[Taxacom] I'm furious over article: On typeless species and the perils of fast taxonomy

[Doug Yanega]

At least a few Commissioners, myself included, communicated with one or 
more of the co-authors of this paper when it came out, and pointed out 
the errors to them, but as far as I am aware, they have yet to 
acknowledge any errors. They most certainly did not include any 
Commissioners among the referees of the paper prior to publication. The 
Commission is also looking into the possibility of issuing a "position 
paper" of our own.

On 5/9/16 10:46 PM, John Grehan wrote:
> Yes, by all means
> challenge problems you see, but don't expect them to ever go way (unless
> one day there will be "intelligent" computers that will assess all papers
> and be able to cross reference every nuance and combination of rules to
> provide the perfect kind of evaluation you and everyone else might wish
> for).
This does not require computers. It requires a different mechanism for 
review; open public review. Having hundreds of taxonomists reading every 
paper before they are accepted would go a very, very long way to 
alleviating all of the shoddy practices that concern us. Critical review 
can easily be circumvented at present, but we have the option of making 
that impossible. There is no technical challenge, only a societal one.

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