Marci's memory

[-JKP-]

Dear Rene

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My point is that because the range of work done on the botanical folios was not fairly or evenly represented to Stephen Bax,  but he was falsely informed that Edith Sherwood's attempted id's were "authoritative" he took them as a basis for his own work, which then failed.   No-body who read the exchanges at ciphermysteries, or who has read any of Pelling's later comments could doubt that Bax suffered indignity and insult as a result.
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I think it was pretty clear that Sherwood's interpretations of the plants differed from those of others and thus were just another set of opinions.

Sherwood also explicitly stated on the site that she had limited her search for plants to a specific geographic area, which means that any researcher working from her IDs was accepting that locale and limitation without critical review, which is, in itself, a questionable choice.


It's the researcher's responsibility to check whether website IDs are authoritative before using them as a basis for further work. A website is not a vetted publication or peer-reviewed journal.