[Taxacom] [iczn-list] Fraudulent alteration of databases to commit scientific theft and fraud.

[Doug Yanega]

On 4/11/14 7:14 PM, Neal Evenhuis wrote:
> OK. I've lurked enough.
>
> I've had a look at all the relevant material in Hoser's case and have
> concluded that his names are indeed available. His claim that a database
> was changed is actually irrelevant, since he was basing his taxa on
> specimen numbers, which do indeed refer to actual specimens (see further
> below on this).
See further below.
> The Code Glossary says that a "type series" is whatever specimens the
> author indicates as included in it. Hoser gave type numbers indicating
> exactly which specimens were in his type series.
>
> He selected one of them as a holotype.
There was no such specimen.
> Based on that, he concluded that someone changed the database from actual
> specimens existing to "observations". There is NO word "observation" in
> that database. The word is "occurrence". Which in database parlance may
> have a totally different meaning -- I have seen it mean a specimen
> "occurs" in the specified collection, but more data is needed to properly
> fill out the form (but again -- this is IRRELEVANT, so don't focus on
> this).
No, it's not irrelevant - the curator of the collection specifically 
stated, when the ICZN representatives contacted him (myself included), 
that no such specimens with those numbers ever were in their possession, 
nothing had been or would be deposited anywhere, and made it clear that 
the term "occurrence record" was applied to unvouchered observations. 
Someone saw a turtle, identified it in the field, counted how many they 
saw (in this case, "1"), took a photo, and entered that record into the 
database. Just like a 4th of July Bird Count.
> However, where he screwed up is by not looking at the Florida Museum
> database itself, where his types are stored. In that database, there is a
> column "Specimens" and the number "1" for each specimen number entry for
> the numbers he used in his type series. Thus, specimens do indeed exist
> and Hoser was within the definition of the Code in specifying exactly
> which of these specimens was in his type series.
No, most of those specimens do NOT exist - most of them are observations 
only. It is a very large proportion of their database, and getting 
larger all the time, since they don't like to collect additional 
specimens of known taxa but will happily add more observations. In fact, 
it's dumb luck that any of the "paratypes" listed corresponded to actual 
specimens.
> There is nothing in the Code that requires an author to actually handle,
> see, or have in front of him actual specimens.
No, on this we are in complete agreement. That is not the problem here. 
The problem here is that there is no specimen, and not even a published 
photograph of the holotype, as in other recent cases of specimens that 
were described and released - and treated as available. Had Hoser 
published a figure saying "Figure X: Holotype specimen of Y, n. sp.", 
then we wouldn't be having this discussion. His description points 
explicitly to NOTHING, and that directly contravenes the provisions of 
Article 16.4.
>   Bibliographic reference is
> allowed (which means an author is not actually "seeing" specimens), and
> that has been abused in the past to make available names in a quick and
> dirty fashion.
An online database is not a published resource in the sense of the Code. 
You cannot "explicitly fix" a specimen whose identity (and even 
existence) is a matter of unpublished observations only. If anything, 
that possibly violates Article 1.3.1, which states that names proposed 
for hypothetical concepts are excluded from the Code; there is no 
practical difference between a hypothetical concept and an unpublished 
observation, since in neither case is evidence presented by their author 
of their existence. A person could claim the existence of ANYTHING THEY 
WANT, including Bigfoot, Extraterrestrials, Chupacabras, Dragons, 
Unicorns, etc., if allowed to use observations alone as the basis for 
descriptions. This is ludicrous.

On 4/11/14 4:58 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> Well, what he actually said is vague and ambiguous. I was invoking the principle of charity to attribute to him the most sensible possible interpretation, in line with scientific etiquette. Anyway, this whole thing stinks. I haven't read over the relevant papers yet, but I will do so now (and will also send Hoser the full Zootaxa article). Just to preempt the conclusion slightly, I suggest that renaming other peoples taxa should only be done if it is 100% certain that the earlier names are unavailable for some reason.
>
No, what he said was very clear, and completely wrong: he said "if the 
holotype is lost". There never WAS a validly designated holotype for 
either taxon, so there was nothing that could be lost. This is 
essentially "begging the question": the conclusion of his argument (that 
since there was a holotype, it can be replaced by a paratype) is 
essentially used as a premise of that same argument (it assumes that 
there was a holotype, and paratypes); i.e., the premise only works if 
the conclusion is already assumed to be true. I'll say it again, so it's 
not vague or ambiguous. HE NEVER VALIDLY DESIGNATED A HOLOTYPE. You 
can't lose something that doesn't exist, and you also can't designate 
paratypes if there is no holotype. His names are unavailable.

On 4/11/14 10:55 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> I disagree. The decision to ignore AJH can only be made by an official ruling by the ICZN (though they are probably too gutless to do it).
Actually, that is also not true. The ICZN has no mechanism to enforce 
compliance with the Code. If you don't believe me, I'll point out that 
there are a few thousand references and online resources produced by 
lepidopterists in the last decade or so in which the names do not comply 
with the Code-mandated provisions for gender agreement. There is an 
entire discipline of taxonomists who have chosen to selectively ignore 
the parts of the Code they don't like, without our approval. The 
herpetological community can boycott Hoser's names and there isn't a 
bloody thing we on the Commission can do to stop them, any more than we 
can stop the lepidopterists from abandoning gender agreement. Compliance 
with the Code is voluntary, and always has been - and sometimes people 
refuse to comply. In this particular case, if all the herpetologists 
other than Hoser ignore the AJH, as Kaiser and others have suggested, 
then this would promote nomenclatural stability, since the peer-reviewed 
literature (which, realistically, is all any of us SHOULD care about) 
would then be 100% consistent in its use of names. I'm not going to lose 
any sleep over this.

Sincerely,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (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