[Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections

Thu May 17 19:33:28 CDT 2012

>Have you ever driven down a road?
?
Actually, no! I have never felt comfortable with the thought of driving, so I don't. I notice from the window of the bus that some other people out there should perhaps have made the same decision!
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At any rate, the analogy is more about signposting of problems on the road .. you know those big orange or red warning signs??
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I cannot, and it would be pointless, to debate with you the effectiveness or otherwise of feedback or other quality control methods that may be in place for your caddisbase. It is the general principle that matters:
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If people promote the attitude that errors are inevitable, and don't really matter anyway, then things inevitably start to go down hill. If the WP issue hadn't come up, how long might it have taken for WoRMS to correct?its Munididae page? WoRMS editors need to understand that they have a responsibility to take care when putting data online for public use. And, to make matters worse, the WoRMS page carries no indication that there was ever any editing done after its initial creation, thus (whether deliberately or not, I don't know) rewriting history and hiding the need for the correction! Seems "dodgy" to me ...
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I observe a general trend away from data quality, and away from upfront honesty, resulting in poorer data quality in taxonomy, biodiversity studies, and elsewhere, supposedly justified by the "overall +ve consequences" of keeping people employed, keeping money going through the system, students successfully going through the system, etc. etc. I don't like that general trend ... 
?
Stephen

________________________________
From: "Walker, Ken" <kwalker at museum.vic.gov.au>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>; "TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU" <TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU> 
Sent: Friday, 18 May 2012 11:58 AM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections

Stephen,
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Have you ever driven down a road?? Sometimes the road surface is perfect, then along comes a pothole which you can drive around or find workers fixing it, other times you are stopped while an entire road resurfacing is being done.
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In the end you have two choices:
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1.??? Don?t drive because the road may not be perfect.
2.??? Decide to drive because you want to get from point A to point B.
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>and you haven't told us what measures you have put in place to deal with such problems.
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It?s called user feedback ? the same way peer review works.? I have been the taxonomic editor for the Australian Journal of Entomology for almost 25 years.? I have never had a manuscript submitted that did not need redrafting (from minor to major). 
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> they might be unlucky and encounter significant problems relating to that taxon in particular
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You of all people have demonstrated the ?significant problems? encountered with some peer-review, scientifically published papers.? It doesn?t stop you doing science but you can provide feedback.
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Cheers,
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Ken
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From:Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
Sent: Friday, 18 May 2012 9:13 AM
To: Walker, Ken
Cc: Doug Yanega; TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
?
yes, nobody, I hope, doubts that some good (perhaps even lots of good) comes out of many/most projects, such as specimen databasing, or Wikipedia. The issue is over how you handle the problems. I, for one, am certainly *not* a proponent of the attitude which goes something like this: "Oh well, the net result is positive, so we'll just gloss over and deny?any problems". I hope you can see where such an attitude can lead? You have given us the +ve spin on your caddisbase, but there will be problems in the data itself, and some transcription errors from label to database, and you haven't told us what measures you have put in place to deal with such problems. The problems may be "insignificant" overall, but if a user wants to know about a specific taxon, they might be unlucky and encounter significant problems relating to that taxon in particular.
Stephen
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From:"Walker, Ken" <kwalker at museum.vic.gov.au>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>; "TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU" <TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU> 
Sent: Friday, 18 May 2012 10:49 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections

I'm not sure how others tackle their massive specimen database backlog, but we approach it strategically. You can either start databasing in the left corner of the collection and continue until you finish in the right corner - in several decades time; or you can target "high value" collections.

Take for example our Trichoptera (Caddisfly) collection. For almost 40 years, the recognized taxonomic expert of this group in the SW Pacific region built this collection from 6 specimens to over 500,000. This collection generated much taxonomic research, several PhDs and because we funded excellent wet collection storage facilities, all researchers in our region deposited their material in this collection. It is a "high value" taxonomic and scientific collection.

Guess what? It was one of our first major targeted collection dataset projects. We used the "lot" system in which we added a single registration number to a tube of caddis specimens which were all collected at the same location and date and are all of the same species. This reduced the number of individual registrations from approx 500,000 down to approx 50,000. The registration task was completed within 12 months by "minimally trained" staff, all of whom were recent Uni graduated scientists basically out on their first "professional" job. It was an excellent introduction for them on museology, taxonomy, working with large biological datasets etc. A number of these staff went on to work with private biological survey companies and one even set up her own survey company.? We are now image capturing the numerous types stored in the collection.

This public dataset has now created links with our EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), numerous fly fishing clubs and is a wonderful example of long term research leading to a valuable, public biodiversity output.

The taxonomy, geospatial and temporal characteristics of the Australian Trichoptera fauna are now at the fingertips of web users.

There are some good news stories from the efforts of digitizing Science collections.

Cheers

Ken

Sent from my iPad

On 18/05/2012, at 7:04 AM, "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:

> Perhaps there is a midddle ground solution ... if the funders want all the data verbatim as a first step, then that is fine, *provided* that it is clearly stated that the data is in "the raw", and may not be reliable. The main thing that annoys the heck out of me is just pretense that everything is okeydokey and spot on, when in fact it isn't ...
>
> Stephen
>
> From: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
> To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
> Sent: Friday, 18 May 2012 6:16 AM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections
>
> 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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