Friday, January 27, 2012

Are we forgetting our biology?

Fewer scientists are out there among the critters

Some scientists complain that too much effort is going into splitting DNA hairs and not enough into finding and classifying stuff in the field - or teaching about it.  I'll explain this one by giving the money quotes:

We are producing "a generation of armchair biologists who can write scholarly essays about species that they would not be able to recognize if they encountered them in the wild."

"...people get very, very specialized. It's not the kind of old-fashioned taxonomy where people had a very broad knowledge."

"There is a huge need for people who can recognize what things are."

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