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My friend Rich Lane has it wrong. So does Norm MacLeod. Both have done it differently and successfully themselves. Our problem is twofold: 1. We work in a very dynamic field where changes happen every day because new information makes it happen. 2. Paleontologists are always bemoaning their situation. Poor us, we have too many names, too many people proposing names, not enough jobs, not enough money, and no respect. Would you respect someone who has such negative things to say about themselves, their work and their field? I don't think so! Re: 1. Comments interspersed in Rich's text: >Item Subject: Text_1 > For those of us who must work daily with scientists outside >paleontology and biology, and with engineers, Linnean nomenclature is >a problem. I suggest that since these other scientists do not know Linnean nomenclature, don't use it. I run into this problem with hundreds of non-science majors and non-micropaleo students all the time here at Berkeley. They seem to understand when I explain things without using disciplinary jargon, and I'm sure engineers and other scientists would be able to understand a simpler explanations too. Our students aren't that much brighter! >The vissicitudes of our nomenclature, as allowed in the code, The Code has nothing to do with this stuff. It is the way the field develops. The Code just give the rules. If you think its bad now, try using no code! >is debilitating to our science and befuddling to our colleagues. I don't think so in most cases. People working with groups understand what is going on perfectly well or can figure it out. It's true that a newcomer to a particular group or time period may have to work at understanding for a little while, but we do that for everything else we use (try running your VCR or a new computer program without some previous understanding or instruction). Furthermore, most of our colleagues in other fields or that work on other groups could care less about what we do within our own specialty. They want results--give it to them simply. Show them a chart, show them a graph, just tell them the answer. They sure as hell don't tell us everything, and we don't want to know either. > I know that we have no other system to substitute, but if >paleontology is to successfully enter the next century secure in the >feeling that it will contribute its maximum and its fair share to the >rest of the scientific world, it must stabilize its nomenclature. Surely you can't mean this. To stabilize nomenclature is to stop progress. Perhaps you mean develop an easier way to deal with the changing field of systematic paleontology, and maybe that is possible. Norm suggests that we electro-storm about it for a while. Paleo will continue to contribute just fine. How many of us care what is going on in glaciology, for example? The contributions of any field lay largely within its own field. In paleo, we have been especially fortunate that many people have been interested in our problems--look at the K/T, early life, macroevolution, dinosaur, paleoceanography, etc., etc., debates. Other scientists ARE interested in what we do--look at the number of news items published in Science of Nature each year about paleo. You don't see that for crystal physics, hard-rock geochemistry, protozoology, mineralogy, etc., etc. We've done just fine, thanks. Security is in the mind of the beholder, except if your job is threatened, I'd agree. >The code as it stands now is only a set of recommendations, No. It is the accepted set of rules which zoologists and botanists use. You can do it differently, but most of us won't pay any attention. >and that is >probably all it can ever be. Unless we systematists world-wide accept some other set or procedures. >Are we left forever to routinely explain >to our fellow non-paleontological scientists and engineers why the >names we were using last week are now all wrong? Tell them that it is progress, just like the development of new computer chips, auto parts, computer programs (I'm now up to ver. 7.5 on one, having gone through 2.1, 4.0, 5.6 etc, and I have no idea what any of those mean, except that 7.5 is supposed to be better than the others, although they all worked fine), engineering terminology, or replacement of buggy whips. Don't apologize. Use it to emphasize that we are expanding our knowledge all the time and that this additional knowledge just might benefit them. The computer guys come up with all these new versions that few of us really know the details of and make a lot of money from it. We won't make money, but we can certainly benefit, if the field is presented as an exciting, dynamic, useful one, which it is in fact. > Are we to be left >with multiple consultant nomenclatoral schemes for the same fossils, >leading to different zonal schemes rendering perfectly good data >nearly useless? That's progress in science. As contrasting systems are tested, one or two will emerge as most useful and be adopted. As for consultants--this is a different problem altogether. Consultants and company scientists that cannot publish or allow their data and interpretations to be shared are not part of the scientific community. They are part of an industrial base whose objectives are different and have no need to follow any common set of rules or methods, as long as they are profitable. I have no objection to that. I only ask that when they enter the scientific community, that they publish their data and hypotheses so I know what they are talking about and have a shot at improving them. If they make more money using other schemes, more power to them. But it ain't science. >Or, when can we finally bring an end to Joe Blow in >Lower Slobovia publishing a new name for every fossil he encounters? >The code allows all of this. This is not science, this is chaos. No problem. Let's pass a rule that Joe Blow's work doesn't count. Or Rich Lane's, or Norm MacLeod's. Not mine, of course!! If any of you don't do it according to the code, it can already be thrown out (ignored is better). This IS science. All disciplines have nomenclature--let's stop bitching and start tooting our own horns. Try asking the computer program engineers to stabilize their output!! They'd only do it for a million bucks or so! Re: 2. I don't know why paleontologists have always complained about their situation. This debate is not new. It's been going on for decades. In 1965, Boltovskoy predicted the "Twilight of Foraminiferology" about 3 years before the whole field took off on an exciting spiral of new knowledge and interpretations that vastly improved what we know about earth history, correlation, paleoenvironments, -oceanography, -climatology, biology, etc., etc. I can't think of another active field that cries so much about their situation as paleontologists. Perhaps it is because we have mostly been a hand-maiden to geology and hence subject to the whims of that science. Now that geologist think that they see (once again!) that paleontology seems less important than other means at their disposal, they have thrown us aside. To their own detriment, I'd suggest. But maybe not. Perhaps they no longer need paleontology, but so what. Let's not throw ourselves out with the bath water as Boltovskoy almost did. Paleontology is still exciting and vital, although some people might have lost jobs. Paleontology has been down-sized. Just like everything else in our society today. Cars are still useful, houses are still useful, tools are still useful, and paleontology is still useful. But down-sized. How to make it better for paleontology? Just like with cars, houses, tools, or whatever, I think we need to do good and innovative work. It must also work for us, not scientists in other fields. Some of it may have value to geologists and other people, and we will be appreciated. Only that will prove our worth. We need to look at other opportunities for paleontology too. More about that later, when I report on the results of a discussion on this subject that the Paleontological Society had at the San Francisco American Geophysical Union meeting earlier this month. Now that was a bunch of hand-ringing in the midst of disciplinary encampments that didn't give a hoot whether we or anyone else cared about them. I think I said all this about a decade ago (1981 in Paleobiology). It takes about a decade for the topic to build up to the "It's crying time again" stage, as they sing down at the country-western bar in Oakland. Happy Holidays, Jere > Jere H. Lipps Professor, Department of Integrative Biology Director, Museum of Paleontology University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 510-642-9006 fax 642-1822 jlipps@ucmp1.berkeley.edu
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