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

  • MammyWhammy@lemmy.ml
    1·
    9 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.”