[Taxacom] Sale: immortal names

[Daniel Janzen]

Doug, we are on the same page, to wit:

" I'm suggesting that we need to ASK these questions, and we should not be surprised if there is no consensus on the answers people give, or pretend that context does not matter. This is likely to be contentious, and we need to be prepared to contend with it."

All I would add is that the taxasphere has been long embedded in these questions, even though any give member might feel comfortable feeling that his or her daily activities are one-off transactions - I do a job, I get a salary.  Done deal.   In fact, the cautions you put on the table are all multiple behind that simple employment deal, even though they are jointly shared and experienced by the administrators, owners, CEOs, government, the volunteers, the peers and the users, etc., each bartering with the pieces of the puzzle they have a hook into.   And when one of them loses a major hook, such as Eric retiring, that is when his barter power goes way down, and it is admirable that he has the personal enthusiasm and drive and dedication to keep his eye on the taxasphere ball (as I know you, Doug, do as well) and therefore is comfortable with exploring to find new hooks.

Keep it up.  

Smile.  Dan and Winnie


On Jul 6, 2015, at 5:30 PM, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:

> On 7/6/15 11:48 AM, Daniel Janzen wrote:
>> "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?
> I am not disputing that there is a long history of philanthropy and patronage in science as a whole, including taxonomy. The question raised was whether that patronage or philanthropy is potentially being usurped if the owner(s) of specimens are not sharing in the largesse they are being used to generate. There are four easily-recognized categories of interested parties when a new taxon is named: the collector(s), the repository(s), the identifier(s), and the describer(s). All four involve an expenditure of time and effort, at the very least, thereby representing some measure of monetary investment. Do they all have a right to share in revenue-generating patronage? (e.g., does the person who collected a specimen have any rights once they have deposited it somewhere, if there is no signed transfer of ownership?)
>> 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.
>> 
> Barter assumes that you are the owner of the property in question, and it is yours to give. Do you own the property rights to specimens that you have borrowed from someone else?
> 
> Look at Eric Metzler's situation: if he goes out at his own expense, collects specimens, decides that they are new taxa, and then describes them, auctions the names, and keeps the proceeds, no one (I presume) is going to think ill of him for doing it - he is the collector, the repository, the identifier, and the describer. Now, consider two alternatives on this - (1) he goes out at his own expense, collects specimens, and then deposits them in a collection. Then someone else borrows those specimens, decides that they are new taxa, and then describes them, auctions the names, and keeps the proceeds. Is that fair to Eric? Is that fair to the collection the specimens were borrowed from? (2) suppose Eric never went out, never collected any specimens, but instead borrowed everything from a series of different collections, including material already IDed as "n. sp.", and auctioned their names to support his research. Is that fair to the collections the specimens were borrowed from, the collector(s), or the people who IDed them as new species? All sorts of permutations are possible, but is the answer always the same, that only the describer is entitled to make any profit??
> 
> I'm not suggesting that there are right or wrong answers to these questions. I'm suggesting that we need to ASK these questions, and we should not be surprised if there is no consensus on the answers people give, or pretend that context does not matter. This is likely to be contentious, and we need to be prepared to contend with it. Just HOW contentious it will be is certainly going to depend on how much money is involved; for a small struggling collection, or someone like Eric, something like $5-10K would be very significant, and therefore a very serious issue for them. For others, this amount might not merit any concern. But when the amount involved is something like the $650K paid for the infamous "Golden Palace Monkey" name auction, is there ANY museum in the world that would say that they don't care?
> 
> Suppose, purely hypothetically, that you were a collection manager who had just found a new species (and announced it in a press release), sent it off to experts to be described, and then got a private communication from someone offering to make a substantial donation to your collection (say, twice your normal annual budget) if you have it named after his company? How should you respond? Do you ask to have the specimens returned so you can describe the species yourself and keep all the money? Do you tell the experts and arrange to give them a small donation after your donation has been negotiated? Do you tell the would-be patron that you don't approve of such crass commercialism, and tell him to keep his money? More to the point, wouldn't something like this alter how you deal with this or future species discoveries from your collection? How could it NOT?
> 
>> 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.
>> 
> On this, we are in full agreement. If you've followed my comments on this topic over the years, you know that I would like to see us do everything we can to promote taxonomy and the protection of biodiversity, and it would be wonderful if we could figure out a way to include this form of patronage - but we need to do so WITHOUT it creating rifts in the community in the process. Call me cynical, but I do see a real potential for damage - damage to our ability to cooperate, and even damage to our credibility as scientists. I believe we need to properly anticipate such consequences before we can decide how best to proceed. Also, despite what some might think, I would NOT enjoy being here 20 years from now telling people "I told you so", because this is also MY livelihood, and my passion, that is potentially at stake. I want to see taxonomy, taxonomists, and collections *thrive*, especially because we ARE advocates for biodiversity. People can't learn to love nature if they know nothing about it, and taxonomists can tell them, and our collections can show them.
> 
> 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.
>