[Zoobank-list] name auctions in the news

[Doug Yanega]

[note the crossposting]
This article from yesterday's "Newsweek" seems quite significant:

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9935134/site/newsweek/

Nov. 14, 2005 issue - Genesis 2:19 says that "whatsoever Adam called 
every living creature, that was the name thereof." But Adam probably 
wouldn't have named a spider Calponia harrisonfordi, a sea snail 
Bufonaria borisbeckeri or an ant Proceratium google. Those are the 
work of environmentalists who've stumbled on an unlikely source of 
publicity and revenue: scientific species names. Lately, the monikers 
have become celebrity gifts so common you'd think they were showing 
up in swag bags. Sting has a tree frog, Harrison Ford has an ant as 
well as that spider and Mick Jagger has a snail, albeit one that 
hasn't aged as well as he has. (It's extinct.) In April, a dot-com 
paid $650,000 for the right to call the newly discovered Callicebus 
aureipalatii the GoldenPalace.com monkey.  Now Brian Fisher, a 
leading entomologist, is opening up the privilege to regular folks. 
In exchange for a $10,000 donation, he'll let you christen one of the 
600-odd new species of ants he's found in Madagascar. (For just 
$15,000 more, you can buy an entire genus, but act now-there are only 
four available.) Fisher is trying to map the distribution of ants all 
over Madagascar. Since they're "the glue that holds ecosystems 
together," he says, areas teeming with ants will likely be future 
sites for national parks. As for that Google ant, which Fisher named 
earlier this year, it's a bid for the search engine's attention. 
Fisher wants the company to partner with him in creating a database 
of all known animal life. The project's prospective name? "Zoogle." 
  - Mary Carmichael  © 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

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A faculty member from our entomology department was just in here, in 
fact, waving this very article in my face, asking why those of us 
puttering around in the museum don't start supporting our 
department's research projects by auctioning names off whenever new 
taxa are encountered by our faculty (with part of the proceeds going 
back into the researchers' pockets). Now *there* is a can of worms! 
Evidently, in addition to all our other worries, we may soon 
potentially be facing pressure to auction off names for money to help 
faculty members fund their research - or (voicing the unspoken 
implication) be considered derelict in our duties, and face possible 
dis-employment. More to the point, consider this: what happens if 
this sort of policy is put into effect all over the world? It could 
quickly create a climate where taxonomists can't name taxa at a 
scholarly pace, or even let colleagues at another institution borrow 
specimens from their collection, because of competition. After all, 
if I were to loan out specimens from our collection, and someone ELSE 
made $100,000 by describing them and auctioning off their names, then 
I would have betrayed my employers' interests. It could shut down 
museum-to-museum loans forever, across the globe. Or are we going to 
have to make loans in the future with a 20-page set of legal 
documents that regulate profit-sharing?

Does this not - at THIS point in time - seem to be setting a bad 
precedent, and setting things up for taxonomists getting more 
bloodthirsty and territorial rather than more cooperative?

Additionally, by bringing this matter to the public's attention at 
this level (there are already several HUNDRED websites mentioning 
this ant), I see this as moving one step closer to the nightmare 
scenario where scam artists start coining new names for species that 
already *have* names, simply to make money. No, that isn't what Brian 
Fisher is doing (though one has to wonder what sort of partnership 
he's trying to arrange with Google - anyone here know? If a registry 
of world species is something Google is interested in, why can't 
Zoobank team up with Google?), but when news items like this start 
appearing, it isn't going to be long before it becomes public 
knowledge that the ICZN has no control over who publishes what, or 
where, or whether a new taxon is actually new.

I believe we may be on the verge of the floodgates opening. Since the 
ICZN is the ONLY entity in any position to exert even the slightest 
measure of control over what may come, I once again suggest that the 
time is ripe for the ICZN to establish an official Code policy 
regarding "valid publication" that (one way or the other) forces all 
new taxon descriptions to go through a legitimate peer review 
process, and with an *explicit* registration queue, similar to a 
patent application, so taxonomists can reserve the right to name a 
taxon *in advance* rather than having to worry about someone else 
stealing their taxa prior to publication (if naming a taxon can be 
worth $10K, then such matters would no longer be trivial). We may not 
have several years' luxury to wait on this, either. Brian Fisher is 
just the first taxonomist to take that plunge, but others will 
certainly follow. Heck, it may even be ME, depending on what happens 
with this faculty member.

Why worry, you ask? Because I honestly believe that taxonomy *could* 
potentially be looking at a gold mine, but that UNDER THE PRESENT 
RULES if we started to exploit that gold mine, it would plunge us all 
into chaos. Nothing brings out the worst in people quite like large 
amounts of money. If we have the collective willpower to write new 
rules BEFORE that happens, we can avoid all of the pitfalls, and 
preserve our capacity to reap all the benefits.

Sincerely,