An Enemy 0f Science

Accuracy in science should worry everyone. So many studies. So many motives. So many paper with results that are not reproducible. And then there is the Sokol Effect, the purposeful sham.

French naturalist Constantine Rafinesque was a self-taught naturalist credited with naming about 2,700 plant genera and 6,700 species. His accuracy has always been questioned--as outsiders always are--but recently a newer element has been suggested. It seems that he was "pranked" by no less a luminary than John James Audubon. It seems that Rafinesque was intrepid but odd and not well liked--indeed Audubon seems alone in liking him.

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was born in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople, Turkey, on August 22, 1783. His father was a prosperous French merchant from Marseilles. His mother, Madeleine Schmaltz, was born in Greece of German parents. By the age of twelve Rafinesque believed that he had read at least a thousand books on a wide range of subjects. He also claimed to have studied 50 languages by the age of 16 including Chinese, Hebrew, and Sanskrit. Rafinesque's education by tutors and his separation from young men his own age caused him difficulties throughout the rest of his life. He went by the name Rafinesque-Schmaltz until 1814 when he dropped his mother's maiden name. He became an intrepid explorer.

Writing in the Atlantic Journal in the spring of 1833, Rafinesque stated that "every variety is a deviation which becomes a species as soon as it is permanent by reproduction. Deviations in essential organs may then gradually become new genera." With this statement he anticipated the future of biological thought.Rafinesque had many interests in addition to botany and ichthyology. He wrote about banking, the Bible, and poetry. Rafinesque endorsed the construction of the Panama Canal, believed that culturing pearls in mussels was a viable industry, and that houses and ships could be built of fireproof materials. He developed and marketed a vegetable remedy for tuberculosis that was never patented. Rafinesque began a savings bank primarily to finance his own publications. He was also the first to suggest that the Mayan system of ideographs was partly syllabic.

Rafinesque sought Audubon out on the Ohio River in 1818. Audubon was years away from publishing Birds in America, but even then he was known among colleagues for his ornithological drawings. There, apparently, Audubon created a number of fantastic species, complete with drawings, that he shared with Rafinesque, who dutifully accepted and recorded them.
Apparently, a sense of humor is the enemy of science, too.

 

A “lion-tail jumping mouse," from Rafinesque, courtesy of Audubon: