Episode 1413
Wells and Wellington affair
Thu, 2021-Mar-18 00:56 UTC
Length - 2:21
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Thursday, 18 March 2021 is Wells and Wellington affair.
The Wells and Wellington affair is a name given to the events surrounding the publication of three papers in the Australian Journal of Herpetology in 1983 and 1985. The publication was established in 1981 as a peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on the study of amphibians and reptiles (herpetology). Its first two issues were published under the editorship of Richard W. Wells, a first-year biology student at Australia's University of New England. Wells then ceased communicating with the journal's editorial board for two years before suddenly publishing three papers without peer review in the journal in 1983 and 1985. Coauthored by himself and high school teacher C. Ross Wellington, the papers reorganized the taxonomy of all of Australia's and New Zealand's amphibians and reptiles and proposed over 700 changes to the binomial nomenclature of the region's herpetofauna.
Members of the herpetological community reacted strongly to the pair's actions and eventually brought a case to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to suppress the scientific names they proposed. After four years of arguments, the commission opted not to vote on the case because it hinged largely on taxonomic arguments rather than nomenclatural ones, leaving some of Wells and Wellington's names available. The case's outcome highlighted the vulnerability to the established rules of biological nomenclature that desktop publishing presented. As of 2020, 24 of the specific names assigned by Wells and Wellington remained valid senior synonyms.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:56 UTC on Thursday, 18 March 2021.
For the full current version of the article, see Wells and Wellington affair on Wikipedia.
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This has been Joanna Standard. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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