In case you thought scientists move in lockstep, Smithsonian.com delivers up a report on scientific vandals:
If you’re a scientist who wants to name a newly discovered form of life, your first step is to gather two to three lines of evidence—from DNA and morphology, for example—that prove that you’re dealing with something new to science. Then you have to obtain a holotype, or an individual of the species that will serve as an identifier for future researchers. Next you’ll write up your paper, in which you describe your discovery and name it according to taxonomic naming conventions.
Finally, you send your paper off to a scientific journal for publication. If you are the first to publish, the name you’ve chosen is cemented into the taxonomic record. But that last step—publication—isn’t easy. Or at least, it isn’t supposed to be. In theory, the evidence you present must adhere to the high scientific and ethical benchmark of peer-review. Publication can take months, or even years.
However, there’s a loophole. The rules for naming a new animal taxon are governed by the ICZN, while the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) governs plants. And while the ICZN requires that names be published, as defined by the commission’s official Code, “publishing” doesn’t actually require peer-review.
I’m a little amazed at the omission of peer-review. It’s also a surprising that it’s a race to the publishing house, rather than a well-documented process that shows which scientist found the critter first.
Here’s one glory-hound scientist sounding a bit grumpy about the rest of the field:
Vandals have zeroed in on the self-publishing loophole with great success. [Doug Yanega, a Commissioner at the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature] pointed to Trevor Hawkeswood, an Australia-based entomologist accused by some taxonomists of churning out species names that lack scientific merit. Hawkeswood publishes work in his own journal, Calodema, which he started in 2006 as editor and main contributor.
“He has his own journal with himself as the editor, publisher, and chief author,” Yanega says. “This is supposed to be science, but it’s a pile of publications that have no scientific merit.” (In response to questions about the legitimacy of his journal, Hawkeswood delivered a string of expletives directed towards his critics, and contended that Calodema has “heaps of merit.”)
It’s a little like buying your victories at, well, any sport. The uninitiated may be impressed, but the folks in the field will well-understand how little these scientists are really contributing to the field. No true legacy for them, I’d say – and, in fact, due to the conflicting nomenclature problem, as Smithsonian.com details, it raises the spectre of the use of the wrong meds in emergency situations. See the article for more information.
And I suppose predatory journals could also be part of this problem.
