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:
I fully agree with your statement.
I am surprised that AOU has already taken the decision. At this political time of extreme polarization across many subjects, I think it unwise to take such a significant action without careful and extended consideration. Where can I get more and balanced info? Has such an august institution like the AOU sot itself in the foot?
Hi, John. I tried to flesh out the wider landscape on this subject in the three papers that I cited in my resignation letter. And, overall, the citations in those also provide a more balanced discussion. The AOS process lacked wide input (even from members!) and transparency.
There is great wisdom in this resignation letter, Kevin. Reducing the names to descriptive names that encode no meaningful cultural information is a loss of public memory; how eponymous names are useful for us today are as bridges to ornithological history. Even critical assessments of figures in ornithological history does not likely benefit from such erasure. Furthermore to a public observing these matters from a distance especially, it sends a message that erasure can occur capriciously, which certainly chills speech.
I am confident time will prove you right.
I, and many like me, will spend many, many hours pouring through our birding notes from the last many (in my case over 63 years of notebooks) years, finding and changing the name to a species that had a perfectly fine name, short of some ignorant people with nothing but emotion to move them thru life, vs a brain like the rest of us. And all the files on several hard disks of newer field trips, along with all the species sightings info for all those species, and finally all the species on my web site must now be changed to again, follow some mindless, helpless, woke morons wishes.
How can we rid the AOS of this low life? Are they able to be fired? Certainly we as a huge group of folks that use our brains vs emotions for making decisions in our life should be able to bring the greatest protest and shame to these (*&Y*^*^()#.
Hi, Monte. I don’t think there is any reason for anyone who disagrees with this decision to follow AOS in its name changing for sociopolitical reasons. As you say, the vast majority of bird species have perfectly fine names. We can continue to use them, and there are other name standards to follow (e.g., Howard & Moore, 4th edition). That’s what I intend to do. Taking on the role of word police to ban words in our widely shared vocabulary is indeed shameful, which is one of the reasons I’ve left the society.
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In 1874 J.A. Allen, Elliott Coues, and William Brewster spear-headed the formation of the American Ornithological Society. I don’t think they could have conceived that 139 years later that a relatively small group of social justice advocates would be influencing how the AOU is being governed. The AOU is not a historical society passing judgment how birds should be named, based on a biased view of history. We can only image how Elliott Coues would have responding to this present day situation.
Yes, indeed (1883). I think they would agree that not all changes have been positive. Prioritizing political and cultural views over science is probably the worst offense. It would be wonderful to have a modern Coues to speak out acerbically with his deep knowledge.