Travis,
  No offense taken, it will take much more than your original comment to
hurt my hide :-)  I'm an academic physician so I am constantly challenged
by the resident physicians that I am teaching.  Also I too do not agree
with blind acceptance of scientific authority.  But, there are also
different levels of skill and these must be acknowledged.  If you have had
the chance to read any of Tom's papers you will discover the reasoning of
a skilled malacologist.  His work is exacting and exhaustive; it is not
shoddy and quick.  In his combining these two Gloripallium he had examined
specimens from the whole Indo-Pacific region.  Tom has as his disposal one
of the finest museums and libraries in the world.  If he makes a claim we
must give it a fair hearing in the court of science; no more no less.  It
is my belief that the name of any taxon is mearly a scientific hypothesis,
not a proof.  One looks at the data that are on hand and decides if a
group of shells represents and new taxon or whether they are part of
another .  As more and more information is available someone may go back
and place the new taxon in the synonomy of an older one.  This gets done
until the "experts" in  a field agree on some system.  However, this
system is always open to revision.  The world view of Aristotle was
replaced by that of Newton and his by that of the quantum physicists.
The original 35 molluscan genera of linne were expanded by Lamarck and
further expanded by others until we now have hundreds.  If I advocated
adherance to authority I would still be using Linne's 35 genera.
  Who the experts are is open to debate, but there are inspired amateurs
that I would consider as expert as some formally trained malacologists.
The letters after ones name help but it is the quality of ones' work that
matters in the end and I have seen some excellent work published by
"amateurs".
  I would like to see another good review of the Gloripallium sps.  I
would like to see a revision that includes not only conchological data,
but also anatomical studies and ecological data as well.  Hopefully people
will save some of the soft parts of the shells that they collect and place
them in museums (an idea that was proposed, I believe, by Tim Pierce).
Maybe then these studies will be accomplished.
  I am rambling on, but in the end, I believe that we are looking at the
same problem in a very similar way.  We are seeking the same answers
to the same questions.
 
Charlie
******************************************************************************
Charlie Sturm, Jr
Research Associate - Section of Invertebrate Zoology
                     Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Assistant Professor - Family Medicine
 
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