A longish article in the latest Wired does what seems to this untutored eye a good job of describing the controversy about barcoding. Here’s the case against in a nutshell:
“We’re not accusing Hebert of being a creationist, just of acting like one,” says Brent Mishler.
and the case for:
The space ship lands. He steps out. He points it around. It says “friendly – unfriendly – edible – poisonous – dangerous – living – inanimate.”
There are a lot of pithy quotes like those and astute observations, such as the one that Charles Darwin was a parataxonomist. Well worth reading. We have, of course, blogged about barcoding before.