Anti-intellectualism in the DNA Barcoding Enterprise

Taxonomy has been portrayed in recent years as a mere ‘service’ provider for end users such as ecologists, bioinformaticists, and conservationists, and is currently undermined by anti-intellectual trends that are playing an ever-increasing role within biological systematics. This anti-intellectual uprising has many facades, one of the most insidious of which is being lead by DNA barcoders. By employing the slogan of 'improving taxonomy' and the spectre of the 'biodiversity crisis', what we term the DNA Barcoding Enterprise Model (DBEM) has succeeded in creating a product for non-taxonomic stakeholders, namely industry, governmental departments, fisheries, agriculture, applied ecology, and conservation. The DBEM is not designed to help taxonomy nor further taxonomic research or promote scholarship. Rather, the DBEM is an anti-intellectual exercise concerned with demoting the importance of taxonomy via faint praise---by adding to the taxonomic 'toolbox' as if taxonomy were a mere 'technology' that needs further mechanical enhancement. Yet, no matter how much supporters of the DBEM praise its apparent usefulness, taxonomy continues to wither. Instead of helping taxonomy, the DBEM uses taxonomists in order to aid its own particular research and development by procuring accurate identifications within databases; the general outcome is simply not useful for taxonomy as a scientific endeavor.