[Taxacom] Sale: immortal names

[Daniel Janzen]

"One of the oldest of all scientific traditions is the free international exchange of specimens…"

One of the oldest of all scientific traditions is the financiing of collecting expeditions by wealthy patrons - whether their payback was market value in home currency or home prestige value in social credits.

"…..anything that might infringe on this will turn into a "slippery slope" scenario".

And just how much of the taxasphere wishes to continue to be treated and viewed as the penniless artist selling art on the street corner for impulse purchase by one in ten thousand passersby?  We have all been way along on the slippery slope since the Pleistocene and before.

Just how long would university campuses continue to exist without the financial support of philanthropic (?) individuals, philanthropic (?) companies, and philanthropic (?) government subsidies? - and the financing from parents who want their fledgings to have a safe and interesting platform from which to fledge into the grinding maw of society?

Barter in all currencies is the essence of human societies, and there are thousands of ways to distribute that currency in return for this or that product.  A conspicuous auction is only one of thousands in use all day every day.

Lets all relax and get on with doing serious taxonomy and all the really good things, patronyms included, that can be done with it.  If we don't, or can't, all this thought and energy and noise is just a whisper over the grave of the world's wild biodiversity, what there is left of it.

Smile.  Dan Janzen, a major and lifelong consumer of taxasphere product.


On Jul 6, 2015, at 2:04 PM, Doug Yanega <dyanega at UCR.EDU> wrote:

> On 7/6/15 8:29 AM, John Grehan wrote:
>> Otherwise it would appear that the option is limited
>> to those who are technically amateurs - assuming the named specimen is not
>> from an institution such as a museum that 'owned' the specimen (presuming
>> that this entitled them to any proceeds - wonder if that is a caveat on any
>> loan forms?) - and assuming that the receiving institution is willing to
>> accept the specimen without some of the proceeds.
>> 
> Since I've talked extensively about this in the past, including a symposium presentation, I've watched the thread and so far refrained from commenting. The point above, however, is one that is very troublesome and needs to be explored. This issue HAS arisen on at least a few occasions, and while it's not by any means a legal precedent, here's how things have unfolded in these examples:
> 
> (1) Researcher borrows specimens from collections X, Y, and Z, as part of their revisionary work.
> 
> (2) In addition to the revisionary work, the researcher sells/auctions names based upon these specimens.
> 
> (3) Researcher uses all of the proceeds to supplement his own institutional support, or related activities like hiring a student, or donates the proceeds to charity.
> 
> Do collections X, Y, and Z deserve a portion of those proceeds?
> 
> In the examples I'm aware of, the researchers have neither asked for permission, nor shared any of the proceeds, and the loaning institutions have done nothing, nor had any clauses in the loan forms. In one case where I did inquire, out of curiosity, the comment I got back was (paraphrased) along these lines:
> 
> "When a researcher is funded by NSF to do a revision using our specimens, we don't ask for a portion of the grant; we just loan the specimens. I'm not sure we'd have any legal grounds for making a distinction between a traditional research loan like that, which has no strings attached, versus a loan that is used for fund-raising /on top of/ the actual research."
> 
> Evidently, the rarity of such examples means that few, if any, institutions have seen fit to implement specific policies that would restrict a borrower's ability to use loaned material as a source of extra revenue without prior approval, but I'm not sure that is going to remain true if it becomes a more common practice. That being said, we have to consider the larger picture here, and that's why I'm posting.
> 
> One of the oldest of all scientific traditions is the free international exchange of specimens, and anything that might infringe on this will turn into a "slippery slope" scenario. Viewed externally (by non-scientists), this tradition is actually quite amazing - it is something altruistic in a world that is full of competition, in an academic environment that is increasingly strapped for funds. I know I'm not alone in seeing the irony here; museums and herbaria being closed or laying off staff (in part because the administrators under whose umbrella they fall decide they are not profitable), while those same collections are, in a very literal sense, a major part of the scientific economy. Without specimens, millions of dollars in research grants would cease to be awarded. The thing is, the places that house the specimens and the places that benefit from these grants *are generally not the same places*. Almost no one does taxonomic research that is 100% "in-house" - *something* has to come from other institutions, even if it's only type specimens. You can't explain this sort of cooperative network to an administrator whose vision does not extend beyond the facility they control. If you do, and they grasp how it works, the most likely response is going to be predictable: "Well, that's bad business practice - obviously we need to start charging a fee for people to borrow our specimens". The result of that, also predictably, would be that no one would borrow your specimens any more, since (a) researchers don't have funds in their grants to cover that, and (b) there are other places they can still borrow material for free.
> 
> The exact same reasoning would apply to institutions that attempt to make their loans subject to "profit-sharing"; a researcher looking to auction names is going to preferentially borrow from places that *don't* require a cut of the profits. The converse could also come to pass, as well; namely, that a collection would be motivated to run *their own auctions*, and if they can make money from it, then they'll be motivated to *refuse to send out loans* any more. Furthermore, what happens if some researchers voluntarily share profits and others don't? Maybe collections will start to selectively make loans, or offer incentives to people like that. Like I said, a slippery slope.
> 
> I have to be honest, I've been thinking hard about this for over a decade, and don't see a good way for this to work within the traditional framework. At a bare minimum it would require some sort of international agreement (on the scale of CITES) for which all the world's museums would need to be signatories, which would specify a fixed and objectively-determined method of profit-sharing, with legally-binding contracts that are signed by both parties in ALL specimen loans - but many institutions would probably view such an agreement as unacceptable, either in principle, or in practice. Would such an initiative have any chance of success? I'm skeptical. Yet, that leaves us with the status quo, and that's not a stable situation, and the alternative paths look bad. A blanket prohibition on auctions would equate with the old adage about "cutting off your nose to spite your face", and do no one any good at all, but allowing auctions to proceed unrestricted stands to seriously interfere with the scientific tradition, since it might well result in certain collections being cut out of the research community (if people won't or can't borrow from them any more), or certain researchers being ostracized (if they make enough money that they become notorious for not sharing, and people stop giving them loans). It is inevitable, after all, that if people start to make serious amounts of money doing this, there will eventually be conflict between the haves and the have-nots - and the community will suffer, at a time when we can ill afford it. Pandora's Box, anyone?
> 
> 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
> The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched at: http://taxacom.markmail.org
> 
> Celebrating 28 years of Taxacom in 2015.
>