Talk:Reginald Innes Pocock

Current Conservation

The article cited here is hardly what counts as reliable and peer-reviewed, it is a popular essay. The author has little work to show on similar research topics, cites no primary sources and merely has a note pointed to the Fauna of British India. In fact I think much of what is written was based on a reading of this Wikipedia entry. Stuff like "He went on to thus pioneer the use of external morphological characters for classifying mammals" hardly makes this a work of scholarship. I think the obituaries in other journals are far more reliable than this. Shyamal (talk) 16:21, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Sources do not need to be scholarly or peer-reviewed to be reliable--Wikipedia is not an academic publication. In addition, sources do not need to have citations; they simply need to be reliable, independent, and preferably secondary. Current Conservation is a quarterly print magazine that has been in existence since 2007, with editors who are academics. (Here is the editor at the time this source was published). Thus, it qualifies as a reliable secondary source.

Both the magazine article and this article clearly use the same journal/society obituarites as sources, as both use what I would consider "period phrasing" found in those sources. However, the Current Conservation feature includes information that was not in the Wikipedia article or its sources; thus, it is not a clone of the Wikipedia article (note that I have now expanded the Wikipedia article to include information from the Current Conservation article, so there is now more overlap).

It is good to include a current source like this as it is a look at Pocock from the perspective of the modern era. To truly capture the significance of a late 19th- and early 20th-century scientist, such a retrospective is important. For example, this source discusses the relevance of Pocock’s theories to modern zoology. This cuts through the glorified accolades that his peers wrote for society journals when Pocock died.

As a side note, we should not base an entire article on obituaries, as that would not really meet notability. As a result, I added this source, an encyclopedia, and newspaper articles. This is a work in progress.Rublamb (talk) 19:16, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Note that the Current Conservation article is cited in a 2018 article in the peer reviewed Mammalia. Rublamb (talk) 20:22, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Being a biologist by training, familiar with the social milieu involved in publishing this apart from being located in the same city as most of its publishers and editors, I think my perspective differs. Just because something is in print does not make it reliable (also I do not think it is in print anymore). It is more of a blog/magazine and by their own description is meant "to tell stories from the field of conservation in a manner that engages both scientific and non-scientific audiences." (see here). It in fact is aimed at a very young and non-scholarly audience - you can see their front covers to get an idea - https://www.instagram.com/currentconservation/ Wikipedia needs reliable sources and high reliability sources can be told from lower reliability by a wide range of indicators and for an article of the nature of biographies, one should look at (1) whether the author is working in the same area of research Y (2) have the authors spent time in institutional archives N (3) have they looked at all the primary sources and are they footnoting them N (4) have they published other works on related themes N (5) do they have a professional position associated with the subject N (6) are they repeating material in other sources Y - if so are they citing them N (7) if they are making an original work - are they indicating it clearly N. Now unfortunately there has been no full length biography of Pocock and under these circumstances one should not use a secondary compilation that does not cite sources (it is more of an essay) and because ALL the verifiable content that they mention are extracted from existing sources (but are not uncited) - we on Wikipedia should be better and actually verify claims and cite the original or most reliable sources that support the claim (That is precisely what Wikipedia's verifiability policy - WP:V - is all about). If you know something about the history of mammal taxonomy, you will straight off recognize that "pioneer the use of external morphological characters for classifying mammals" is blatantly incorrect because prior to molecular phylogeny there was nothing else but morphology and that EVERY comparative anatomist before that was relying on morphological characters. What Pocock DID PIONEER and needs to be pointed out was his use of nasal structure in the high-level classification of the primates. The author of this work clearly did not do her homework. She was however clearly feeling inspired by the life of Pocock and that is the generality for which the article you pointed to is citing it for. I also see that you did not like my indication of his precise position at the BMNH (verifiable and cited by a WP:RS) diff. Shyamal (talk) 03:51, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Guess you know more than Encyclopedia Britannica, which says Pocock "was one of the first mammalogists to use external features, such as feet and ears, in the classification of higher animals." Unfortunately, personal knowledge cannot be used as a source in Wikipedia. Just because you disagree with or know more than a given source does not make it unreliable.

The source in question is an article in a magazine that has been published for nearly 20 years and has biologists and other scientists on staff, including a Ph.D. in biology as chief editor when the cited article was published. I agree that the source is not scholarly, but general sources are used throughout Wikipedia, especially when crafting biographical articles like this. This same source/article is cited in an article in Mammalogy, a peer-reviewed journal that has been in existence for 75 years. Thus, there is ample evidence that this is a reliable source, especially as a source for a general summary of Pocock's life. The key here is a general encyclopedia overview of his life, not a scholarly dive into his research.

As to your edits, I reverted your edit to restore the needed source, then went back and manually re-added your positive changes. The change in question is still included in the article and was a good addition. Since you originated this article, several others have also contributed and made improvements. Rather than trying to maintain ownership, try appreciating these improvements, as this a good example of how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Rublamb (talk) 23:47, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

@Shyamal: Note that the 1948 Royal Society obituary says: "During the latter part of his nineteen years at the Zoological Gardens, however, he began to appreciate the value of external characters such as the feet and ears for purposes of classification and most of his later papers were concerned with these and similar structures and with the external glands. He was, in fact, the pioneer among mammalogists in making use of such characters." Rublamb (talk) 02:00, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

First off, let me say that you have certainly improved the entry and which is why it is particularly marred by the one citation that stands apart from the others in being a non-original work of scholarship. I think it helps if one is routinely immersed in zoological literature to see subtlety. It helps if one is a specialist but even otherwise it helps to read the original sources to see the difference in the wording of say Enc. Brit. contra the lead here "He helped pioneer morphology as a means of classifying mammals" - especially since all one can also cross reference the primary sources which are readily available - http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/31856241 - One would then clearly see the vast difference in the breadth and depth of a the paper by Gippoliti et al. compared to a essay for amateurs. Also as a person familiar with his arthropod work, I personally think the article does not do enough justice to his work in the Fauna of British India that people like me routinely make use of. I can try and fix that omission at a later time. Shyamal (talk) 03:02, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

As per WP:PSTS, secondary sources are preferred over primary sources. As editors, we can include what is stated in an article by Pocock, but cannot interpret its content or its value to the field. The guidelines note, "All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." I know this policy can be frustrating to those in academia and often counters what we are taught to look for as appropriate scholarly sources; for that reason, I avoid working on articles related to my field of studies. Regardless, we have three reliable sources that both support Pocock's role in using morphology in the classification of mammals, so this claim is not relying on Current Conservation. If that is the only content supported by this source that you find questionable, this issue should be resolved. Rublamb (talk) 03:50, 12 July 2026 (UTC)