Talk:List of invasive species in Colombia

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Use of Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species as a source[edit]

I have extreme reservations about the use of the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species as a source. It may be that I am using it incorrectly but it seems that there is no information about how species are determined to be invasive. It seems to be on a "trust us" basis. But there are some inherent problems. The geographic entries in the database do not match the maps supplied, so I'm not even confident that the database is error free, or that it has the correct distribution of introduction. Looking at the list of invasive mammals it includes the red-necked wallaby and the Hamadryas baboon both of which would appear to be erroneous. I cannot find any other sources that demonstrate that they exist in Colombia, much less that they are invasive. Nor does it make any sense that either would be invasive in that country. The baboon has a quite restricted ecology, and would be in areas where predators what would very adept. The wallaby is largely incompetent with medium to large cats, and I would be amazed if it could establish any footing at all.

Could someone please enlighten me as to why Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species should be considered an adequate source. In particular could User:Contrawwftw please make a comment. Jameel the Saluki (talk) 15:42, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

GRIIS is a country-level checklist so it only really says presence/absence and their invasive status. If you're looking at distributions & occurrences that might be the GBIF data which is different. I do wish they were more specific about what sources they use for each species and to determine invasive status.
For those two species specifically I've found two references in their bibliography which mention the Hamadryas baboon (Baptiste, M.P., et al., 2020; Franco, A., et al., 2015) however both mention it's in captivity so I'm not sure how it got categorised as invasive. Of the sources I could access I also didn't find anything about the wallaby. I think it's fair to remove those two until/unless a corroborating source is found. In my eagerness to improve the article I clearly didn't practice enough scepticism.
Full disclosure: I am a student of one of the members of the GRIIS project, hence why I thought to use it as it tends to be my go-to for checklists of introduced and invasive species. Though she was not an author on this list specifically. Contrawwftw (talk) 23:43, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Given the obvious errors I've listed and the lack of verifiability I think this source should be deprecated for now. I'll go through all of the species that you've added and see if I can find corroborating sources. Jameel the Saluki (talk) 00:07, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Onthophagus gazella[edit]

The current reference used just justify Onthophagus gazella's inclusion in this list [1] has been demonstrated to be unreliable (see above discussion). User:Headbomb has reverted the replacement citation (Noriega 2017) on the basis that it is predatory source. Being a predatory source does not exclude the use of the source, and I argue that its use in this context is acceptable.

For every species there requires a decision to include or exclude it from this list. An exclusion based on unsatisfactory evidence is as wrong as the inclusion based on unsatisfactory evidence. This is different to typical statements in wikipedia where uncertainty can be solved by omission.

When it comes to determining whether a species is invasive or not, because of the sparsity of scientifically documented evidence, it is required that other sources are used, so long as they appear to be reliable. Further, it is often difficult for academic researchers to publish mere observations in reputed scientific journals because of the requirement in modern times for there to be an element of hypothesis testing. This was not such an issue 50 years ago. Noriega 2017 is authored by paid academics at known institutions. Given the nature of material within the publication it does not seem reasonable to assume that the observers were either mistaken or invented the observations. This appears to be strong evidence that the species is invasive in Colombia, and the source is acting in supplementation to gbif. I believe User:Headbomb is erroneous in his actions to remove this Noriega 2017.

Further Noriega 2017 is excluded then Onthophagus gazella needs to be removed from the list.

As an aside, not that matters to me, but there is no way that CABI Compendium could be described as a journal. It doesn't even describe itself as that - "The Invasive Species Compendium is an open access reference work" published and authored by CABI "an international, inter-governmental, not-for-profit organization". Jameel the Saluki (talk) 06:06, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Being a predatory source does not exclude the use of the source" it most certainly does. Predatory sources are by very definition unreliable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:00, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The link that you provided Predatory publishing does not state that predatory sources are "by definition" unreliable (I am not sure that you know how to use that term properly). The article makes it clear that the issue is controversial, there is a significant bias against developing countries, and that many of the issues are not particularly pertinent to the value of the use as a source in Wikipedia but relate more to the use of publishing as a metric of academic achievement.
The relevant guidelines link is Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Predatory_journals which is remarkably brief. It states in part "The lack of reliable peer review implies that articles in such journals should at best be treated similarly to self-published sources". I think "at best" is unreasonable. So if we take this as a self-published source I would still include it as a citation for the purposes of this article, based on the content of the reference, the authors involved, and the relevance to the use in this article. The guidelines add as justification for treating these as self-published sources "Many submissions to these predatory journals will be by scholars that a) cannot get their theories published in legitimate journals, b) were looking to quickly publish something to boost their academic resumes, or c) were honestly looking for a legitimate peer-review process to validate new ideas, but were denied the feedback by fraudulent publishers.". I agree with this list, but in relevance to this case a) there is no theory b) it's a thorough publication c) no new ideas involved. This reference has likely been rejected because of the lack of an hypothesis testing, which was the required structure, not because the underlying observations were fraudulent.
The guidelines also state "If you are unsure about the quality of a journal, check that the editorial board is based in a respected accredited university" This link lists the editorial board www.scirp.org/journal/editorialboard.aspx?journalid=192, which looks entirely adequate to me, unless you are claiming fraud.
The particular publisher is Scientific Research Publishing. From the Wikipedia article I can find no issue with fraud or even unreliability. The issues relate to academic rigor and quality. In essence the publication allows for unlimited publication of poor quality articles from the academic point of view for the purposes of revenue.
The final issue that you still haven't addressed is that if the source in question is removed then there are no valid references to support Onthophagus gazella in the list, and yet you have made no attempt to remove Onthophagus gazella. I have looked thoroughly and there are simply no other references available. Why are you comfortable leaving the text that was supported by the reference when you don't believe the reference should be used?
Jameel the Saluki (talk) 10:46, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to see what WP:RSN thinks of Scientific Research Publishing and predatory publishing in general.
As for "if the source in question is removed then there are no valid references to support Onthophagus gazella in the list", if that is the case, then yes it should be removed. But there is a source (doi:10.15468/yznr8v). If that source doesn't support Onthophagus gazella, then it should be removed, as should the entry on Onthophagus gazella be. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:43, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussions on Scientific Research Publishing never came to a conclusion, instead moving on to focus on OMICS Publishing Group, but the comments made weren't very supportive in general. I disagee with a lot of what was said in the discussions, but I will concede essential defeat on the matter. The other source (doi:10.15468/yznr8v) is supportive, but I consider it completely unreliable as it includes some absurd and indefensible examples and gives no citations or reasoning to support its conclusions. I am thinking of rewriting my Scientific Research Publishing source as a web citation, claiming it as a personal blog of the three authors, but I think that I'll just delete Onthophagus gazella and wait for another set of observations to be published. Jameel the Saluki (talk) 12:36, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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