Drs. James Parkinson, Samuel Wilson, and Alois Alzheimer all seem to have a clean bill of health according to the current standards of social justice. We should play it safe to be certain we don’t offend someone someday. It’s probably best not to name anything after anyone.
Besides ‘Paralysis agitans’, ‘hepatolenticular degeneration’, and ‘neurocognitive degeneration associated with amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and loss of neuronal connections’ have such a nice ring to them.
Sarcasm aside, I have a genuine questions for Mr. Walter. These birds are named by or for the people who first described them in western literature. If one were studying COHA, using your example, would they not uncover a broader body of research under the name Cooper’s Hawk? Is the animal’s taxonomic name (Accipiter cooperii) still safe to use? It sure seems like that burdensome 19th century name is still in there.
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