[Taxacom] Taxonomic output study

[Curtis Clark]

On 5/26/2012 6:35 PM, Ken Kinman wrote:
>   The biggest problem with phylogenetics for phylogenetics sake is that way too much of it concerns herpetology, and dinosaurs in particular.
There are a lot of things about this post that I find amusing (one being 
that my ornithologist colleague would argue that the dinosaurs he works 
with are not yet extinct), but there is a serious issue as well. People 
do what interests them, or what remunerates them. If someone weren't 
working on dinosaur fossils, there's no assurance that they'd be working 
on extant dinosaurs or any other living group. If a museum weren't 
funding dinosaur fossil digs, there's no assurance that they'd fund 
research on living organisms, rather than archaeology or art. And I find 
it hard to believe that the US National Science Foundation is funding 
dinosaur research at any level that would clearly be described as 
"disproportionate".  We'd all like it if the things that were important 
to us were important to others as well, but it sadly doesn't work that 
way, even if the things that are important to us seem by many measures 
to be more generally important.

-- 
Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4140
Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768