University officials say they cannot afford to maintain one of the largest herbariums in the United States. Researchers are urging Duke to reconsider.

University officials say they cannot afford to maintain one of the largest herbariums in the United States. Researchers are urging Duke to reconsider.

Duke University has decided to close its herbarium, a collection of 825,000 specimens of plants, fungi and algae that was established more than a century ago. The collection, one of the largest and most diverse in the country, has helped scientists map the diversity of plant life and chronicle the impact of humans on the environment.

The university’s decision has left researchers reeling. “This is such a devastating blow for biodiversity science,” said Erika Edwards, the curator of the Yale Herbarium. “The entire community is simultaneously shocked and outraged.”

Scientific societies have also protested the move. “Duke’s decision to forgo responsibility of their herbarium specimens sets a terrible precedent,” the Natural Science Collections Alliance wrote in a letter to the university last Friday.

The alliance, along with six other scientific societies, endorsed a petition asking Duke to reconsider closing the herbarium. As of Wednesday, it had gained over 11,000 signatures.

Non-paywall link

    • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
      2·
      6 months ago

      I knew an athlete a few years ago who was told by Stanford that she had to get a 23 on the ACT to be accepted. Her GPA was mediocre. I don’t even remember if she had AP classes. To be clear, this person was barely literate. She was a nice person, but to put things in perspective, a 23 means getting almost half the questions wrong (in a multiple choice test where 1/4 of random answers are automatically correct). It means, again, illiterate.

      She struggled for a whole year to get to 23 and was accepted to Stanford where she played sports. The one interesting part is that the only major they’d let her have is a business degree, since it requires so little effort.

    • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
      3·
      6 months ago

      To be fair, Duke is a Catholic university and everyone knows Jesus loves money. Only rich men can enter the kingdom of heaven, right? You can’t expect them not to charge students $70k/year while paying overworked adjunct professors $60k/year to teach 5 classes per semester. How else will the hyper-religious underworked administrators go to heaven?

      EDIT: in all seriousness, Duke pays poverty wages to their adjunct professors. I know an MD PhD who gets paid $15/hr to work 70 hour weeks at Duke. Her CV is a mile long. She says that all of the University hospitals are like that. They exploit and destroy new talent, young doctors, and aspiring researchers. And then everyone whines about how there aren’t enough doctors. It’s easy to fix. Cap the salaries of all administrators 1:1 with the average adjunct professor’s salary.

      Now I know, “economists” will say that this will create an artificial shortage of administrators, but I think they’re forgetting that administration takes only slightly more skill than watching paint dry, so we might be alright.

      • meat_popsicle@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        6 months ago

        MD PhD who gets paid $15/hr to work 70 hour weeks at Duke. Her CV is a mile long

        She should quit. Industry pays an actual livable salary compared to that. She could work as a shipping clerk and make more money and have a higher standard of living.

        They abuse people endlessly because smart and talented people like your friend volunteer to get abused. It’s tragic, but their own choice.

  • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
    2·
    6 months ago

    Whose idea was it to give one of the shittiest universities such a big responsibility? Duke is basically a giant sports program with a religious school attached. What do they care about science?

    • MammyWhammy@lemmy.ml
      1·
      6 months ago

      Calling Duke a ‘religious school’ is disingenuous. They are a secular school that has a divinity program. The university pre-dates the divinity school by almost a century.

      They are widely seen as a world class medical, business and law school. Contributions include, the first ultrasound imaging, the first CFD analysis software, and cochlear implant development.

      They don’t focus on sports anymore than other peer institutions (think Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt, or Notre Dame) they just caught lightning in a bottle with Coach K, and have been really good at basketball for a while.

      I say all of this to highlight, they are a legitimate, well funded active contributor to academia and research.

      They aren’t some hack religious institution that’s trying to play being a real school while shoveling indoctrination down your throat like BYU or Liberty.

      Duke is a legitimate research university that should be criticized even more harshly for the decision outlined in the article because of their history as a top tier research institution, not because they’re “a religious school that doesn’t care about science.”

      • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        That’s like saying “they have commitments to a cult, but they’re good at science.” I don’t think non-secular institutions should have accreditation. Period.

          • xkforce@lemmy.world
            0·
            6 months ago

            In a country increasingly governed by religious ideals that strip the rights of women and minorities, it is harder and harder not to hate religion.

            • kora@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              0·
              6 months ago

              Agreed. I’m a Socialist Bi/Pan Transwoman and a “Christian” for lack of less tinged and equivalently brief word.

              I choose to look at these types of things as opportunities to praise good opinions.

              Whenever the collapse happens, assuming there are still people around, we’ll still have to live with people after the fact. Accepting the inevitability of “religious thoughts” and helping to mold and shape those ideas is better than failing to remove them entirely.

              Also, its a healthier mindset in general, for me at least.

              • xkforce@lemmy.world
                01·
                6 months ago

                I would be fine with tolerating religion’s existence if it remained a personal belief that was not forced upon others. But the moment it is, that means war.

  • Yokozuna@lemmy.world
    02·
    6 months ago

    Well if they’re that upset about it, maybe they could help maintain it as well financially. Still sucks that it’s happening, these institutions usually have more than enough money to throw around for something they deem this significant.