Dear friends and colleagues,

I am resigning from the American Ornithological Society and its committees on which I served. The decision by AOS to change all eponymous English bird names in its jurisdiction is, in my view, a huge mistake for a scientific society. Since its founding in the 1880s this society has had a tremendous positive effect on ornithology in North America and helped expand it enormously. Part of this success has been through its establishment and maintenance of a standardized list of bird names. This list has always included recognition in some English names of people who were deemed to have made important contributions to science or society. Consequently, these names became well established in our shared vocabulary and deeply entrenched in our literature. Today we recognize that some of those names recognize people who might not deserve such recognition. We could have chosen to do a survey to obtain the views of our many stakeholders and the tens of millions of people they represent. We could have chosen to evaluate each of these eponymous names and the people they recognize. Instead AOS leadership has chosen to cancel all of this shared history—because some of it is deemed bad, it all must go.

This politicization of our shared science and shared vocabulary is divisive and polarizing. This we know. What might be gained from it—we do not know. Such dramatic nomenclatural changes are a departure from both societal and scientific norms. I’ve studied these issue more than most and feel strongly that there are better, less divisive, and more inclusive ways forward (see Winker 2022, Winker 2023a, b, referenced below). I am sorry that AOS leadership instead chose this way. In doing so I think they have needlessly politicized our science and that in doing so without adequate data and in opposition to societal norms they have done the opposite of what I think a scientific society should do. We share a strong belief in promoting ornithology and welcoming all to participate. We disagree that this is a good way to achieve those goals.

Sincerely,

Kevin Winker

(Former Life Member, elected Fellow, chair and member of the Committee on Bird Collections, member of the North American Classification Committee, and other committees, and Council, and Associate Editor over the years)

References :

Winker, K. 2022. A brief history of English bird names and the American Ornithologists’ Union (now American Ornithological Society). Ornithology 139: ukac019. https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithology/ukac019

Winker, K. 2023. Bird names as critical communication infrastructure in the contexts of history, language, and culture. In review. Preprint here: https://osf.io/34bg7/  

Winker, K. 2023. The inordinate unpopularity of changing all eponymous bird and other organismal names. In review. Preprint here: https://osf.io/tnzya/

Presentation given at the Aug 2023 AOS meeting: