2009年9月27日 星期日

若要保育瀕危陸龜就不要亂寫文章?

文獻來源: Werner, Y.L. (2009). How not to write in defense of threatened tortoises. Journal of Threatened Taxa 1(9): 471-473. [全文網址]

Abstract
Prudent use of the limited conservation resources rests on solid taxonomy data. This is a critical review of a taxonomy paper aimed at conservation but in itself not fully reliable (“Genetic evidence for premature taxonomic inflation in Middle Eastern tortoises”, Parham et al., 2006, Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. 57: 955–964). Its authors consider that unjustified naming of species is detrimental to conservation. This reviewer considers the paper flawed in (a) selection and reportage of voucher specimens, partly erroneous or inaccurate; (b) methods; (c) scientific reasoning and conclusions; and (d) clarity of argumentation. Hence even if the results are supported by the more solid results of others, the paper in itself is considered not to be sufficiently reliable for systematics or conservation.


註: 我認為這篇文章是篇表文+戰文, Wener為耶路撒冷希伯萊大學榮譽教授, 教授脊椎動物與爬行動物學多年. 這篇文章的主要目的是質疑Praham et al.在2006年所發表的對於中東地區歐洲陸龜紛亂的分類研究結果. Wener緊咬一些證據標本的鑑定甚至是分布圖的繪圖問題試圖駁斥Praham et al.的研究不足以解決分類學的問題並提供對保育生物學的建議. 然而我認為Wener的這篇文章感覺上在大談一些他自己其實已經不太懂的分子演化議題, 而且他錯落的英文實在是很難令人看懂. 這篇文章甚至讓我覺得只能拿來貼blog, 而不應該發表在一個期刊上.