The widely publicized alleged discovery of a new species of sea snake in north-west Australia on 1 April 2020 has been exposed as a scientific fraud.
In a supposedly peer reviewed paper, a group of so-called scientists alleged they had found a new species of sea snake in Western Australia and proceeded to formally name it Emydocephalus orarius, Nankivell et al. 2020.
It can now be revealed that their alleged work is nothing more than a thinly veiled fraud in that their key findings had in fact been lifted from a 4 year old paper that had already discovered and named the very same species. In a brazen lifting and theft of the works and findings of Australian scientist Raymond Hoser, Nankivell and his gang of thieves rehashed a four year old paper of Hoser and prostituted it as peer reviewed scientific discovery in an online journal Zootaxa.
Nankivell and the gang of thieves used the exact same specimens, morphology and findings of Raymond Hoser, including the same holotype specimen of their allegedly newly discovered species that Hoser had used four years prior.
Yes, Raymond Hoser, better known as The Snake Man had identified and named the exact same sea snake species as separate to better known northern and eastern species in the same genus four years earlier.
The name assigned was Emydocephalus teesi Hoser, 2016, named in honour of highly respected human rights lawyer, Alex Tees of Bondi in New South Wales, Australia.
As this name has a four year date priority over the bootleg name, it is Emydocephalus teesi Hoser, 2016 that is the correct name and that which must be used.
The 2020 paper by Nankivell et al. fraudulently markets the contents of their 2020 paper as their own original work and discovery.
They have repeated this dishonest behaviour with numerous media releases and posts on social media (e.g. Facebook, twitter, etc), including a patently false series of claims alleging they had discovered the species when doing fieldwork, when in actual fact, Hoser had done the hard yards over preceding decades.
Importantly, Snakeman Raymond Hoser had been onto it and published his findings many years prior.
While authors overlooking or ignoring earlier important papers was common in years past, it is rare in the present time due to the fact that scientific papers are databased and widely accessible almost immediately after publication.
Significantly Nankivell admits to having read the earlier Hoser paper, but cites a blog post by a friend of his (Wolfgang Wuster), cited as Kaiser et al. (2013) as a basis to ignore the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and unlawfully over-write the Hoser name.
In terms of a reviewer, it would be impossible to miss the obvious fact that the key evidence and findings in both the 2016 and 2020 papers are effectively identical.
At the time Hoser’s 2016 paper was published he was widely accused by a gang of thieves known as the Wolfgang Wuster gang of “Taxonomic vandalism”, which is a nefarious practice of recklessly renaming species that have already been named. Hoser challenged this claim on the basis his newly discovered species of sea snake had significant morphological and molecular divergence and were reproductively isolated.
Ironically, it is the actions of Wuster's closwe friend Nankivell and his et al. who in 2020 have actively engaged in taxonomic vandalism and scientific fraud.
Zootaxa is the online journal that published the fraudulent Nankivell paper.
It is a holotype PRINO journal and a serial offender in terms of taxonomic vandalism. Zootaxa is an example of the hazards of the internet in terms of the ability of pseudoscientists to be able to rush bad science or non-science into print and without any serious forms of editiorial control or peer review.
The journal Zootaxa has developed a well-deserved reputation as being a holotype PRINO, or peer reviewed in name only journal, because it frequently publishes fake science and bootlegs of the works of genuine scientists.
Taxonomic vandalism as practiced by Nankivell and his listed co-authors, is not just fraudulent and unscientific, but it is also highly illegal as Australia has signed several international conventions forbidding it and binding all scientists to the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature which expressly forbids taxonomic vandalism.
In any event, one thing is clear and undeniable. The allegedly newly discovered species of sea snake from Western Australia is not so new after all. It was formally discovered and named 4 long years ago.
The most recent case of scientific fraud by Nankivell has been heavily promoted on social media by his good mate, Wolfgang Wuster, a serial law breaker and fraudster from Wales in the UK.
Wuster has set out to destroy the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature and regularly tells others to ignore the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.
He aggressively encourages friends and members of his cohort of thieves to plagiarize and steal works of others and market their discoveries as their own.
Wuster's cohort have illegally renamed dozens of previously named species in a practice known as Taxonomic Vandalism, including works of 1800's greats like John Edward Gray and Leopold Joseph Franz Johann Fitzinger, throwing the science, taxonomy and nomenclature of reptiles and other animals into chaos, with enormously negative public health and wildlife conservation outcomes.
Members of Wuster's cohort have recently been convicted of child sex offences, theft, shootings and other serious crimes.
They also run hundreds of fake social media accounts and heavily attack and manipulate sites like Wikipedia in order to peddle their warped agenda, publish personal hate pages replete with false and defematory comments about respected scientists and mislead people into believing that they are a majority of reptile scientists, when in fact they are merely a side group of thieves and trouble makers.
The two relevant papers are as follows:
Hoser, Raymond T. 2016. A previously unrecognized species of sea snake (Squamata: Serpentes: Elapidae: Hydrophiinae). Australasian Journal of Herpetology 33:25-33.
Full text available at:
http://www.smuggled.com/Issue-33-25-33.pdf
and
James H. Nankivell, Claire Goiran, Mathew Hourston, Richard Shine, Arne R. Rasmussen, Vicki A. Thomson, Kate L. Sanders, 2020. A new species of turtle-headed sea Snake (Emydocephalus: Elapidae) endemic to Western Australia. Zootaxa (PRINO - Online), 107(3):517-523.
Full text available at:
https://www.mapress.com
/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4758.1.6

In terms of the fake claims of a new species of sea snake allegedly discovered this April Fools Day!

From Nankivell et al. (2020) who stole the basis of their paper from Hoser, 2016.
They wrote:
"Hoser (2016) named Emydocephalus populations from coastal Western Australia and the Timor Sea as a new species; however we follow the recommendations of Kaiser et al. (2013) and consider names published outside of the peer-reviewed literature post 2000 to be unavailable."
Problem one was that Hoser (2016) was in fact peer reviewed and
Problem two is that the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature administered by the ICZN, which governs scientific names of species, does not mandate for peer review to make names available to use, which is a good thing as the majority of the millions of scientifically named organisms were not named via peer review - including quite ironically Nankivell et al. (2020)!
(The online Journal Zootaxa is notoriously PRINO, meaning peer reviewed in name only).
Nankivell et al. (2020) then wrote:
"On the basis of nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA and morphological evidence we regard the coastal Western Australian E. annulatus as an evolutionarily distinctive new species with no available name."
before renaming the species as an objective junior synonym (meaning this name is illegal and must not be used, with the correct senior name with date priority being used instead),
"Emydocephalus orarius sp. nov.
Fig. 5, 7A–B
Holotype. WAM R165708. Adult male collected in Shark Bay (25°15`38”S, 113°08`19”E), WA on 10/02/2006 by G. Parry."
And so there is absolutely no doubt as to from where he stole his alleged discovery ....
From Hoser, 2016.
"EMYDOCEPHALUS TEESI SP. NOV.
Holotype: A preserved specimen number R165708, at the Western Australian Museum, Perth, Western Australia, obtained from Shark Bay, Western Australia, (shot dead) caught on 10 February 2006.
The snout-vent length is 660 mm, tail length is 132 mm and weight is 245.0 grams.
The Western Australian Museum is a government-owned facility that allows inspection of its holdings.
Paratypes: Specimen number R47852 from the Western Australian Museum, Perth, Western Australia collected from Barrow Island, Western Australia, Lat. 115°40‘E Long. 20°8‘S in December 1975.
Specimen number R28469 from the Western Australian Museum, Perth, Western Australia collected from Barrow Island, Western Australia, Lat. 115°25‘E Long. 20°45‘S on 9 September 1966.
The Western Australian Museum is a government-owned facility that allows inspection of its holdings.
Diagnosis: Emydocephalus teesi sp. nov. would previously have been identified as E. annulatus. However it is readily separated from that taxon by having 21-23 body bands in females, versus 24-25 in females of E. annulatus. In males there are 19-21 body bands versus 22-30 in E. annulatus. These same characteristics separate E. teesi sp. nov. from the otherwise similar E. chelonicephalus and E. szczerbaki. Complete melanism is known to be common in E. annulatus and E. chelonicephalus, but is effectively unknown in Emydocephalus teesi sp. nov. and E. szczerbaki.
Melanistic E. teesi sp. nov. seen in Ashmore Reef, WA retain remnants of cross-bands on the lower flanks as whitish or lighter flecks on the rear of the relevant scales.
Emydocephalus teesi sp. nov. commonly (but not always) has 3 postoculars, versus a standard 2 in E. annulatus, E. chelonicephalus, E. ijimae and E. szczerbaki (and some E. teesi sp. nov.).
The three postocular condition in Emydocephalus teesi sp. nov. is caused by the usual larger lower postocular (seen in other Emydocephalus) instead being two smaller ones. ..."
Full text of Hoser 2016 is available at http://www.smuggled.com/issue-33-pages-25-33.pdf

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