QUOTE
Nameless fears preying on scientist's mind
By Leigh Dayton, Science writer - August 23, 2004
FROM stick insects to humans, Andrew Polaszek wants all creatures great and small to be known and named. But the British zoologist has a problem.
The scientific body that sets the rules for naming and sorting animals, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, is going broke.
The prospect is so dire that Dr Polaszek, the ICZN's executive secretary, has chosen to go public.
"Without the ICZN to regulate the naming of animals, it would be absolutely chaotic out there," he said during a visit to Australia last week.
"People would flounder in a sea of scientific confusion."
Dr Polaszek was in Brisbane to attend the International Congress of Entomology, where he made the first public announcement of the ICZN's flagging fortunes.
According to pioneering biologist Edward O. Wilson, concern about the ICZN's fate is not a "fusty enterprise" of esoteric scientific interest.
"The future of biology is going to be the exploration, management and study of the earth's biota," he said from his office at Harvard University, in Boston. "We cannot go forward without a sound basis of the classification of life."
The ICZN acts like a zoological version of the ICAAN, the group that assigns domain names and numbers to internet users and settles disputes.
Professor Wilson is so worried about the ICZN that he has agreed to help with fundraising, and fully supports Dr Polaszek's plans to use web-based technology to manage the burgeoning data.
The work of naming and classifying the planet's animals began in 1758 with the publication of the 10th edition of Systema Naturae by Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus.
Since then, close to 1.2million species have been named. There may be 100million more waiting to be discovered.
The ICZN secretariat is housed in the paleontology department of the Natural History Museum in London. There, Dr Polaszek and two other scientists have a small budget to co-ordinate ICZN activities. Another 25 elected international experts voluntarily adjudicate in cases of dispute and policy. At present, the commission operates on money left from past sales of the ICZN's code of nomenclature. The last executive chose to give the code away.
Without new funding, Dr Polaszek predicts the ICZN will be bankrupt by 2008, the 250th anniversary of Linnaeus's great work. And that, said Professor Wilson, would be a "stain on science"
By Leigh Dayton, Science writer - August 23, 2004
FROM stick insects to humans, Andrew Polaszek wants all creatures great and small to be known and named. But the British zoologist has a problem.
The scientific body that sets the rules for naming and sorting animals, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, is going broke.
The prospect is so dire that Dr Polaszek, the ICZN's executive secretary, has chosen to go public.
"Without the ICZN to regulate the naming of animals, it would be absolutely chaotic out there," he said during a visit to Australia last week.
"People would flounder in a sea of scientific confusion."
Dr Polaszek was in Brisbane to attend the International Congress of Entomology, where he made the first public announcement of the ICZN's flagging fortunes.
According to pioneering biologist Edward O. Wilson, concern about the ICZN's fate is not a "fusty enterprise" of esoteric scientific interest.
"The future of biology is going to be the exploration, management and study of the earth's biota," he said from his office at Harvard University, in Boston. "We cannot go forward without a sound basis of the classification of life."
The ICZN acts like a zoological version of the ICAAN, the group that assigns domain names and numbers to internet users and settles disputes.
Professor Wilson is so worried about the ICZN that he has agreed to help with fundraising, and fully supports Dr Polaszek's plans to use web-based technology to manage the burgeoning data.
The work of naming and classifying the planet's animals began in 1758 with the publication of the 10th edition of Systema Naturae by Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus.
Since then, close to 1.2million species have been named. There may be 100million more waiting to be discovered.
The ICZN secretariat is housed in the paleontology department of the Natural History Museum in London. There, Dr Polaszek and two other scientists have a small budget to co-ordinate ICZN activities. Another 25 elected international experts voluntarily adjudicate in cases of dispute and policy. At present, the commission operates on money left from past sales of the ICZN's code of nomenclature. The last executive chose to give the code away.
Without new funding, Dr Polaszek predicts the ICZN will be bankrupt by 2008, the 250th anniversary of Linnaeus's great work. And that, said Professor Wilson, would be a "stain on science"