Wells and Wellington affair
The Wells and Wellington affair was a dispute about the publication of three papers in the Australian Journal of Herpetology in 1983 and 1985. The periodical was established in 1981 as a
Members of the herpetological community reacted strongly to the pair's actions and eventually brought a case to the
Background and publication
Australian Journal of Herpetology
Discipline | Herpetology | |
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| ||
Language | English | |
Edited by | Richard W. Wells | |
Publication details | ||
History | 1981–1985 | |
Publisher |
| |
Standard abbreviations | 1125293756 |
The Australian Journal of Herpetology was a
In 1981, the Australian Herpetologists' League released the first and second issues of the first volume of the Australian Journal of Herpetology. They contained papers written both by professional and amateur researchers concerning a number of topics in Australian herpetology, including a description of a novel python species, "Python" bredli.[1][5] The journal gained individual and institutional subscribers in Australia and abroad.[1] Meanwhile, Wells did not complete his first year at UNE and moved to Sydney.[1]
Wells and Wellington's papers
For two years, the journal did not release any further issues.
A single-issue supplemental series to the Australian Journal of Herpetology was released in 1985, dated 1 March.
Rationales and responses
Initial reactions
Upon the release of "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia", all three members of the Australian Journal of Herpetology's editorial board resigned. The trio wrote letters to the editor of the
British paleontologist
Wells and Wellington's combined work put forth more than 700 changes to the
Word spread outside the world of herpetology in 1985 when Monteith, an
Wells and Wellington's justifications
Wells and Wellington, the latter a teacher at Blaxland High School, said that they did "years of research" before publishing their first paper.[14] Wellington claimed in 1984 that their work was self-published due to a dispute with the Australian Museum, to which the pair had donated several specimens.[14] Nonetheless, he said that the museum had prevented him and Wells from using its reptile collections for their research, further saying that,
"It became obvious to us that there were people in the know who were keeping a lot of things to themselves [...] Our studies showed that there were many animals which were very distinctive and should have full specific status. Because some scientists were suppressing this for their own ends, these animals were suffering. How can you talk about conserving animals when you don't even know they exist?"[14]
Relative to other continents, Australia's herpetofauna had been subject to less in-depth research, primarily due to the continent's low population density, uneven population distribution, and high biodiversity.[4] Monteith described the duo's justification for their papers as "a radical conservation ethic" and wrote that their intent appeared to be based on the belief that describing individual populations as distinct species would hasten efforts for their conservation.[1] Wells and Wellington said in the introduction to their first paper that they hoped their work would be taken "not as anarchistic taxonomic vandalism, but as a decisive step intended to stir others into action".[9] They intended to encourage others to generate research either to ratify their conclusions or counter them, either way putting out material to further understanding of reptile and amphibian life in the region.[4]
ICZN case 2531
Binomial nomenclature, the widely used system of identifying distinct species through two-part Latin names, is related to and distinct from the study of taxonomy, the
The ICZN published Grigg's case for suppressing the names provided in "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia", "A Classification of the Amphibia and Reptilia of Australia" and "A Synopsis of the Amphibia and Reptilia of New Zealand" in the June 1987 issue of their journal, the
In the initial case to suppress the names, Grigg described several specific issues with the Wells and Wellington works. He wrote that their claim that they examined almost 40,000 specimens (translating to more than ten each day every day for ten years) was unlikely.[6] According to Grigg, the duo had taken 205 subspecies or synonyms directly from a 1983 book by Harold Cogger and colleagues and had elevated or resurrected them to species status with no further discussion.[6] He added that while Wells and Wellington had claimed to have visited several museums outside Australia to examine specimens in their collections, these museums confirmed with him that they had not lent or shown specimens to either Wellington or Wells.[6] Grigg wrote that while many taxonomists would likely reject the nomenclature contained in the three papers because of the quality of the underlying taxonomy, non-taxonomists unaware of the situation surrounding the works might accept the nomenclature, leading to nomenclatural destabilization.[6] This outcome, Grigg speculated, would require piecemeal acceptance or refutation of all of the hundreds of changes offered by the pair in their papers.[6]
The researcher Glenn M. Shea wrote that the names in "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia", even those accompanied by "inadequate or erroneous" diagnoses, fulfilled the requirements of the Code and were thus available.[24] However, Shea listed 43 species from "A Classification of the Amphibia and Reptilia of Australia" whose diagnoses did not differentiate them from the populations from which the pair was attempting to split them, and also identified three species whose diagnoses were reliant on works that were still in press at the time of Shea's comment (late 1987).[24] Shea identified several proposed species whose holotypes were collected from outside the species' proposed ranges and several well-known populations of species that were suddenly without names based on Wells and Wellington's diagnoses.[24]
The researcher Jonathon Stone wrote that the ICZN permitting Wells and Wellington's names would set a negative precedent for subsequent researchers to enact nomenclatural changes without peer review.
In 1989, the researcher Kraig Adler published the book Contributions to the History of Herpetology. Its index of herpetologists by John S. Applegarth intentionally omitted Wells and Wellington on the basis that their works were "inconsistent with acceptable practices of taxonomy".[27] Philippe Bouchet and colleagues at the French National Museum of Natural History described Applegarth's attitude as akin to "the Stalinist falsification of history" and by extension, asked facetiously if the pair "should be physically eliminated using an ice-pick".[27]
The ICZN decided the case in September 1991.[28] The commission wrote that while Wells and Wellington had ignored many of the Code's ethical tenets and while taxonomic arguments against the pair's works were strong, the ICZN did not have the power to rule on the case on those grounds and thus opted not to vote on the case, thereby closing it.[28] The immediate result of the ICZN opting not to vote on their case was to leave researchers of Australian herpetofauna with "a certain amount of detective work to determine which Wells and Wellington names are available, and for what species".[4] Shea and fellow researcher Ross A. Sadlier synonymised around 60 of the duo's proposed species in a 1999 paper.[29] The authorship of, means of publication of, and backlash to the final three Australian Journal of Herpetology articles are sometimes referred to collectively as the "Wells and Wellington affair".[18]
Legacy
In 2001, the American herpetologist John Iverson, and the Australian herpetologists
Although Wells and Wellington indicated that they intended to write reassessments of
In its 1991 case decision, the ICZN noted that the affair highlighted the need to update its Code to account for the effects that desktop publishing was having and would continue to have on the availability of scientific names.[28] Nonetheless, 25 years after the affair, the herpetologists Van Wallach, Wolfgang Wüster and Donald G. Broadley wrote that "taxonomy remains as vulnerable to acts of nomenclatural vandalism as it was then".[45] Indeed, the term "taxonomic vandalism", coined in the introduction to the pair's 1983 paper, has come be the most widely used term to describe the act of publishing low-evidence taxonomy for the purpose of proposing many new scientific names without peer review.[46] Wells and Wellington's case was cited during a different ICZN case initiated nearly three decades later, concerning the taxonomic work of another amateur Australian herpetologist, Raymond Hoser.[47] Hoser, who writes about Australian herpetofauna in the self-published Australasian Journal of Herpetology, gave the Pilbara death adder its scientific name (Acanthophis wellsi) in honour of Wells.[47][48]
See also
Notes
- ^ Although dated for the end of 1983, the work is usually cited as "Wells & Wellington, 1984", including by the authors themselves in subsequent works.[6][7][8]
- ^ An available name is one which has not been explicitly suppressed by the ICZN and otherwise fulfils the requirements of the Code.[23]
- Varanus keithhornei.[33]
References
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- ^ (PDF) from the original on 17 October 2019.
- ^ (PDF) from the original on 17 October 2019.
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- ^ a b "Reptile species checklist" (xlsx). Reptile Database. 17 August 2020. Archived from the original on 2 October 2020. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
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External links
- Data related to Australian Journal of Herpetology at Wikispecies