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

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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  • phdepressed
    31·
    9 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.