Re: paleonet Head of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum

[Dee Ann Cooper <deeanncooper@xxxxxxxxx>]

i'd like to apply for an underling position.
--- John V Jackson <jjackson@interalpha.co.uk> wrote:
> 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
> 
=== message truncated ===


=====
Dee Ann Cooper, M.S., B.S.
University of Louisiana - Lafayette
Lamar University - Beaumont, TX 
Phone: (409) 751-6907
Fax:  (409) 880-8246
Address: 17890 Nonie Lane, Lumberton, TX  77657

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