Duke Shuts Down Huge Plant Collection, Causing Scientific Uproar

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.

Non-paywall link

turkalino,
@turkalino@lemmy.yachts avatar

Cannot afford, after the regents voted to give themselves $300k pay raises

yeahiknow3, (edited )

To be fair, Duke is a Catholic university and everyone knows Jesus loves money. Only rich men can enter the kingdom of heaven, right? You can’t expect them not to charge students $70k/year while paying overworked adjunct professors $60k/year to teach 5 classes per semester. How else will the hyper-religious underworked administrators go to heaven?

EDIT: in all seriousness, Duke pays poverty wages to their adjunct professors. I know an MD PhD who gets paid $15/hr to work 70 hour weeks at Duke. Her CV is a mile long. She says that all of the University hospitals are like that. They exploit and destroy new talent, young doctors, and aspiring researchers. And then everyone whines about how there aren’t enough doctors. It’s easy to fix. Cap the salaries of all administrators 1:1 with the average adjunct professor’s salary.

Now I know, “economists” will say that this will create an artificial shortage of administrators, but I think they’re forgetting that administration takes only slightly more skill than watching paint dry, so we might be alright.

SlopppyEngineer,

Channeling some serious Supply Side Jesus there

meat_popsicle,

MD PhD who gets paid $15/hr to work 70 hour weeks at Duke. Her CV is a mile long

She should quit. Industry pays an actual livable salary compared to that. She could work as a shipping clerk and make more money and have a higher standard of living.

They abuse people endlessly because smart and talented people like your friend volunteer to get abused. It’s tragic, but their own choice.

yeahiknow3, (edited )

Boston Children’s Hospital in collaboration with Harvard Medical school pays residents about the same. It’s pitiful and we desperately need regulation on salaries at educational institutions.

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

don’t worry the dorms still have a bigger plant collection

shiftymccool,

Dear everyone,

It’s not sports, so fuck it!

Sincerely,

99% of US universities

aniki,

This is capitalism end-game.

Yokozuna,

Well if they’re that upset about it, maybe they could help maintain it as well financially. Still sucks that it’s happening, these institutions usually have more than enough money to throw around for something they deem this significant.

Lemonparty,

I didn’t read the article.

There, I fixed that comment for you.

Yokozuna,

I was on break at work, was going to check it out later, relax guy lol.

Lemonparty,

You commented before you read, that’s a paddlin’ my friend!

blazeknave,

Nope

xkforce,

According to other sources, people tried to donate and were ignored. Duke doesn’t seem to prioritize working with potential donors to maintain the program.

Yokozuna,

Unfortunate that’s the case, seems to be a severe lack of care and concern on the institutions end. Hopefully another would have the capacity to take it over at some point instead of losing everything thats been accomplished.

yeahiknow3,

Whose idea was it to give one of the shittiest universities such a big responsibility? Duke is basically a giant sports program with a religious school attached. What do they care about science?

theotherone,
theotherone avatar

I think it was their idea that predated the rise of the NCAA.

ElleChaise,

Don't worry, I heard Georgia Southern is gonna take over operations. Ship shape I tells ya.

MammyWhammy, (edited )

Calling Duke a ‘religious school’ is disingenuous. They are a secular school that has a divinity program. The university pre-dates the divinity school by almost a century.

They are widely seen as a world class medical, business and law school. Contributions include, the first ultrasound imaging, the first CFD analysis software, and cochlear implant development.

They don’t focus on sports anymore than other peer institutions (think Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt, or Notre Dame) they just caught lightning in a bottle with Coach K, and have been really good at basketball for a while.

I say all of this to highlight, they are a legitimate, well funded active contributor to academia and research.

They aren’t some hack religious institution that’s trying to play being a real school while shoveling indoctrination down your throat like BYU or Liberty.

Duke is a legitimate research university that should be criticized even more harshly for the decision outlined in the article because of their history as a top tier research institution, not because they’re “a religious school that doesn’t care about science.”

Cethin,

I assume you mean secular, not non-secular. Non-secular would mean they do have a religious affiliation.

MammyWhammy,

Yup, that’s what I meant.

batmaniam,

After a quick googling, they also were on the religiously unpopular side of embryonic stem cells.

yeahiknow3, (edited )

“Duke says embryos aren’t children, which anyone with eyes can see, and that’s why they’re a great university.”

KillingAndKindess,
@KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

If the university president sucked your dick for breakfast every morning it wouldn’t matter. Way to pick up on the least emphasized and important point to fuel your gate boner.

MammyWhammy,

They’re a secular institution that was on the leading edge of stem cell research when it was far more controversial than it is now.

I don’t think those are “low-ass” standards.

yeahiknow3,

Stem cell research has never ever been controversial among scientists. Priests, maybe.

webghost0101,

Scientists tend to care about science, that is indeed correct.

Your earlier comment stated that they didn’t care for science and where preoccupied with religious ideologies.

Which is it that you believe now?

phdepressed,

That’s a disingenuous statement. Gregor Mendel was a monk(and became an abbot). Darwin very nearly became a priest and waited years to publish the origin of species until Alfred Wallace independently came to the same conclusion partly because Darwin was conflicted about how it went against Christian dogma at the time. Even now there are plenty of scientists with religious faith and belief. There’s no scientific guidance on souls.

yeahiknow3, (edited )

Your evidence is people who lived a century or two ago?

According to a 1998 study, 92% of members of the National Academy of Sciences reject the belief in a higher power or God. Now decades later, that number is closer to 100%. And a soul is a philosophical concept, not an empirical one.

phdepressed,

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.

yeahiknow3,

That’s like saying “they have commitments to a cult, but they’re good at science.” I don’t think non-secular institutions should have accreditation. Period.

lyam23,

I sense you might have some unresolved anger issues…

xkforce,

In a country increasingly governed by religious ideals that strip the rights of women and minorities, it is harder and harder not to hate religion.

KillingAndKindess,
@KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Agreed. I’m a Socialist Bi/Pan Transwoman and a “Christian” for lack of less tinged and equivalently brief word.

I choose to look at these types of things as opportunities to praise good opinions.

Whenever the collapse happens, assuming there are still people around, we’ll still have to live with people after the fact. Accepting the inevitability of “religious thoughts” and helping to mold and shape those ideas is better than failing to remove them entirely.

Also, its a healthier mindset in general, for me at least.

xkforce,

I would be fine with tolerating religion’s existence if it remained a personal belief that was not forced upon others. But the moment it is, that means war.

KillingAndKindess,
@KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I totally agree. I personally just try to be a part of influencing the… culture? Of religion from a less antagonistic or opposing position. History has proven, piss off a country and religion may be used to retaliate, piss off a religion and countries will retaliate. Understanding people for what we all are in essence is something that has worked in my life on the micro scale, and despite having little to show for my efforts so far, I think its more than nothing…

yeahiknow3,

I accept the existence of religion by virtue of the fact that humans are half a chromosome away from chimpanzees. I’m not happy about it, though.

streetfestival,
@streetfestival@lemmy.ca avatar

Defunding biodiversity science at a time like this…

FigMcLargeHuge,

I bet their football team doesn’t have any budget issues…

blazeknave,

Or their rape defense team

turkalino,
@turkalino@lemmy.yachts avatar

*basketball

yeahiknow3,

I knew an athlete a few years ago who was told by Stanford that she had to get a 23 on the ACT to be accepted. Her GPA was mediocre. I don’t even remember if she had AP classes. To be clear, this person was barely literate. She was a nice person, but to put things in perspective, a 23 means getting almost half the questions wrong (in a multiple choice test where 1/4 of random answers are automatically correct). It means, again, illiterate.

She struggled for a whole year to get to 23 and was accepted to Stanford where she played sports. The one interesting part is that the only major they’d let her have is a business degree, since it requires so little effort.

BURN,

And Stanford hates that they have to accept her too. I’m amazed they haven’t gone the way of the ivies and just stopped scholarship sports outside of the Olympic ones

Lemonparty,

Their basketball coach that retired was the highest paid basketball coach in history. I am not 100% certain due to new contracts but I believe that includes NBA coaches. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong.

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