CorrespondenCe
Nacional de Ciencias Naturales,
Taxonomy: add a
human touch too
Norman MacLeod and
colleagues’ call to develop
automated species-identification
systems is laudable (Nature
467, 154–155; 2010), but let’s
not forget a core feature of
taxonomic work that depends on
a scholar’s input — the discovery
of new characters.
Unexpected evolutionary
novelties in morphology
and physiology, for example,
are what make taxonomic
exploration rewarding.
Taxonomists set out to discover
and track such novelties and
their evolutionary history. It
is in this sense that taxonomy
provides the empirical basis for
understanding speciation and
phylogeny.
There is a place for automated
pattern detection, but it would
not work with the 5,000 species
of Drosophila, say, which are
identified by their many different
structures. Taxonomy can
independently test and verify
identifications without relying
on patterns of single characters,
as the long list of synonymies in
any biological group testifies.
The practice of taxonomic
revision and publishing
detailed monographs ensures
that character distributions,
species status and phylogenetic
relationships are subject to
repeated and critical testing.
We should beware the trend to
confuse automatic identification
tools with those that are useful
for discovering new species. The
emerging field of cybertaxonomy
is an advance only if it is
understood as enhancing and
enabling theory-rich descriptive
taxonomy, not replacing it.
As in many other modern
scientific fields, including
diagnostic medicine and
molecular genetics, a final step
involving a human expert is
essential.
Antonio G. Valdecasas Museo
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Universities are experiencing
CSIC, Spain,valdeca@gmail.com
Quentin D. Wheeler Arizona
State University, USA
Taxonomy: include
social networking
Help with the shortage of
professional taxonomists needed
to identify organisms (Nature 467,
154–155; 2010) may also come
from an unexpected source —
social networking on the Internet.
Through social networking,
the identification process can
be made more efficient while
simultaneously spreading real
taxonomic knowledge. The
facility is available to anyone,
unlike other technologies that
require specialized equipment.
In its first year of operation,
the website iSpot (http://ispot.
org.uk) has helped 6,000 users
to identify 25,000 sightings
of some 2,500 species, from
lichens to birds. The website
works by linking experts
(including amateur experts)
with beginners through a
sophisticated reputation system
that encourages users to help and
learn from each other.
Eventually, DNA bar-code
matching and image recognition
might be added to the tools
available. But these will be aids,
not replacements, for people
learning how to identify species.
Jonathan Silvertown The Open
University, UK,
j.silvertown@open.ac.uk
Call to reshape
university curricula
Universities worldwide
are undergoing structural
transformation, but reform of
curricula is also key to their
renewal. We invite scholars,
educators and administrators to
collaborate with us to reshape
university teaching and learning.
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
awareness of an imminent
a crisis of purpose, focus and
content, rooted in a fundamental
confusion about all three. The
crisis is all the more visible as
their pace of social, intellectual
and technological change falls
increasingly out of step with that
outside. Furthermore, universities
are largely reactive where they
should be visionary and critical.
Curricula are mostly separated
from research, and subjects are
taught in disciplinary isolation.
Knowledge is conflated with
information and is too often
presented as static rather than
dynamic.
There can be no standard
formula to rectify these problems,
given the diversity of institutional
structures and cultural
differences among universities.
However, our working group
of scholars has made a start. To
inform international dialogue
and guide the experimental
process of redesigning curricula,
we have just published a set of
11 principles for rethinking
undergraduate courses worldwide
(see www.curriculumreform.org),
and we welcome any suggestions.
Yehuda Elkana
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin,
Germany
Manfred D. Laubichler Arizona
State University, USA,
manfred.laubichler@asu.edu
Adam S. Wilkins Centre de
Recherches Interdisciplinaires,
France
Science as a threat
to far-right fringe
The scorn of the US far-right
‘Tea Party’ fringe for science,
particularly relating to
sustainability, climate change
and biodiversity, stems from a
perceived threat to its idealized
views of how the world should be
(Nature 467, 133; 2010).
The great (and undervalued)
psychologist George Kelly
described threat as “the
comprehensive change in
one’s core structures”. Science
opens up our culture’s core
structures to criticism and
calls their importance into
question — one example being
non-sustainable approaches to
managing the planet.
The far-right’s response to
the threat posed by modern
environmental science goes
roughly like this. First, discredit
a piece of scientific data —
the ‘hockey-stick’ graph, for
example. When that fails to
remove the threat of climate-
change science, discredit the
scientists (as happened in
‘Climategate’). When that
doesn’t work either, discredit
science as a method for
understanding the world.
Richard Kool Royal Roads
University, British Columbia,
Canada,
rick.kool@royalroads.ca
Alternative view of
Serengeti road
Andrew Dobson and colleagues
overstate the argument against a
road across the Serengeti National
Park in Tanzania (Nature
467, 272–273; 2010). Migrant
wildebeest already regularly
cross transportation arteries in
the Serengeti and in adjacent
linked ecosystems. Established
evidence of impacts on declines
in migratory wildlife populations
is centred not on roads, but on
fencing — a separate and more
remote possibility.
Conservation policy in the
Serengeti has too often been
based on idealized notions of
what landscapes should look like.
The Serengeti ecosystem has been
shaped by thousands of years of
human use, and is now groomed
by park managers rather than by
local inhabitants.
The ecosystem is supported
and enhanced by pastoralist land
use in surrounding buffer zones.

Dobson et al. do not consider the
likely importance of the road for
the land use, mobility, livelihoods
and welfare of people living near
the park.
Wildlife tourism is a major
contributor to Tanzania’s
economy. But local people,
whose land-use practices have
created and now maintain the
ecosystems valued by Western
conservationists, are being
dispossessed by state and
international elites who capture
much of the tourism revenue
and reinvest it in conservation-
incompatible land use.
Wherever the road goes, it will
have an environmental impact
as well as socio-economic costs
and benefits that require rigorous
analysis of good data.
Katherine Homewood
University College London, UK,
k.homewood@ucl.ac.uk
Daniel Brockington University
of Manchester, UK
Sian Sullivan Birkbeck,
University of London, UK
International, not
‘campus’, please
Your News story on China’s
science journals (Nature
467, 261; 2010) inaccurately
described the Journal of Zhejiang
University-Science (JZUS) as a
‘campus’ journal. In fact, it is an
international publication with a
pool of some 7,600 referees from
more than 67 countries (go.nature.
com/pknY2R). On average,
64.4% of its contributions come
from outside Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou, of which 50% are
from more than 46 countries and
regions. The editorial board is
international too.
There are roughly 5,000
science, technology and medical
periodicals in China, including
more than 200 published in
English. Around 1,000 are
university (‘campus’) journals
that mostly publish papers from
a specific institution, many of
which were launched during
the country’s early reform and
opening-up stage from 1978 into
the 1980s. This also happened in
Japan — the only difference being
that most university journals in
China are multidisciplinary in
content, whereas those in Japan
usually focus on one subject or
subject group.
Yuehong (Helen) Zhang Journal
of Zhejiang University-Science,
China, jzus@zju.edu.cn
Reward quality not
quantity
China is not the only country
facing a glut of low-impact
papers in scientific journals
(Nature 467, 252; 2010). Shutting
down journals will not help
(Nature 467, 261; 2010), as the
papers will inevitably resurface
elsewhere. As many have
pointed out, it is the incentives
responsible for the glut that need
to change.
What is required is a new
academic culture that rewards
quality over quantity, an idea
whose time has finally come.
For example, Germany’s main
research foundation, the DFG,
recently ruled that a maximum
of only five papers should be
listed in any grant application;
compare this with the 10 papers
allowed in applications to the US
National Science Foundation.
More universities and
colleges could limit the number
of publications permitted
when applying for tenure or
promotion. Researchers would
then be able to focus their
efforts on publishing articles
only when there is something
substantial to report.
Stan W. Trimble on behalf of
7 co-authors*, University of
California, Los Angeles, USA,
trimble@geog.ucla.edu
*A full list of signatories is
available online at http://dx.doi.
org/10.1038/467789b
Basic science in
Russia under threat
The president and prime minister
of Russia proclaim their support
for science and many ambitious
projects (Nature 467, 251; 2010).
However, the actual support
for basic research in Russia will
decrease drastically this year.
The main source of peer-
reviewed funding is the
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
CorrespondenCe CoMMenT
Russian Foundation for Basic
Research (RFBR), a non-profit
organization that is largely
backed by the state, as well as by
voluntary contributions from
enterprises, organizations and
individuals. Its budget will be
cut in 2011 to 6 billion roubles
(US$200 million), half of what it
was in 2009.
The budgets managed directly
by the Russian ministry of
research decreased 4.5% in 2010
compared with 2009, but are
expected to rise in 2011. Although
this does not sound that bad, the
funds distributed by the ministry
seem to be based on non-
transparent schemes and arbitrary
decisions, and are often awarded
without proper peer review.
It is essential to expand state
support for the RFBR and save it
from closure. The government
should recognize that investing
in internationally recognized
peer-reviewed research is better
than funding ambitious and
costly projects that have an
uncertain outcome.
Yegor Vassetzky Institut Gustave
Roussy, France, vassetzky@igr.fr
Better governance
to save rainforests
Urgent measures are needed
to help Papua New Guinea to
develop sustainably. The country
is beset by corporate misdealing
and weak governance, and
consequently its biologically
and culturally rich forests are
imperiled.
Attempts by the World Bank
and other organizations to
improve forest governance have
been largely frustrated. As a result,
overcutting of forests continues
apace, with most accessible forests
likely to be logged or to disappear
in just one to two decades.
Foreign corporations are
driving much of this forest
exploitation. Trees are mostly cut
by Malaysian logging companies
and then shipped as raw logs to
Chinese manufacturers of wood
products for export.
Papua New Guinea’s raw-log
exports yield only meagre
income and employment for
local communities, and proceeds
are often concentrated in the
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hands of political elites.
Environmental prospects
in Papua New Guinea might
actually be worsening. In May,
the country’s parliament stripped
indigenous groups of important
land-protection rights, making
it difficult for them to sue
offending corporations for
environmental damage. The
few conservation areas in the
country are mostly small and
poorly protected, and the
government has frozen proposals
for 120 new conservation areas
to avoid conflicts with loggers. A
government pledge to phase out
raw-log exports by 2010 has also
gone unfulfilled.
Papua New Guinea should
immediately reduce its raw-log
exports, which will promote local
wood-processing industries,
training and employment. It
should also reinstate the rights of
traditional communities to legally
challenge foreign corporations
for environmental damage. And it
should use international climate-
change mitigation funds — which
could eventually exceed US$500
million a year — to promote
new conservation areas and
improve forest management and
governance.
William Laurance on behalf
of 6 co-authors*, James Cook
University, Australia,
bill.laurance@jcu.edu.au
*A full list of signatories is
available online at http://dx.doi.
org/10.1038/467789d
Left-handed DNA
can be right
I must protest against the
knowing groans expended every
time a scientist is personally
affronted by the image of a left-
handed DNA helix (Nature 467,
401; 2010). I would remind the
groaners that DNA handedness
depends on its molecular
sequence — witness a seminal
paper you published more
than 30 years ago: ‘Molecular
structure of a left-handed
double-helical DNA fragment at
atomic resolution’ (A. H.-J. Wang
et al. Nature 282, 680–686; 1979).
Albert Erives Dartmouth
College, USA,
aerives@dartmouth.edu