distant disjunctions certainly attract interest,
accepting them at face value may be no more uncritical than for any record.
In this case there appears to be no information to make any judgement and I
do not see the need for the author to make any necessary author. Further
corroboration might be desirable if one wan't to question the record. There
is the case of Metrosideros parkinsoni on offshore islands near Whangarei
and also in NW South Island, or the Sticherus and Asplenium in the northern
North Island and South Island, or the moth Sabantica calliarcha in the
Coromandel Peninsula (single location) and South Island. If anything, the
author might be critiqued for not recognizing the pattern in the work, but
now the question might be, how common is the occurrence and what is its
biogeographic significance?
John Grehan
On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 12:48 AM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
> wrote:
> note that I am primarily arguing against the *uncritical* use of label
> data (which happens), and suggesting that in cases of doubt, the only way
> to settle it is to go out into the field and verify presence/absence
>
> for an example of how not to do it, see p. 11 in:
> Matthews, E.G. 2003: Ulomotypus Broun a member of the new subfamily
> Palorinae, with remarks on Aphtora Bates and Demtrius Broun (Coleoptera,
> Tenebrionidae). New Zealand entomologist, 26: 7?14.
>
> http://www.ento.org.nz/nzentomologist/abstract.php?volume_issue=j26_1&first_page=7
>
> not really the fault of the Australian author, but the peer review
> editorial process should have picked it up. Yes, a single specimen of
> Ulomotypus laevigatus (a fairly large flightless beetle) is labelled as
> being from Whangarei (north of the North Island), while all others are
> from
> the South Island, but to simply list it without comment is hardly helpful!
> For some other taxa in Hymenoptera or Diptera, for example, such a
> distribution pattern could be a genuine consequence of small sample size
> (so it is not "objectively" a red flag), but this is most unlikely in the
> present case, and simple mislabelling will be to blame. An N.Z.
> entomologist might be able to see this as an obvious case of mislabelling,
> but not so others, so at least some sort of comment was warranted. This is
> a case of "too much objectivity", instead of utilising genuine local
> knowledge and judgement with the fauna...
>
> Stephen
>
>
> *From:* John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
> *To:* Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> *Cc:* "TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 16 May 2012 4:23 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
>
> Going out an personally recording the distribution is not always feasible.
> Hence using label data from specimens is sometimes the only practical
> option. In a current revision of a ghost moth genus in Latin America I do
> not have the $ to collect specimens from the wild and so have to rely on
> specimens collected by others.
>
> John Grehan
>
> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Stephen Thorpe <
> stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
>
> label data is a huge can of worms for all sorts of reasons! After having
> thought the issue through at some length, I have come to the probably
> rather unpopular conclusion that it is a bad idea to think that the
> totality of label data for any given taxon is a useful thing to have! It
> is
> somewhat analogous to the example of using WoRMS as a source for that
> squat
> lobster article on WP ... given the way the WoRMS page was at the time, it
> was best to just not mention it at all! There is a certain irony that it
> is
> common nowadays for scientists to spend money going on collecting tours to
> get fresh material of taxa for use in DNA analysis. Actually, it would be
> better to go on a collecting tour to gather reliable distributional
> information for the taxon! Any distribution map based on the uncritical
> acceptance of label data is likely to be problematic, unles the map is so
> coarse that points cover a significant proportion of the planet! Even
> worse
> is displaying a
> distribution map of a tiny subsample of available label data! If you want
> to know the geographical distribution of a taxon, you gotta go out and
> measure it ... carefully!
>
> Stephen
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
> To: TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 10:01 AM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
>
> > Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading,
> > especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing
> > over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures
> > work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant
> > omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things
> > like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date
> > formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels
> > have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical
> > errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels.
>
> I can confirm that mollusk labels have similar issues with similarly
> high frequency, though I have not tallied percentages. In fact,
> insects may have better than average quality of average data because
> fewer specimens survive from the "I picked these up somewhere when my
> ship sailed around the world" era. Having a misidentified specimen
> with good locality data is far more useful than a correctly identified
> specimen with bad locality data, as the identification can be fixed
> from the specimen. Someone knowledgeable about the taxon or locality
> may be able to recognize that a record is supect, even without
> examining the specimen. But all data in a database needs competent
> checking to be reliable. And many larger collections will include
> items from various sources, of varying reliability for their
> localities and identifications.
>
> The problem is compounded when online databases grab information from
> varied sources without careful verification or good harmonization
> protocols. In particular, homonyms can lead to perfectly good
> information from one database being presented wrongly in another one,
> which claims that corrections should be referred back to the first
> database.
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> Collections Assistant
> The Paleontological Research Institution
> 1259 Trumansburg Road
> Ithaca NY 14850
>
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