[Zoobank-list] Re: [iczn-list] quality control in taxonomy?

[Doug Yanega]

Alexander Riedel wrote:

>  Personally, I am facing a similar problem with Mr. L. who published 
>a home-made CD-ROM on Attelabidae. Within relatively short time he 
>described "8 new tribes, 34 new subtribes, 113 new genera, 83 new 
>subgenera, 151 new species and 4 new subspecies. Discharged of 
>lectotypes of 105 taxa." All these descriptions are valid according 
>to the latest edition of the code. It was published without any 
>peer-review and is full of mistakes. The language chosen was Russian 
>(except for short English so called "diagnoses").
>
>How to solve the problem? There is clear need for discussion on 
>effective measures. One suggestion would be that newzoological names 
>become available only if the papers have undergone a minimum amount 
>of peer-review. It would be relatively easy to produce a positive 
>list of peer reviewed journals. To deal with publications of 
>monographs would be more difficult, but nevertheless it should be 
>possible to find a solution for that. Publication on home-made 
>CD-ROMs should be taken off the list of valid means of publication 
>as soon as possible. And finally, I believe that some restrictions 
>on the languages suitable for taxonomic publication would be 
>beneficial.

This topic actually has come up here with some frequency, especially 
in regards to the Zoobank "name registry" initiative, as some of us 
pushing this program believe it needs to explicitly require 
peer-review (though we are a minority, as far as I can see). The 
issues surrounding peer review often provoke strong emotions, and 
it's hard to imagine any system that will make *everyone* happy, 
ESPECIALLY those taxonomists whose careers depend on publishing 
worthless descriptions - and there are enough of them to create 
considerable resistance. Even "peer-reviewed" journals are prone to 
corruption, when there is motivation to do so - the late Ron 
Gatrelle, who developed "The International Lepidoptera Survey" and 
its journal, would solicit potential editors with a letter that 
privately communicated that they didn't actually have to review any 
manuscripts if they didn't want to - that Ron would simply list them 
as contributing editors and review the papers himself (and, not 
surprisingly, Ron consistently argued that adopting a community-wide 
policy of mandatory peer review would be the same as censorship). I 
know for a fact that this is not the only such journal in existence 
in which the "peer review" process is essentially a rubber stamp, and 
I'm sure we ALL know of such journals. My point is that simply making 
a list of peer-reviewed journals and only accepting names published 
in those journals is only a bandage, and it won't stop the bleeding.

If we are serious about *eliminating* corruption and fraud and plain 
old incompetence in taxonomy, rather than just making a token effort 
at *suppressing* it, it will take a complete overhaul of how we deal 
with publishing - realistically, it can only be accomplished if the 
review process is made public, because it is the tradition of 
"confidentiality" that offers the last, ultimate refuge for BAD 
science to persist. If every weevil researcher in the world had been 
given the opportunity to review the work of "Mr. L" then it would 
presumably never have passed review (at least not in its entirety), 
but it is certainly conceivable that Mr. L has enough sympathetic 
colleagues that he could list a bunch of them to act as referees for 
his work and approve it for a peer reviewed journal. If we switched 
over to a system similar to Zootaxa (with simultaneous online and 
hardcopy publication), and simply modified the system so it 
implemented online public review, we could solve these issues once 
and for all. Even Mr. L would benefit, in a way, because he might 
still be able to publish a few new taxa,  rather than having his 
works summarily rejected - that is, online review and publishing 
would make it possible to selectively accept some taxa and reject 
others from within the same work.

Of course, for the ICZN to incorporate any such requirements into the 
Code would represent a major paradigm shift - because, by ANY 
definition, peer review would introduce an element of subjectivity to 
a process which, at present, is explicitly formulated to be as 
objective as possible - and subjectivity of ANY sort is something the 
ICZN staunchly avoids. "Quality control" is definitely NOT an 
objective concept, so I suspect the ICZN will never adopt it. I think 
we'll be compelled to tolerate people like Mr. L for the few 
remaining years traditional taxonomy is likely to survive, before the 
genetic bar-coders replace us all and simply rename everything from 
scratch.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        /Dept. of Entomology         /Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.afriherp.org/pipermail/zoobank-list/attachments/20060410/52fdbfd3/attachment.htm