IUBio

impact of old unreliable identifications

Helmut Zibrowius hzibrowi at com.univ-mrs.fr
Thu Dec 14 11:24:31 EST 1995


On Wed, 13 Dec 1995 08:36:58 -0800, JAMES BLAKE wrote:

>The recent postings by Read, Zibrowius, and Ten Hove on their views 
>about "expert" and "non-expert" identifications need to be tempered 
  ......
>My point is that we should not dwell on who did what kind of 
>identifications or how well or how poorly.....

The point simply is that we should be ready to be cautious and critical. 
Those old data representing certain periods (and some people have 
always been more behind the generally admitted period than others) are 
frequently reused in "modern" contexts. Many people now have computers, 
feed in whatever data, and are pleased to have nice graphs drawn, whatever 
insignificant they may be given the input. I do not need to refer specially 
to Polychaeta. For example, I also remember two recent MS on Anthozoa. 
Computer games with whatever data are a general trend.

  ----------------------------------- 
  Helmut ZIBROWIUS
  (Centre d'Oceanologie de Marseille)
  Station Marine d'Endoume
  Rue Batterie des Lions
  13007 Marseille / France
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