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Megapnosaurus: undoing a nomenclatural "prank"
From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org
Megapnosaurus: undoing a nomenclatural "prank"
The reason some people such as myself are unhappy is not,
as someone recently proposed, because three
entomologists "dared" name a dinosaur, or because the
proposed name "Megapnosaurus" is a "joke," but because
Ivie et al.'s actions amount to a tasteless and
unprincipled stunt at the expense of the scientist who
discovered and has studied the taxon being renamed. From
Mike Raath's own comments, it appears that the ICZN Code
of Ethics may have been ignored in the process, and that
Dr. Raath was apparently not informed about the
preoccupied status of Syntarsus until recently, and not by
Ivie. Ivie claims he sent a letter back in the 1990s but
never got a reply--logically, though, he should have
checked the literature to see if Raath replaced the name
Syntarsus. Since Raath wrote a paper using the name
Syntarsus in 1999, it would have indicated he did not
receive Ivie's letter and he should have been contacted
again. Worst of all, someone allegedly told Ivie that
Raath was deceased, but this piece of misinformation was
easy to refute--Raath was working as an editor on the
journal Palaeontologica Africana. At the very least, more
diligence on the part of Ivie would have avoided the
appearance of a breach of ethics.
I strongly suspect instead that the momentum of Ivie et
al.'s nomenclatural "stunt"--the "first dinosaur" named in
an entomological journal, plus the novelty of its '"joke"
name--overrode basic procedures in scholarship and led
them to downplay obvious ethical questions. As a result, a
glaring injustice has been done to Mike Raath--
essentially, Ivie et al. expropriated his taxon for the
sake of a nomenclatural "prank." Clearly, the fairer
outcome would be for Mike to publish his planned
replacement name for Syntarsus, retain authorship, and
have his replacement name used in the literature.
Repairing this mess, however, will be tricky. The
International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature "is
not empowered to investigate or rule upon alleged breaches
of [the principles of the Code of Ethics]." In this case,
Principles 3, 4 and 6 of the Code of Ethics are at issue:
3. A zoologist should not publish a new replacement name
(a nomen novum) or other substitute name for a junior
homonym when the author of the latter is alive; that
author should be informed of the homonymy and be allowed a
reasonable time (at least a year) in which to establish a
substitute name. [Mike claims he was not contacted by Ivie-
-Ivie claims he sent a letter.]
4. No author should propose a name that, to his or her
knowledge or reasonable belief, would be likely to give
offense on any grounds. [The "joke" name in this case
clearly offended Mike Raath, and likely gave some offense
or irritation to other researchers who did not appreciate
its dismissive take ("big dead lizard") on Raath's
dinosaur research.]
6. Editors and others responsible for the publication of
zoological papers should avoid publishing any material
which appears to them to contain a breach of the above
principles. [Clearly, the editors at Insecta Mundi should
have checked with Dr. Raath on their own about his plans
for the name Syntarsus.]
My own suggestion for now would be to treat Ivie's
nomenclatural actions as a prank, and to impose
a "boycott" on the name "Megapnosaurus" in any formal
literature. References to Raath's taxon should be in the
form "Syntarsus" (in quotes)--indicating an resolved
nomenclatural or taxonomic problem, and Ivie et al.'s
paper should not be cited.
Mike should go ahead and publish his planned replacement
name for Syntarsus without citing Ivie et al.'s work or
the name "Megapnosaurus." Paleontologists could use
Raath's name for the taxon once it's published.
Since the ICZN can act when the issue is usage rather than
ethics, a refusal by scholars to use the
name "Megapnosaurus" (published as a prank) in formal
literature would provide a de facto basis for an appeal to
the ICZN: the name has never been used, will never be
used, and should be suppressed in favor of the junior
objective synonym proposed by Raath.
I plan to write to the editors of Insecta Mundi and to the
Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature to submit a few
comments on the ethics of "nomenclatural pranks" pulled at
the expense of living scientists.