RE: paleonet AGI Report

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The problem in Paleontology relates to its perception.  The science is
perceived as being very tired, and basically a repetition of the same thing
in different variations.  There is no identifiable overarching scientific
community because it is scattered by its own internal design largely caused
by xenophobic subdiscipline in-fighting and non-communication.  It is
perceived that it still largely depends on, and gets it strokes using old
scientific methods to solve applied problems, describe new species, or
catalogue old/new collections.  Nothing wrong with that, but as a
consequence a clear basic research front for the science is poorly defined
and therefore not communicated to funding agencies that will impact
decisions on the hiring/retention of paleontologists in academic
departments.  It is perceived to have poorly established lines of
communication with sister core scientific areas.  The big stories are the
discovery of new dinosaurs, plants, and such, many largely removed from
their research context before critical non-paleontological information is
recorded, and studied by a narrowly focused set of paleontologists. 
 
I'm playing devil's advocate here.  Please don't shoot the messanger.  I'm
all for getting our act together but, in my opinion, it will have to be at
the community level that a new positive view of paleontology is generated
and the academic hiring problem reversed.  

Is there anyone out there that I haven't offended? 

Any comments?

Rich Lane 

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Holterhoff [mailto:frank@matricus.com]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 11:54 AM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: Re: paleonet AGI Report


Whew, thanks Norm...BTW, have we discussed how the Scots were oppressed 
by the English?

Many paleontologists have ended up in the petroleum industry, some of 
whom originally intended to be academics.  Some of these are doing 
paleontology within the petrolem industry setting, others not.  In fact, 
I personally know of at least one in the last category who tries to 
continue paleontological research & publication on his own time, 
although I don't know how he can fit much in around career & family. 
I'm sure there are a number of others.

Are there really lots of paleo jobs absolutely these days, or is it just 
a high ratio of jobs/candidates?  If there were more candidates, many of 
these positions would probably be filled before you heard about them.

F

N. MacLeod wrote:

> OK. The Kepkupaiui string has gone on way past long enough. Surely 
> there's something else of interest to talk about. For instance, I 
> recently came across an AGI report on the status of geosciences in US 
> universities. The url where with a link to the full report is: 
> http://www.earthscienceworld.org/careers/ The report seems to suggest 
> paleontology/stratigraphy has been the big loser in terms of faculty 
> positions between the 1980's and 2002. The histogram that compares the 
> stats for the various specialty groups showed a larger drop for 
> geochemists, but this was more than made up for by a net increase in 
> environmental geology positions, many of which would be environmental 
> geochemistry. Yet, I see lots of activity in terms of the paleo. job 
> market. What's the real story? Are academic paleontologists  and palaeo. 
> programs being differentially singled out? Also, where do 
> paleontologists who don't go into academics find jobs these days? Many 
> leave the field. But are they any employment sectors where 
> paleontologists can be paleontologists that are growing? Last, but not 
> least, how many paleontology positions are there in the world right now?
> 
> Norm MacLeod
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________
> 
> Dr. Norman MacLeod
> Keeper of Palaeontology
> The Natural History Museum,
> Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD
> 
> 
> (0)20-7942-5204 (Office)
> (0)20-7942-5546 (Fax)
> http://www.nhm.ac.uk/palaeontology/a&ss/nm.html (Web Page)
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________

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