[Taxacom] Fw:Re: Sale: immortal names

Tue Jul 7 02:51:34 CDT 2015

-- Eredeti üzenet --
Feladó: Doug Yanega  <dyanega at ucr .edu>Címzett:  <>,  <>,  <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>Elküldve: 2015. július 6. 23:31Tárgy : Re: [Taxacom] Sale: immortal names

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

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