Document of bibliographic reference 340156

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

Magallana or mayhem?

Abstract

Given the competitive side of human nature, it is inevitable that some people will wish to suppress the openly available (i.e. published) hypotheses of others in favour of their own. This opinion piece uses three molluscan examples at the level of genus – involving oysters (Magallana: Ostreidae), land snails (Powelliphanta: Rhytididae) and nudibranchs (Trinchesia: Trinchesiidae) – wherein workers suffering from ‘revision shock’ have used non-taxonomic courses of action to express their dissidence by attempting to suppress the taxonomy of others (i.e. by recommending avoidance, personal attacks, or omission, respectively). Although ‘revision shock’ is understandable following change at any taxonomic level and universal consensus within the research community is not always achievable, none of these courses for suppression is beneficial to scientific knowledge or endeavour in the long term. Such dissidence should be contained within the bounds of evidence-based published science; certainly not posted on social media sites. In the interests of objectivity and ethics, everyone should adopt the latest justified and openly published taxonomic hypothesis, even though they do not necessarily agree with it, and expect further changes with future research.

WebOfScience code

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000624979600001

Bibliographic citation

Willan, R.C. (2021). Magallana or mayhem? Moll. Res. 41(1): 75-79. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13235818.2020.1865514

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true

Access rights

open access

Is accessible for free

true