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Duke Shuts Down Huge Plant Collection, Causing Scientific Uproar (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 10 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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University officials say they cannot afford to maintain one of the largest herbariums in the United States. Researchers are urging Duke to reconsider.

Duke University has decided to close its herbarium, a collection of 825,000 specimens of plants, fungi and algae that was established more than a century ago. The collection, one of the largest and most diverse in the country, has helped scientists map the diversity of plant life and chronicle the impact of humans on the environment.

The university’s decision has left researchers reeling. “This is such a devastating blow for biodiversity science,” said Erika Edwards, the curator of the Yale Herbarium. “The entire community is simultaneously shocked and outraged.”

Scientific societies have also protested the move. “Duke’s decision to forgo responsibility of their herbarium specimens sets a terrible precedent,” the Natural Science Collections Alliance wrote in a letter to the university last Friday.

The alliance, along with six other scientific societies, endorsed a petition asking Duke to reconsider closing the herbarium. As of Wednesday, it had gained over 11,000 signatures.

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[-] MammyWhammy@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 months ago

They're a secular institution that was on the leading edge of stem cell research when it was far more controversial than it is now.

I don't think those are "low-ass" standards.

[-] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world -1 points 10 months ago

Stem cell research has never ever been controversial among scientists. Priests, maybe.

[-] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

That's a disingenuous statement. Gregor Mendel was a monk(and became an abbot). Darwin very nearly became a priest and waited years to publish the origin of species until Alfred Wallace independently came to the same conclusion partly because Darwin was conflicted about how it went against Christian dogma at the time. Even now there are plenty of scientists with religious faith and belief. There's no scientific guidance on souls.

[-] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Your evidence is people who lived a century or two ago?

According to a 1998 study, 92% of members of the National Academy of Sciences reject the belief in a higher power or God. Now decades later, that number is closer to 100%. And a soul is a philosophical concept, not an empirical one.

[-] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

NAS is far from every scientist. There's a graduate+faculty faith organization at most if not all R1 institutes.

As you state a soul is a philosophical concept which is why faith is so involved in trying to dictate what "life" is.

If you want to beat them we need to be arguing at the correct level for understanding. The church not caring til Roe and abortion of some sort being done for hundreds or thousands of years is not the argument that matters to fundies. It is when life is determined to have a soul in their belief. If scientific facts argue against philosophical belief, neither side will ever understand the other.