Taxonomist’s revenge 21 Jun 2009 There’s a long and distinguished history of taxonomists taking revenge upon friends and enemies (sometimes simultaneously!) by naming unpleasant things after them. Linnaeus himself named an ugly useless weed after his major critic, Siegesbeck, who had attacked the “sexual system” of Linnaean botany. More recently, Quentin Wheeler named three types of slime beetles after the then President Bush, VP Cheney and architect of the Iraq war, Rumsfeld, although he swears it was an honour. Now, a San Francisco mycologist has named a stink horn fungus Phallus drewesii after friend and colleague Robert Drewes, a herpetologist, at the California Academy of Sciences. It’s shaped like a penis, droops and is two inches long, but Robert Drewes claims, at any rate, to be honoured: “It’s a wonderful honor and great fun to have this phallus-shaped fungus named after me,” says Drewes. “I have been immortalized in the scientific record.” All I can say is, never piss off a taxonomist, even in fun. Biology Humor Science Species and systematics Systematics
Biology Legal metaphysics of genes 13 Apr 2010 The recent decision in the NY district court against the breast cancer gene patent held by Myriad has many interesting aspects, but one that was brought to my attention by John Lunstroth is that the court engaged in a metaphysical dispute: are genes physical things or information? Read More
Evolution Birds up 6 Nov 200718 Sep 2017 I can’t believe Laelaps beat me to this (shows how on the ball he is) but he’s just noted a paper that I watched getting written, and discussed in detail with Chris Glen, a very smart and talented young paleontologist, before I got to. So I will now, before he… Read More
Yet another reason not to use your real name on the net. But isn’t taxonomy also an instrument of praise? Surely something is amiss when there is no Biggus Dickus.
Is there some sort of dispute emerging in biology of late or have I been drinking too much Wilkins coffee? I did like the remarks on the Linnaen sexual system as repugnant and immoral. Delightfully stupid.
I don’t think it’s funny. You are a gifted academic and more than capable of winning an argument. We have a plant in Scotland called Stinking Billy in England it goes under the name of Sweet William named in honour of Prince William after his cold blooded murder of many Scots in the aftermath of Cullodin. Emotive folk taxonomies can be somewhat devisive and just keep bitter memories alive. They can also be subverted. I am sure we have all faced unreasoned responses to our views it’s unpleasant and I find at the moment in first writing up my own research that it is a bit unbalanced and one-sided. As I have a particular axe to grind which I think is perfectly correct; but I can’t allow the emotive part of a heated debate to have a place in my final results. It must be balanaced free of personal belief and emotion. In other words I have to learn to do science. I find it helpful to imagine I have Robert Boyle sitting on my shoulder when I write. What a guy! Although sometimes he slips off and I become all too human. But such are the creatures we are Mr Boyle was a rare thing.
An elderly friend of mine, author and illustrator of ‘Mushrooms of Western Canada’, once gave me a gift-card with one of her paintings. It prominently featured Phallus adrianus. I blushed, she didn’t.