I wanted to take a slightly different tact, though I agree with many of the statements in the other two "clades" (couldn't resist) of this discussion.

To me what gains acceptance is quality of the work presented. I try to use multiple sources of data, I use morphology, morphometrics, electrophoresis and DNA sequencing. Where they disagree I consider this as something that must be reconsiled and I do not consider DNA sequencing any more objective than quality morphological analysis. I do not believe taxonomy can be done without morphology because if you want to do a phylogeny and don't include the described fossils then you are throwing out data. Thats not being objective, that's making a subjective decision.

I also hold to the ICZN and go by the ideal of "Refute it or Accept it". So if someone describes something, they only way to not accept it is to publish a refutation. Otherwise wether you like it or not it will be accepted, eventually, by many people. This is why Iverson, Georges and myself dealt with all the Wells and Wellington names for turtles one at a time in an Internationally published paper. So there could be no arguments, we either refuted them or accepted them. Hence I now accept the name Macrochelodina, even though many hate it.

I have had to deal with some very awkward taxonomic decisions, I did this by being objective, using the ICZN to guide the decisions and gathering as much data as I could.

Do all my taxonomic proposals go down well? No, and I could not care less, the data speaks for itself. I had one person come up to me once and say "I described one species in my whole career and you sank it"... Well it was not a species.

The point is, if the quality of the presented work is poor then the chances of it being accepted in the long term are poor. If the quality is good, then there will be no objections and it will be accepted.

So all up, good taxonomy will be accepted, do it right, publish it properly and there is no problem, no matter how people hate it or love it. Do it badly and those who hate it have all the ammunition they need to cause political rubbish for decades.

Cheers, Scott
Carettochelys.com


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Scott Thomson

If you believe you can or you can't you are always right.

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