Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

A Factor-Analytic Study of Simplicity-Complexity of Social Ordering

From 80 college sophomores were obtained three measures of simplicity-complexity of social ordering: number of discriminable categories along scales of discrimination applied to persons, number of different bi-polar scales used to discriminate among persons and a rating scale of the level of abstraction of descriptions of a single Other person. Nine attitude measures were given: acceptance vs rejection of change, dogmatism, self-reliance, rationalism, purpose-fulness, rejection of people, abstract sex standard, concrete sex standard, and authoritarianism. The Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale was also given. Three factors which accounted for a total of 89% of the common variance were interpreted. These factors were: (A) Rejection-Acceptance of attitude positions and social stimuli tending to threaten or change the perceptual ordering and belief systems, (B) The imposition of rational, dichotomous order and suppression of spontaneous experiencing to achieve a future goal, and (C) Simplicity-Complexity of social ordering. </jats:p

Intercorrelations of Simplicity-Complexity of Social Ordering, Accuracy of Perception, Acceptance of Change, Self-Reliance and Sex Attitude

From 82 college Ss were obtained three measures developed from a theory of discrimination systems: number of discriminable categories along scales of discrimination applied to persons, number of different bi-polar scales used to discriminate between persons, and a rating of the level of abstraction of descriptions of a single Other person. Three attitude measures, acceptance vs rejection of change as a general, over-riding attitude, reliance upon self vs reliance upon others, and extreme sexual restraint vs affirmation of sexuality, were obtained, and all Ss predicted the choices of a female Other in 40 concrete situations before receiving her actual choice. The hypothesis that all seven of these measures would intercorrelate was not confirmed since the measures formed two clusters. </jats:p

Recall of Nonsense Sentences and Self-Reliance

60 Ss first heard 20 complete nonsense sentences read on tape and then attempted to recall the correct response element for each sentence after hearing only the stimulus element. The sentences were constructed so that response elements were incongruent with stimulus elements. Half of the sentences were judged by separate groups of judges as interesting and half as uninteresting. Ss who scored high in self-reliance recalled significantly more interesting nonsense sentence elements than those who scored low in self-reliance. Highly self-reliant Ss also recalled more uninteresting nonsense than low self-reliant Ss but the difference was not statistically significant. </jats:p