ICZN call for comments (1 Viewer)

[Mysticete]

While I don't believe this has immediate effect on ornithology, this may influence future work.

"We must stress that this is a very broad issue, which manifests in many ways, affects many disciplines, and has occurred throughout the history of taxonomy. We also recognize that the most prominent and timely concerns relate to issues such as plagiarism, falsification of data, criminal activities, and practices that subvert or circumvent the process of peer review (which is considered an essential element of all scientific practice, taxonomy included). This is, emphatically, not a referendum on professionals versus amateurs (or other cultural stereotypes), nor a referendum on the merits (or lack thereof) of peer review. Basically, what we seek to know is whether the taxonomic community wants to continue dealing with these issues at their own discretion, or whether they want the Commission to be empowered to do so (or something in between); we will not do so on our own initiative."

Effectively the issue is whether ICZN should intervene in nomenclature that is considered taxonomic vandalism (specific mention is made to Raymond Hoser) or allow communities to police the issue. It's a complicated subject, but with the widespread availability of internet and print on demand, something that seriously needs to be looked at.

http://iczn.org/node/40405*

 

[mb1848]

Is "criminal activities, and practices that subvert or circumvent the process of peer review" referring to Fenwick sic Antpitta where one party asked a journal not to publish?

 

[Mysticete]

Nope...Author is a herp person and given the context of the article, I am pretty sure the proposal is about Raymond Hoser principally

 

[l_raty]

Nope...Author is a herp person and given the context of the article, I am pretty sure the proposal is about Raymond Hoser principally

There is presumably some lobbying from herp persons at the base of all this but, FWIW, the authors themselves are not herpetologists--Mark Harvey is working with arachnids, and Doug Yanega is an entomologist.
Doug is saying very loud, ia. on Taxacom (Archive here), that this is NOT about R. Hoser...

 

[AlexC]

Coming at this from the dark, can someone break down what work was done to trigger this? I don't know Raymond Hoser.

 

[Richard Klim]

Coming at this from the dark, can someone break down what work was done to trigger this? I don't know Raymond Hoser.

See, for example...

• Kaiser et al 2013 (Best practices: in the 21st Century, taxonomic decisions in herpetology are acceptable only when supported by a body of evidence and published via peer-review) [especially Table 1!]
• Naish 2013 (Taxonomic vandalism and the Raymond Hoser problem)

...and this earlier BF thread: Most hilarious taxonomy paper of the decade.

 

[Mysticete]

Your correct, however this proposal seems to stem from competing proposals put to ICZN by Hoser and Kaiser, which the beginning references.

 

[KyleJones]

The battle with Hoser was started about 15 years back by a guy called Wolfgang Wuster.
Basically Wuster wants to steal all Hoser's work and rename Hoser's species.
Can you image the chaos that would erupt if everyone did this?
For a background go here
http://www.smuggled.com/scientific-fraud-wolfgang-wuster.htm

 

[fugl]

Just another example of the famed bitterness of dispute/smallness of stakes correlation or is there real substance here?

 

[KyleJones]

The Hoser page seems legit here,
Take a look at the ICZN site.
Hoser named a snake in 2009 and then Wuster came along six months later and renamed the thing.
Hoser goes to the ICZN to squash the junior name.
Wuster spits the dummy and out comes Kaiser et al.
That's where we are now.
See here
http://iczn.org/node/40371
"The purpose of this application, under Articles 78.2.3 and 80.2.1 of the
Code, is to confirm that the generic name Spracklandus Hoser, 2009 [23 March] for
the African spitting cobras is available in the sense of the Code, and also that the
work in which this genus was proposed met the Code’s criteria of publication under
Article 8.1. The Commission is asked to rule on these seemingly routine matters
because widely promulgated recommendations by some herpetologists to use a junior
objective synonym, Afronaja Wallach, Wüster & Broadley, 2009 [21 September],
instead has resulted in instability in nomenclature."

 

[Mysticete]

Fugl, my opinion is that most (with a few exceptions) of Hoser's names are invalid, because they are self-published. All he does is take someone's phylogeny paper, make up names for all the clades, and puts them on his website. There is no research associated with most of these names, and I am not even sure if he has ever seen specimens for most of the new names.

Birders have gotten off easy on this because birds were historically oversplit, so there are relatively few "splits" of genera/species/etc where an older name isn't already present. That is not the case with herps, which have been historically overlumped at every level of classification

FYI, Hoser is notorious for creating fake accounts to argue against his opponents/criticism on the internet. JUST SAYING

 

[fugl]

Fugl, my opinion is that most (with a few exceptions) of Hoser's names are invalid, because they are self-published. All he does is take someone's phylogeny paper, make up names for all the clades, and puts them on his website. There is no research associated with most of these names, and I am not even sure if he has ever seen specimens for most of the new names.

Birders have gotten off easy on this because birds were historically oversplit, so there are relatively few "splits" of genera/species/etc where an older name isn't already present. That is not the case with herps, which have been historically overlumped at every level of classification

FYI, Hoser is notorious for creating fake accounts to argue against his opponents/criticism on the internet. JUST SAYING

Many thanks for the detailed response. Eye-opening. Before this thread, I had never heard of Hoser and had no idea that biological nomenclature was subject to this kind of piracy. What do you think should be done about it?

 

[jurek]

It looks like a simple personal fight.

Mr. Hoser ability to easily produce so many publications and names illustrated that the whole process - splitting and renaming subspecies into species, species into genera etc. - was a mockery to begin with.

From the practical point of view, adding eg. requirement of peer review or no self publication is pointless. Besides that most scientific journals are normally self-financed and work in close cliques, one can make eg. his own wife a publisher and reviewer. Unless one explicitely declares that "only my buddies are right in herpetology".

From the scientific point of view, any "wrong" species or clade will simply slip to obscurity. Who uses anymore 8 named species of polar bear or 8 named genera and 20-odd species of common chimpanzee?

 

[Mysticete]

Jurek, your arguments could be used for any field of science.

Personally, as someone who does deal with peer review, I find it useful and important part of science. And as someone who deals with taxonomy every day, the creation of hundreds of taxa/higher level names only increase confusion and makes it more difficult for people in science to communicate, especially between people of different fields which are likely to utilize this taxonomic information. Yes people can ignore it (no taxonomic authority in the US uses Hoser's rattlesnake taxonomy, for instance), but not everyone who works with reptiles is likely to be up to date or realize that different names might have different weights in the taxonomic community.

It's a sticky issue. The proliferation of the internet and disreputable "pay to publish" journals has made self publishing incredibly easy for anyone to publish their thoughts and ideas, no matter how ill thought or poorly supported they are. The difference is that if those thoughts are things like vaccines causing autism or schematics on perpetual motion machines, the scientific community can laugh and safely ignore them. But pity the poor taxonomist, who suddenly finds himself saddled with using poorly conceived name because some guy decided to name every possible clade in a tree in his self published paper.

 

[Mysticete]

I would also say, it would be frustrating to identify a novel clade in a phylogenetic analysis which I spent years of hard data collection to put together. However I hold off on naming said clade because I want to make sure it holds up with morphology, or I need more DNA, or I want to sample additional relevant taxa. Unfortunately, before I can finish the follow up study, some guy reads my paper and publishes a new name for the clade in a short note, with no research to test the validity of the group.

If anything, actions like those perform Hoser encourage sloppier science, since they force people to attach names to groups, just so they could ensure that there pet organism doesn't get sadly with some uninformative name, such as Hoser naming a taxon after his dog.

 

[Farnboro John]

So would I be right in thinking that the discussion is leaning towards a reputable authority taking charge of the business?

That there should be a formal registration process for names - similar to patent registration, where one's original work must be described, including the way in which it is original, and the first stage is a literature search to establish that nobody else's work is being hijacked?

John

 

[jurek]

Mysticete,

What are you saying is that normal herpetologists are morons who cannot recognize valid from invalid species, and must be took by hand by self-proclaimed better herpetologists and told what is species. It is not so. As you told, no serious taxonomist followed Mr Hoser's rattlesnake taxonomy, without any censoring, reviewing or species-branding body. So leave it. Such things will always exist on a fringe of science.

It is against the principle of science, which is an open debate where best arguments win. I feel that personal fights and squashing alternative views by authority not arguments is much more common and damaging to science.

If you feel that you "own" a "valuable" clade and worry that somebody "steals" the name of "your" clade, then simply in a next paper, number all the nodes in the cladogram and put a list of numbers and proposed names. Will take maybe 20 lines of text.

More interesting topic - which taxonomists may be afraid of - is that clade-naming and species-naming is often the process with low intristic value. The outsider demonstrates he can do it by hundreds. The same is in insect taxonomy, where people naming (valid) new insects occassionally do in by hundreds using photocopier. So, what value comes from all those names? Who will return to these papers and trace back which is which? Or do we have a kind of cybersquatting animal names, like internet domains?

 

[nrg800]

The best summary that I've seen so far on the issue of taxonomic vandalism was on Tetrapod Zoology [EDIT: Which I just realised Richard links to above]. Link here http://blogs.scientificamerican.com.../06/20/taxonomic-vandalism-and-raymond-hoser/. Personally I support the control of these practices. In all senses what Hoser and a few others do is just take pot luck that a few of the species they describe will be valid.

Check out his website and journal...
http://www.raymondhoser.com/
"Because Raymond Hoser is the world's leading authority on reptiles, he is known globally as the Snakeman®"
http://www.smuggled.com/AJHFP1.htm
I especially like the etymology in his discoveries.

Named in honor of my Great Dane dog Oxyuranus
(in turn named after an Australian genus of elapid snake). In the
eight year period from 2004 to 2012, he kept the Snakebusters
facility safe from numerous burglary attempts. These were by
inexperienced snake handler imitators and business competitors
who thought that they could enhance their own prospects by
attacking the Snakebusters enterprise and steal reptiles.
These persons not only sought to attack Snakebusters, but also
committed countless other crimes and wrongful actions, solely
motivated by a desire to make a lot of easy money and with no
regard for reptiles or even people for that matter.
Oxyuranus (we called him “Oxy”) did a sterling duty in protecting
our property for many years and without ever complaining,
putting him ahead of human security guards, enabling
Australia’s best reptile education and shows to continue. As a
result, over 2 million people were exposed to Snakebusters
education one way or other and as a result herpetology in
Australia got a major boost.
In other words this dog did more for herpetology than most
people, including many ostensibly within the field. Therefore it’s
appropriate he have a genus of crocodile named in his honor.

Also check out his "rebuttal of a dangerous and dishonest blog by Hinrich Kaiser and eight other renegades":
http://www.smuggled.com/Issue-18-2-79.pdf

Jurek, I think the main issue with the actions of Hoser is that if something that he does name does turn out to be valid then the rule of Principle of Priority states that this species must forever be referred to by the name of his pets of friends (Katrinahoserserpenea, Michaelnicholsus, Jackyhosernatrix, Moseselfakharikukri eww). Also in addition to this many of the species concerned are venomous snakes. Although professional taxonomists might be pretty good at filtering out the crappy (and invalid) names, people involved in the medical trade may not. And this can be bad, especially if rapid discourse between scientists and medical professionals in the case of a medical emergency.

 

[Xenospiza]

For quite a few known (and well-watched) new taxa in South America we have been awaiting a description for >15 years. I am amazed that no one "stole" them already: the songs are often available. Now a specimen is not necessary anymore (cf. the Strix omanensis case), describing an undescribed bird is a doddle. And for clades, it is even easier. We only have to wait for a "vandal" to take over from John Boyd!

Still, the fear for “hijacking” of species as soon as it is made public is there. Two years ago, George Sangster got very upset when someone published pictures and the location of the Scops Owl he had been describing (in a very detailed paper).
In 2009, the new bulbul in Laos was announced by a Belgian bird guide: http://www.birding2asia.com/articles/LaosMysteryBulbul.html, which caused some stir.

The sorry tale of the Urrao Antpitta was different: this bird was not yet known to the outside world. But to describe a new species, (in my opinion) criminal behaviour apparently is taxonomically acceptable. Claiming that "taxonomic vandalism" is a problem sounds like infighting... The obvious issue is that the most visible (and least interesting) result of scientific work in taxonomy is the name. The solution is to lay claim to a name as soon as you publish a new clade, before someone else names it after his wife, pet or favourite biscuit.

 

[thyoloalethe]

What about the publication of the names Leiothlypis and Parkesia (Parulidae) by Sangster in the BBOC in 2008? Sangster wasn't involved in any of the studies that discovered these clades. Does this count as "taxonomic vandalism?" Or does being published in a peer-reviewed journal automatically negate this?

Liam