Re: paleonet Head of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum

["John V Jackson" <jjackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The NHM London are advertising for a new Head of Palaeontology: "...to be a
talented palaeontologist who will thrive in a challenging scientific
leadership role, with an international reputation and able to use their
skills to develop palaeontology as a discipline and integrate its work with
other life and earth sciences.”

I am thinking of applying for this position, but before submitting my
application would like to run the essence of it past some of my fellow
palaeoers...

It is as safe to claim to be a talented palaeontologist, as a talented
futurologist of the next millenium but one; you don’t expect to be proved
conclusively wrong.  Indeed, a better criterion would be the ability to
thrive in a challenging scientific leadership role since appearing to be
sound is as much as one could hope for.  If ‘challenging’ refers to the
intensity of the arguments, ‘scientific’ means one follows Popperian
principles, and ‘leadership’ implies few people are ahead of you in their
degree of belief in the cause, then I should be ok; as to reputation, if I
have one, I’m sure it’s international.

But the development and integration of the science and the museum are the
important things...

A number of major challenges confront the holder of this post:

The first is what every generation of palaeontologists has to face: having
to explain to the public, that “...we’ve got it all absolutely wrong up to
now, but we really are sure we’ve got it right this time”.  This time
though, the issues are rather serious.

Strategy must come first:  are we going to bluff our way through the next
generation of developments, or be the first to jump on all the bandwagons at
once?

Of course the former line has always been the option of choice, and I need
hardly mention the stalwart phrases that have been so reliable in the past.
However there are three new problems with this approach:

First, genomics is progressing at such a rate that all sorts of embarassing
discoveries might emerge at any moment, from sources beyond our control.

Second, the principles of thought are being implemented on computers at an
ever accelerating rate.  This means that not only are they becoming well
understood, and if anyone analyses ours, we’re going to need to be confident
in our justifications, but that some undergraduate computer scientist might
do a study of our field as a semester project, and draw different
conclusions.  The old ploy of explaining the differences by claiming our
years of experience might be difficult if he says “It’s all right, I’ve got
all info on all vertebrate types (distributional, temporal, structural,
behavioural, chemical, genomic etc) represented on computer, along with a
variety of cladistic programs, all palaeo maps and climatic information, and
of course all under the control of SROPRACT 6.3 [the Standard Rules Of
Pattern Recognition And Creative Thought package]”.

This brings us to the third problem: that although people’s brains are
getting smaller all the time, they are getting more academic too.  How long
will it be before most of the world is a gradaute?  By then, the e-net will
have removed most of our control over publishing, and we may no longer be
able to rely on our challengers being ignorant in any useful area; the
computers will in any case be giving them the answer to any question they
need to know before they’ve even thought of it.

The world is developing x-ray eyes, but good timing may save us.  It doesn’t
matter if all that happens, so long as we’re ready when it does.  We may not
need to rearrange any foundations in the next generation in most areas so
long as we keep an eye on developments in all the information sciences.

Are there any loose bits “hanging off” our accepted dogmas that the majority
of undergraduates could see through even without fifth-generation computing
power?

What about the “Savannah Hypothesis”?  Still safe for a while, since
although we now know uprightness developed in thicker forests, it can’t be
pinned to water.  We may have gone upright, then stepped out of the woods.

What though about secondary quadripedality in chimps and gorillas?  If we
are to discount the molecular evidence, especially since its phylogeny’s
topology is so well corroborated by the clocked time intervals, how are we
to defend phylogenies where molecules are unavailable?  The idea that the
known fossils left no modern lineages of chimps or men, yet no ancestors of
modern types have been found, would be very hard to justify.

I think we’ll have to bite the bullet on this one now, though there’s no
real difficulty for us.  The sensitive aspect, human phylogeny, is barely
changed; we can simply say that through our phylogenetic technology we have
merely discovered the dear old chimps are are bit nearer and a bit more
interesting than we thought.  Anyway, the average person doesn’t care much
if we split 3,4,5,10 or 20 mya.

Our story of the emergence of the tetrapods needs tidying up a bit,
including as it so often does the claim that since we’ve found an animal
with limbs but without lungs, those limbs can never have been used on or
evolved for land.  There are too many amphibious but lungless
counter-examples, and everyone knows returning to the water has occured
repeatedly.  We should pre-empt the smart-alecs by re-introducing a little
modest uncertainty here.

The “bird” question is unfortunately rather unstable.  Although certain
aspects of the previous theory look increasingly improbable, and it does not
seem likely to reverse its slow descent relative to the current one, it will
not be possible to suppress further alternatives indefinitely.  These new
alternatives present such a stark contrast to the currently accepted views,
and a threat to current practices that acceptance would be unthinkable.

In order to avoid an entire branch of the profession having to explain a
volte-face in their beliefs, I would tend to encourage the following
approach: When the current blackout of the new theories can no longer be
sustained, any unavoidable questions about them should exploit the confusion
of the profusion of the new possibilities (there are at least two new
theories).

In the unlikely event of yet further recourse being necessary, the
requirement for new theories to provide undeniable positive evidence is
likely to remain a plausible defence for some time.  Most scientists have as
much distain for philosophy as anyone, and for current philosophy to be
first convincingly demonstrated computationally, then commonly understood
will take fifty years at the very least.

By then our own investigations into the response of organisms crossing
between widely differing environments, and the way algorithms behave in
trying to retrieve the true trees in such cases, will allow us to claim a
major role in the demonstration of any new theory if necessary.


With regard to the requirement for making a major contribution to science
and to tackling issues of contemporary concern, I would advise a prudent
approach on two main grounds.  Publicising the true core of the scientific
process would inevitably bring us up against our patrons in government, and
their, and our, patrons in the fossil fuels industry, which would inevitably
reflect unfavourably on our funding, particularly for micropalaeontology. It
would be injudicious to be seen to back the view that beliefs worthy of
action can arise in the absence of “certain” evidence, whatever comparison
detractors may make to fiddling with the controls of an aircraft with only
uncertain results.  We therefore have no place in advising premature
intervention in issues such as global warming and BSE, and should restrict
ourselves to keeping the public informed of “uncontrovertible facts” as and
when the various situations become clearer.

The second reason for caution in handling issues involving the principle of
refutation has been touched on earlier: it would clash with our position
vis-a-vis topics of popular concern in vertebrate palaeontology, and we don’
t want to confuse the public, do we.  It should be said though that the risk
of anyone spotting any such inconsistency and then being able to express it
in a telling sound-bite down the right channels is vanishingly small.

The last thing palaeontology and the museum wants is some kind of “Sir Roy”
figure explaining everything and its full significance, meeting undiscovered
challenges, and rushing around telling everyone outside the museum what they
must and mustn’t do.  The eventually inevitable automated world-wide data
analysis and theory generation system must be controlled and developed by us
or a group of significant museums including ourselves, but there is no need
for the public to be bothered by any preliminary announcements until we are
ready to explain them at our own convenience.  Up until now palaeontology’s
relative untestability has given us a free hand, but we must now start using
techniques from those testable disciplines closest to our own operations,
and we will want to be in a position, should anything untoward emerge, to
spin it out carefully and judiciously.


Moving on to the exhibits themselves, I have no plans for any extensive
reorganisation, finding the current layouts very inspiring, but also
appreciating the classical formats that allow plenty of comparison.  The
temporary exhibitions have been successful too, so I would tend to give the
sub-departments a relatively free hand.

However, I would provide computerised captions for each exhibit, which would
allow visitors to extract as much information as they wanted, linking in
with other resources on the web, and elsewhere in the museum.  A little
“visitor modelling” would be quite straightforward, allowing each to be
addressed at the best level.  Many a time I have fulfilled this role
personally, engaging the interest of chance visitors I find in the museum,
and explaining the errors in the captions and current understandings as I
take them around.

In the entrance, we could pension off dear old Diplodocus and get something
big, but that would be in the long term.  In the medium term, we could have
the “Fighting Pair” represented by five holograms in a cube, and electronic
pointers on computer screens allowing the various parts of the fossils to be
explained, along with their broader significancies.  Each visitor could then
be sent on their own special tour of the museum, and picked up by the system
as they interact with each computerised caption.


As to staff policy, I believe there has been a tradition, celebrated even in
the literature, of extended discussions in the pub during working hours.  We
all know where that has led.  My first action upon taking command will be to
instigate knowledge engineering workshops held every Friday afternoon from
1:30 – 4:30, for every academic member of the department.  I am sure the
governors would agree this would prove much more useful in the long run.


As to my scheme of personal emolument, so long as my non-contributory
pension were maintained according to the advertised salary (anything is
possible for a skilled accountant), and I received the first class season
ticket from Southampton and a new good suit annually, in addition to regular
conference expenses etc, I would be happy to take as a basic salary just the
national minimum wage.  I feel sure those on the selection panel will
appreciate how useful the savings to them will be for paying for a member of
staff or for whatever purposes they may deem suitable.