The open nature of the science of classification virtually guarantees fights.
Ever since Darwin gave us a framework for understanding common descent, the search has been on for a natural classification, an arrangement of nested groups, or taxa, that accurately reflects evolutionary relationships. In this scheme, a classification functions as an explicit evolutionary hypothesis—to say that five species form a genus is also to say that those five species share a unique common ancestor. Ditto for families and orders, right up through classes and kingdoms.
.. splitters, who advocate for more and smaller groups, and lumpers, who like their groups big and inclusive.
.. Keeping track of all these names and their shifting histories requires specialists to maintain a near-encyclopedic familiarity with the literature of their group.
.. the Codes generally remain silent on the question of quality: Any taxonomic proposal, no matter how outlandish, ill-informed, or incompetent, counts so long as it was published according to the barest of requirements set out in the Codes themselves.
.. if you can print it and you can distribute it, then you can describe pretty much whatever you want.
.. it also creates a massive loophole for unscrupulous, incompetent, or fringe characters to wreak havoc. That’s because the Principle of Priority binds all taxonomists into a complicated network of interdependence; just because a species description is wrong, poorly conceived, or otherwise inadequate, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a recognized part of taxonomic history. Whereas in physics, say, “unified theories” scrawled on napkins and mailed in unmarked envelopes end up in trashcans, biologists, regardless of their own opinions, are bound to reckon with the legacy of anyone publishing a new name. Taxonomists are more than welcome to deal with (or “revise”) these incorrect names in print, but they can’t really ignore them.
.. As E.D. Merrill, the Harvard botanist who set out to index and correct much of this work in the 1930s and ’40s, put it, “we would have been infinitely better off today had Rafinesque never written or published anything appertaining to the subject.”
.. Makhan’s descriptions are notoriously short on detail. In place of clear scientific diagrams, he illustrates much of his work with blurry, out-of-focus photographs. Most frustrating to fellow entomologists, many of Makhan’s “new” species are instantly recognizable, at least to them, as already described insects. Despite numerous articles and blog posts on the so-called “Makhan problem,” new publications continue to appear, most in a small Australian journal without a traditional peer-review process. (As recently as last year, Makhan described a new species of waterbeetle, Desmopachria barackobamai—named, of course, for the 44th president of the United States.)
.. That’s because the growth of so-called “vanity journals”—publications that look to all appearances like mainstream scientific outlets, but lack rigorous peer-review—has produced new avenues for what some have taken to calling “taxonomic vandalism.” As traditional boundaries between experts and amateurs dissolve in the face of digital publishing, more opportunities than ever exist for novel voices in science, journalism, and politics. Unfortunately, these opportunities come at a cost, as a growing tide of information challenges the discriminatory abilities of scientists and lay readers alike.
.. While discussions underway now could revise the Codes to include stricter controls on which publications count for classificatory changes, many taxonomists are wary of doing anything that might deter amateur contributions. With so many species left to discover, and with existential threats to biodiversity looming, they realize the field needs as much help as it can get.
The Voyeur’s Motel
Often on foot, although sometimes in a car, he would cruise through neighborhoods and spy on people who were casual about lowering their window shades. He made no secret of his voyeurism to Donna. “Even before our marriage I told her that this gave me a feeling of power,” he said. She seemed to understand. “Donna and most nurses are very open-minded,” he said. “They’ve seen it all—death, disease, pain, disorders of every kind—and it takes a lot to shock a nurse.” She even accompanied him sometimes on his voyeuristic excursions, and it was Donna, he said, who first encouraged him to make notes about what he saw.
.. I knew that he viewed himself as a sex researcher along the lines of Alfred Kinsey, and I assumed that his account centered on what excited him sexually, but it was possible that he noted things that existed beyond his desires. A voyeur is motivated by anticipation; he invests endless hours in the hope of seeing what he wishes to see.
.. because his guests were unaware of his voyeurism, they were not affected by it. He reasoned, “There’s no invasion of privacy if no one complains.”
.. Donna always registered the more youthful and attractive guests in one of the “viewing rooms.” The nine non-viewing rooms were saved for families or individuals or couples who were elderly or less physically appealing.
.. My observations indicate that the majority of vacationers spend their time in misery. They fight about money; where to visit. . . . All their aggressions somehow are immeasurably increased, and this is the time they discover they are not properly matched. Women especially have a difficult time adjusting to both the new surroundings and their husbands. Vacations produce all the anxieties within mankind to come forward during this time, and to perpetuate the worst of emotions. . . .
.. The more I read, the more convinced I became that Foos’s stilted metaphysics were his way of attempting to elevate his disturbing pastime into something of value.
.. As the years passed, he became more preoccupied with receiving recognition for what he viewed as his pioneering research. By necessity, he existed in the shadows, running his laboratory for the study of human behavior. He considered his work to be superior to that of the sexologists at the Kinsey Institute and the Masters & Johnson clinic.
.. He grew jaded about what he was seeing through the vents, and he began to realize that it was impossible for him to get the scientific credit he felt he deserved.
.. These experiences prodded Foos to concoct an “honesty test.” He would leave a suitcase, secured with a cheap padlock, in the closet of a motel room. When a guest checked in, he would say to Donna, in the guest’s hearing, that someone had just called to report leaving behind a suitcase with a thousand dollars inside.
.. Out of fifteen guests who were subjected to the honesty test, including a minister, a lawyer, and an Army lieutenant colonel, only two returned the suitcase to the office with the padlock intact.
.. But, as I thought about it, his response—the observation that he “really didn’t exist as far as the male and female subjects were concerned”—was consistent with his sense of himself as a fractured individual.
..I also thought of John Cheever’s 1947 story “The Enormous Radio,” in which a couple’s marriage slowly suffers as their new radio mysteriously allows them to overhear the conversations and secrets of their neighbors; and of Nathanael West’s 1933 novel, “Miss Lonelyhearts,” in which an advice columnist’s life deteriorates as a result of his ongoing exposure to his readers’ sad and empty lives.
.. although he took comfort in the belief that the business was in decline. When he began, in the sixties, motels thrived because of the “tryst trade”; guests could walk directly from their cars to their rooms without having to interact with anyone in a lobby or elevator. Couples today, he said, seem less concerned with that kind of secrecy and discretion.
.. Because it is possible that someday the F.B.I. will show up and say, ‘Gerald Foos, we have evidence that you’ve been watching people from your observation platform. What are you, some kind of pervert?’ And then Gerald Foos will respond: ‘And what about you, Big Brother? For years you’ve been watching me everywhere I go.’ ”
The Crackpot Index
A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:
.. 20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.
.. 20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about the “The Evans Field Equation” when your name happens to be Evans.)
.. 20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never actually explaining it.
.. 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
.. 30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory.
.. 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
Tapeworms and Other Parasites Can Make Good Guests
According to the hygiene hypothesis, our ancestors came to tolerate low levels of infection. They even came to depend on parasites to help the immune system develop properly.
.. That’s not to say that parasites became an unalloyed good. Our relationship with them is instead a complicated trade-off.
“Having worms can mean you have fewer allergies when you grow up, but it could also stunt your growth,” said Marlene Zuk, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota. “Nobody promised you this was going to work out really well.”