[Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections

[John Grehan]

I agree with viewing all records as potentially flawed unless demonstrated
otherwise. I did not mean to imply otherwise. In comparative biogeography
one uses a multitude of publications and other sources and one is not in a
position to scrutinize or one would end up not accomplishing anything.
Interestingly, even though there have been errors, the principal
biogeographic patterns identified in the 1050's still stand today.

John Grehan

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:16 PM, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:

> John Grehan wrote:
>
> >  > At any rate, the point of all this was about whether the uncritical
> >>  synthesis of all label data for a taxon is a useful thing to have ... I
> >>  guess it depends on what you want to use it for, but probably not that
> >>  useful for displaying on maps that are supposed to indicate known
> >>  distributions ...
> >>
> >
> >I think in practice it just means that one records localities as they are
> >until one has reason to do otherwise.
>
> After considerable experience with all this, I've concluded that a
> different approach is required: I effectively consider all label data
> to be guilty (flawed in some manner) until proven innocent. In
> practice, one should not serve records to data users that have not
> been confirmed, and our practice reflects this; nothing is trusted
> until it has been scrutinized, and our database contains only the
> cleaned data. I've been chastised for this, but if we've gone through
> the trouble of correcting omissions and errors, there are two
> significant points to make: (1) there is little utility in showing
> the pre-corrected verbatim data; admittedly, it has a few potential
> uses, but since every specimen being databased has a GUID assigned,
> tracking which specimen is which is NOT one of those potential uses.
> (2) Funded databasing projects are ultimately under severe time/labor
> constraints. If the verbatim label data are not *absolutely
> necessary*, then the amount of time needed to enter them (even if
> it's just by taking photos) cannot be justified, as every minute
> spent is a minute taken away from *necessary* work. As such, I
> consider many such projects to have their priorities backwards; that
> is, it is evidently common to invest in verbatim data capture first,
> and then only worry about quality control and data cleanup and
> georeferencing if there is time and money left over to do it. This
> approach looks great on paper, since verbatim capture takes (assuming
> labels are legible and often-duplicated) about 1/10th the time
> required to do thorough georeferencing and data checking, and
> verbatim capture can be accomplished with cheaper and less-trained
> technicians. The alternative is to check every label, and instead of
> entering it verbatim, enter only the cleaned, corrected, and
> georeferenced data; if time and money are left over at the end of the
> project, THEN go back and enter the verbatim data (or take photos).
>
> In essence, it comes down to this: which is preferrable - spending X
> dollars and getting 200,000 verbatim records entered/photographed,
> but not knowing for certain whether *any* of the data are trustworthy
> (and many, if not most, NOT accurately georeferenced), versus
> spending X dollars and getting 20,000 records entered, every single
> one of which is confirmed clean, trustworthy, and accurately
> georeferenced?
>
> This isn't a hypothetical choice, nor purely fabricated figures. It's
> a real choice, and most people who have made this choice went for the
> first option. It seems that funding agencies prefer that approach,
> but I'm personally not happy with the trade-off, and not happy that
> people assume that data cleaning and georeferencing are trivia that
> can be dealt with AFTER we have everything digitized and online.
> Online data that are full of invisible errors awaiting correction are
> like a fruit basket in which one out of every ten fruit is toxic.
>
> Sincerely,
> --
>
> 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
>
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