Why Do Taxonomists Write the Meanest Obituaries?

April 30, 2016

Ansel Payne’s article Why Do Taxonomists Write the Meanest Obituaries? is a terrific read, even if you’re not a taxonomist.

A tricky thing I learned: naming things has consequences, particularly if you do a lousy job of naming things.

As a way to encourage amateur contributions, the rules regulating new names is remarkably loose. But this also means that people who do sloppy work can “wreak havoc” because their contributions, however mistaken, are legitimate until they are otherwise corrected or disproven.

That’s because the Principle of Priority binds all taxonomists into a complicated network of interdependence; just because a species description is wrong, poorly conceived, or otherwise inadequate, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a recognized part of taxonomic history. Whereas in physics, say, “unified theories” scrawled on napkins and mailed in unmarked envelopes end up in trashcans, biologists, regardless of their own opinions, are bound to reckon with the legacy of anyone publishing a new name.

Again, I’m no taxonomist – but this was a terrific read. I found myself highlighting multiple paragraphs as I was reading. And if I had my way, I’d end up just quoting the article in full here, snippet by snippet.

Go read Payen’s article, and learn a bit more about Constantine Rafinesque, Francis Walker, Peter Cameron – men whose work was consequential and long-lasting, but only in the most terrible of ways.

[via MetaFilter, CC photo via Andrew Moore]

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