Re: paleonet Palaeontology versus Geography versus Cultural Respect Versus Politics

[José María González Donoso <jmgd@xxxxxx>]

Dear colleagues,
	The following is a message from Paul Palmqvist, who apparently has
problems posting to Paleonet.
	Cheers,
		José María

Dear Paleonetters,
I imagine that you will be saturated with the debate opened by Xabier
Panades I Blas and I do not wish to fuel it (although it is undoubtly a
good matter of study for a psychologist), but in one of his latest e-mails
he writes an explicitreference to my good colleague and friend Miguel Pardo
and also to me. I would like to clarify some points raised in this letter
[by the way: Mr. Panades, you must know that I will not reply more in the
future to your comments, as I explained you with patience before, because I
have no time to waste in sterile things, as you seem to have]:
1.- Miguel Pardo, acting as moderator of the Iberpal list, was forced to
expulse you from this list given the unprecedent level of entropy that you
were introducing in it and the abuse of insults and disqualifications to
other members of Iberpal. In any case, he never insulted or disqualified
you, because he is a tolerant, open-minded and well educated person.
2.- Talking about me, in your message you affirm that "I understood his
anti-Catalan and anti-Anglo-Saxon comments". I wish to explain you, once
again, that I have nothing against Catalonians or Anglo-Saxons. On the
contrary, some of my best colleagues, associates and friends are Spanish
who live or were born in Catalonia (=Catalonians), as well as many others
are from the United Kingdom and the US. In addition, I use to publish
regularly in "Anglo-Saxon" journals (with the difficulties inherent for a
scientist whose first language is not English; incidentally, the editors of
several high-ranked paleontological journals often send me papers for
review, and this also happens with many Spanish colleagues, which implies
that they are more concerned with the contents of the articles published in
their journals than on the language, and demonstrates clearly that they do
not marginalize others member of the scientific community, for example the
Spanish ones, as you affirm).
3.- I accept the (obvious) fact that English is nowadays the language of
science (until it is replaced by "Spanglish" or Mandarin, who knows?) and
that if we wish to communicate to the wideat possible audience the outcomes
of our research we need to use English. However, it is also a fact that,
apart from English, there are other languages with long tradition in
scientific literature (e.g., French and German) or with an increasing
audience over the World (e.g., Spanish but not Catalonian).
4.- Concerning your chauvinist reasons about the status of Catalonia (and
other parts of Spain) as a nation, I think that they could be also applied
(and perhaps more properly) to the Andalusian region, according to our long
cultural legacy, our way of life, and even from a historical perspective
(that does not apply in the case of Catalonia, a region which was part of
the Aragon kingdom): in fact, we were an independent kingdom during several
centuries following the arab's army invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. In
any case, most of us here in Andalusia feel proud of being part of the
Spanish kingdom and, by extension, of Europe (and, in relation to the
scientific community, of the World).
5.- Finally, as several colleagues have explained you, to reference the
geographic location of a place in Catalonia is less understandable in the
rest of the World than to refer it to Spain (as the contents of a paper
written in Catalonian are less accessible and understandable by the
international scientific community than the ones of a paper written in what
you call "Castilina", which I suppose is the Spanish spoken in Castilla).
Please have a nice day,
Paul

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Dr. Paul Palmqvist, Profesor Titular
Depto. Ecología & Geología (Área de Paleontología)
Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Málaga
Campus Universitario de Teatinos, 29071 Málaga (Spain)
Phone: +34 952 132002 (office), +34 952 212870 (home)
Shared Fax: +34 952 132000, E-mail: ppb@uma.es
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