https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02337-1
Researchers at an international meeting will also consider how to monitor names that have problematic roots.
Followed the link hoping to find at least a partial list of offensive plant names. Was greatly disappointed.
The Audobon Society recently started working on doing the same thing for birds. As with that, this is likely only changing the common names, not scientific names, as that is a much bigger deal since those are used worldwide by the science community.
To argue that changing the names is some big ordeal, these things already have a different name in every language anyway. Scientific names also get changed when necessary, especially now that DNA testing is prevalent. We learn things aren't related to what we thought, and it changes what we know about evolution diversity, and taxonomy, which is a much bigger deal. Do you want updated scientific facts and names or is what you used to know from year ago good enough? Changing the informal name is no bigger of a deal than if a product changes brand names.
Some of the people these plants and animals named after are horrible people that exploited native people and their homelands with no regard to anything beyond their own personal fame. Graverobbers like Verreaux and racists like Blakiston didn't discover anything, they cataloged it with a colonial power. Language evolves as we advance, and this is a natural part of our development as a society.
To see the reactions in the comments here is really disappointing for a science oriented community.
The Great Tit, the Woodcock, and the Blue Footed Booby are safe. It's largely things named after some people that really don't deserve to be remembered in a positive regard. Cornell and Audobon are both in favor of it, though Audobon has not committed to changing their name. Audobon traded slaves to help finance his work, hence the call to change the name.
[...] the minimal practical consequences of the changes.
So let's invalidate all of the printed literature about those plants, and invite confusion because some delicate hearts got their panties in a twist over some words. Intelligence does not preclude monumental stupidity.
Your discovery only counts if you're the kind of person we like sounds a hell of a lot like the Whitewashing that is usually agreed upon to be bad. How is this any better? History is full of people who don't live up to modern standards on both sides. We just gonna pretend everything we don't like never existed?
Ronald Dahl is now on a list because of some of how he describes children as fat or ugly and some other things. Ronald Dahl is a beautifully honest writer who tells children the way the world and parents often are.
Mark Twain has long been on lists because his characters accurately used the n-word to show endemic racism, discrimination and bigotry in Huck Finn. Twain's writings probably had a bigger effect to reduce cultural acceptance of racism than any PHD of "non-offensiveness" could.
I'm as progressive as you can get but you'd think the liberals on the left would at some point start to refocus from political correctness that has diminishing returns to, you know, winning something important politically? The far right and far left meet in the middle on censorship.
Gillman, for instance, would like to see future botanical congresses consider replacing some existing plant names with longstanding names used by Indigenous groups.
YES, do it!
My level of despair just keeps growing the more I see this complete nonsense going on.
Stop the world this is where I get off ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
They go on and on about a slur "affra" that I've literally never heard used. But it's supposedly "super common". Like, aren't there literally plants called "removed heads"?
From inaturalist.org: "Enneapogon nigricans, known by the common names blackheads,[1] bottle washers, pappus grass,[1] purpletop grass,[1] and removedheads,[3] is a perennial Australian grass."
It feels like the article is doing a lot of reaching when more obvious examples are RIGHT THERE.
Instead it's going "well this person was bad so this discovery doesn't count anymore even though it's the standard we applied to everything else".
It's pointless nitpicking and virtue signalling. Naming a plant after something doesn't suddenly make everyone who encounters it racist. It makes you racist if that's your first thought instead of "well that's a stupid name but it's just a name".
Edit: Lemmy edited out the n-word, even when used in a scientific name. Funny that affra stayed...
But really, who is hurt by changing the name of a plant from a racial slur to something else? Why are you upset?
For the same reason most people who oppose this do: it will create multiple names for plants and sow confusion. Imagine trying to look up research papers. You won't be just searching for the new name, you'll be searching for the new name and every single name it was ever called to find all relevant research. You'll literally still be dealing with it every time.
It's come up a few times with insects. Name changes and suddenly research papers get missed/ignored because they still used the old name and vice versa.
And frankly, it's a name. It's just a word we attached to something to identify it. If that makes you emotional, maybe don't be in science?
The words have negative meanings because we acknowledge the meaning. Most people don't know "affra" is a slur and never would have even considered it until someone else loudly goes "hey! That sucks!". If you just ignored it, it literally wouldn't exist. It's going out of its way to point out something most people never even consider.
Just seems like a weird hill to die on. Names can change. That's such a smaller problem than being black and having to talk about some "n-word flower" all the time, don't you think?
Require children to be chaperoned by a responsible adult. Require hand-wringy adults to kindly fuck off and get over themselves?