[Peter Finke]

Stefanie, I am sorry but you are wrong. I criticize the state of the Paro-taxonomy, nothing else. And what I say about ornithology is a fact of the history of science. Read Dominik Mahr, Fortschritt oder Rückfall? in: P. Finke (Hg.), Freie Bürger, freie Forschung. Die Die Wissenschaft verlässt den Elfenbeinturm. München: oekom 12105, 119-123. There we have another context, but this does not make my critique invalid. Many museum have big and valuable collections of bird skins, many of them were added recently, and I do not criticize that. But the modern science of birds would not have developed as it has if the methods of dealing with dead birds would have remained the same up to now. I don’t criticize that dead fish or birds are collected in the museums. But I criticize that our hitherto descriptions of the Paro-species are not on the level that is comparable to other taxa. Even the museum ornithology has advanced since long from describing corpses to another, advanced level. If we took behaviour (not to speak about the genes) as containing valuable additional information, ornaticauda and parvulus would probably not retain that status they have today. Not to speak about sumatranus.
I see that you say similar things, of course. But there is a remarkable progress made by many taxa that has – at least for our Paros – not been made up to now by including all the other important information not to be seen at the phenotype level. I do not state that I could it do better. But I state as a researcher on science in general the revision of the Paro-taxonomy including all that other informations is necessary. Fortunately there are people working on that.