Botany

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Hundreds of racist plant names will change after historic vote by botanists (www.nature.com)

submitted 3 months ago by neme@lemm.ee to c/botany@mander.xyz

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[–] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Hundreds of Latin plant names had a version of the K-word racial slur in them, wtf.

Glad that South African Scientists advocated for this change. That is a horrific word. For Americans here, imagine if hundreds of plants had a variation of the N-word in their name. That's how bad that word is.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Americans somehow handle "Nigeria". These plants were named before the word became offensive. We shouldn't be putting scientific nomenclature on the euphemism treadmill, IMO.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And what would be different if we changed it?

Right, nothing.

Science is and always has been about updating information. That is what differentiates it from say religion, which stays in the exact same spot no matter what. Let's not be like religion.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

Once you get on the euphemism treadmill, you're going to have a hard time getting off. They're already talking about making more changes:

A second change to the rules for naming plants that aimed to address problematic names, such as those recognizing people who profited from the transatlantic slave trade, also passed — albeit in a watered-down form

IMO the only hard line, and the one that should have been drawn, is that scientific names are only changed due to new discoveries in cladistics. Following wherever the winds of popular culture happen to blow isn't "updating information" in a positive sense.