Dear all, apologies for posting in English.
Anyway, my response the the Kaiser blog has been written and is itself subject of a proper peer review, unlike that of Kaiser et al.
In the interim and bypassing the false claims against myself, I draw everyone’s attention to the rules of Zoology and post the following for your benefit.
All the best
KAISER ET AL. AND THEIR DEFECTIVE CALL FOR ACTION
While the dominant feature of Kaiser et al’s rant is a repetitive and unsubstantiated collection of lies condemning my own taxonomic papers and then calling for a boycott of them, it is of note that they have taken the view that working within the Zoological Code rules is in their words a “tricky business”.
This isn’t so.
In fact as a document, the Zoological Rules are easy to work within and provided the three key rules of homonymy, priority and stability are adhered to, it is very straight forward.
As shown already, repeated statements by Kaiser et al. (2013) detailing deliberations of the ICZN in terms of “taxonomic vandalism” are fraudulently misrepresented by Kaiser et al. to imply they relate to Hoser papers, when they clearly do not.
The statements by O’Shea and Coritz, (O’Shea 2013c, Coritz 2013) of ICZN support for Kaiser et al. (2013) posted to a potential audience of over 1 billion people is also a lie.
Asserting that the taxonomic papers of myself and Wells are some kind of attack on herpetology, requiring Kaiser et al. to set themselves up to “defend herpetological taxonomy from unscientific incursions”, they then set about in an elaborate attempt to create a legal loophole within the Zoological Rules to usurp the Hoser and Wells names for taxa with their own names as attempted already by Wüster in his illegal renaming of Spracklandus Hoser, 2009.
As already mentioned, they also sell this as a business model to suppress other people’s valid names as well (p. 20, second column).
However by far the most important part of their plan as detailed is the legal loophole in the Zoological Code that they seek to exploit.
However as already mentioned, legal loophole they seek to exploit is in error, because the authors have foolishly misread the code and misquoted it, with no one it seems bothering to check the quote against the actual source document.
They rely on Article 23.9 of the code which deals with “Reversal of precedence”, or in layman’s terms means when the law of priority can be broken in order to maintain nomenclatural stability.
Now Kaiser et al. have repeatedly misrepresented the spirit of the code to falsely imply I have acted outside it. As I quoted from the code earlier, the fact is that myself and Wells have in fact operated wholly within the intent of the code which states:
“The 4th edition of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, like the preceding editions and before them the Règles internationales de la Nomenclature zoologique, has one fundamental aim, which is to provide the maximum universality and continuity in the scientific names of animals compatible with the freedom of scientists to classify animals according to taxonomic judgments.”
So the fact is, that it is Kaiser et al. operating outside the spirit of the code.
Now in terms of the spirit of the code as stated in the preamble and elsewhere, reversal of priority is intended for things like when a well-established name on the record is found to be the junior synonym of a long overlooked name published in an obscure place, perhaps not properly indexed or in a foreign language and a very long time ago.
Reversal of priority is not intended when a recently (last 100 years) published name that has been widely disseminated and indexed in places like Zoological Record is forcibly suppressed by a bunch of thugs intent on having their own more recently coined name over-ride a senior synonym.
However to get their legal loophole up (in their view), Kaiser et al. (2013) twist their alleged meaning of the code about quite dramatically and interpolate it with direct quotes from it, to make their loophole appear a viable way to forcibly suppress the usage of Hoser and Wells names.
On page 20 they wrote:
“According to the Code (Article 23.9.1-3; ICZN 1999) it is desirable to avoid the use of names that threaten stability even when this reverses the Principle of Priority. This is one area of the existing Code where ICZN actions can favor the establishment of names generated within a genuine scientific framework. The Code adopts a strict stand against names (including those that could be classed as unscientific) that have not been used in “at least 25 [scientific] works, published by at least 10 authors in the immediately preceding 50 years and encompassing a span of not less than 10 years” (Article 23.9.1.2; ICZN 1999); thus, authors following best practices could legitimately create names that, under strict application of the Code, would amount to junior synonyms of taxa named in an unscientific manner. Unscientific names should be boycotted and scientifically sound names should be used in their place; applications requesting the suppression of unscientific names could then be filed with the ICZN after 10 years have elapsed, and the Commission would then be able to enforce the Code.”
However they have in fact misquoted the relevant section of the code, perhaps deliberately, so as to omit the most important part of Article 23.9 of the code.
So to clear things up and show why the Kaiser et al. plan to rename all the Hoser and Wells named taxa is doomed to fail at the outset, I shall quote in full the relevant section of the code.
It reads:
“23.9. Reversal of precedence. In accordance with the purpose of the Principle of Priority [Art. 23.2], its application is moderated as follows:
23.9.1. prevailing usage must be maintained when the following conditions are both met:
23.9.1.1. the senior synonym or homonym has not been used as a valid name after 1899, and
23.9.1.2. the junior synonym or homonym has been used for a particular taxon, as its presumed valid name, in at least 25 works, published by at least 10 authors in the immediately preceding 50 years and encompassing a span of not less than 10 years.”
The important bit that Kaiser et al. 2013 left out was “the senior synonym or homonym has not been used as a valid name after 1899”, which I had underlined above to make sure it wasn’t overlooked again.
This automatically excludes the Hoser and Wells names which by Kaiser et al’s own findings are those that postdate year 2000!
Hence the one section of the code that Kaiser et al. thought contained a loophole by which they could suppress the Hoser and Wells names in favour of their own, in fact doesn’t exist!
Inability to properly read or quote a simple document such as the Zoological Code, or for that matter join the dots in terms of names of taxa described and genera they came from originally in relevant papers subject to condemnation, do not serve as good indicators of scientific method or ability by the eight listed authors of Kaiser et al. or those people who allegedly blindly followed them by endorsing the fatally flawed document.
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