Raymond Hoser - Career - Herpetology

Herpetology

Hoser has also contributed to the taxonomy of Australian snakes, describing new species and new genera, and suggesting revisions to current arrangements. The majority of these nominations have not been accepted. Hoser's work has been a source of controversy in the field of herpetology, with a 2001 review in Litteratura Serpentium strongly criticising his publications as "less than professional", describing them as a source of confusion and wasted effort. The review claimed that Hoser provided no description of the holotype or type specimen for most of his new species, and argued that Hoser's alleged errors could have been avoided had the articles been published in a peer-reviewed, rather than amateur and non-institutional, journal. Charges of ethical misconduct were made in this article. Further criticism of Hoser's work was published in 2006, in a review that stated that "the level of evidence provided by Hoser to justify his taxonomic acts is minimal" and charged that several of his publications appear to have been made with the intention of scooping other workers in the field, behavior that the authors described as "ethically repugnant".

Some of Hoser's papers have been published and discussed in scientific journals in Australia and elsewhere; however, other papers have been published in journals that critics claim are amateur or self-published, non-peer reviewed journals. In a 2007 article in Nature on amateur naturalists Hoser responded to criticisms of his work by stating, "The description of me as an amateur is complete rubbish", he said. "There's no one in history who has spent so much time dealing with, looking at, catching and breeding death adders as myself." He is the author of the valid names and descriptions for Pseudechis pailsei and Acanthophis wellsi, snakes in the Elapidae family. Hoser's work on the taxonomy of the Pythoninae has been partially confirmed by later phylogenetic studies, but has not been officially recognized.

In 2009, Hoser started his own journal, the Australasian Journal of Herpetology, for which he is editor and, as of March 2012, the sole contributing author.

In 2012, Hoser received criticism from several crocodile zoologists after he named what he claimed to be new species of pygmy freshwater crocodile, based on a single population discovered in 1979 in the upper Liverpool River in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territories of Australia by noted zoologist and current IUCN Crocodile Specialist Group Chair Grahame Webb. Grahame Webb argued that the crocodiles were a merely clinal variation of the Johnston crocodile which is stunted in size because of lack of food in the area, and not a new species. Crocodile geneticist Sally Isberg stated that Hoser had not presented the required molecular genetic data to prove that a new species exists and claimed that Hoser's journal is not peer-reviewed.

In 2013 a group of international herpetologists published a paper in the Herpetological Review, a peer-reviewed publication of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. The paper, which included the names of over 60 of the world's academic herpetologists as supporters, and many of the major societies including the World Congress of Herpetology, set out to put a stop to the "taxonomic vandalism" of Hoser and another self-publishing herpetologist, Richard Wells. It dismissed as unscientific, and lacking in evidence, scientific rigor, or credibility, the huge number of names coined by Hoser since 2000, mostly in his self-published, self-edited, single-authored Australasian Journal of Herpetology, and provided authors with the original or alternative, more acceptable, names. The paper also dealt with a smaller number of names coined by Wells.

Hoser is an author and publisher of a number of books and a website on frogs and reptiles, and has a business as a snake handler. He runs the website smuggled.com, which contains articles about official corruption and reptiles. Hoser runs a business called Snakebusters in Melbourne, providing reptiles for children's birthday parties and catching and moving snakes in urban areas. As part of his business, Hoser claims the title "Snakeman" (and others) as trademarks and has asked a number of people, including New South Wales volunteer snake-catcher George Ellis and Gold Coast snake catcher Tony Harrison, to cease using the name "snakeman".

Hoser is an advocate of venomoid snakes, surgically altered to remove venom, and has published discussion on this topic, and promoted the procedure on his website. These animals are kept as pets, or used in exhibitions to the general public, and the procedure is regarded as controversial. A 2008 government tribunal ruled that Hoser's venomoid snakes cannot be handled by members of the public, due to the risk of the venom glands regrowing. VCAT Deputy President Anne Coghlan found Hoser had no qualifications, no training and produced no scientific evidence to back up his claims.

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