Best Practices: In the 21st Century, Taxonomic Decisions in Herpetology are Acceptable Only When Supported by a Body of Evidence and Published via Peer-Review.

Herpetological Review, 2013, 44(1), 8–23.

Einleitung:

Taxonomy,  the  scientific process by which natural groups are identified, described, named, and  classified is an exciting research  pursuit, not  only  because it  makes an  ndispensable contribution  to  biodiversity science but, at a more basic level, because it satisfies the human enjoyment of discovery. However, taxonomy has been an area of biological science in which errors,  ethical transgressions, and clashes of egos have been particularly vicious and public, harkening back to the earliest days of the  binomial system of nomenclature when Linnaeus (1737) named what he considered an insignificant weed (genus Siegesbeckia) after Johann Georg Siegesbeck, a contemporary and very vocal critic.