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I agree with Martin's cautious approach to interpretation of the AGI report. It may be that by some measures academic paleontology positions have not declined in some ways. However, here in the UK it's hard to escape the feeling that things aren't going well. We see a lot of good BSc/MSc students that aren't getting PhD studentships and PhD's that aren't getting good jobs. We also see academic training programmes closing (e.g., palynology at Sheffield, all of geology at Aberystwyth), university programmes divesting themselves of their paleo. collections (e.g., Imperial College's now defunct Royal School of Mines), and so forth. Interestingly, an increasing number of UK post-graduate students are completing their education in the US. Two things occurred to me immediately upon reading the AGI report (which is indeed old news, but which I hadn't seen discussed on any public forum over the last 18 months). Perhaps it would be a good idea to know accurately what's happening to academic (and industrial?) palaeo. positions worldwide? The AGI study is a crude tool, partly because of the inherent complexity of the task and partly because it was trying to look at all geoscience. One of the first steps in tackling any problem is to first gain a good idea of whether it exists and, if so, its scope, areas of concentration, etc. AGI undertook their study in accord with their remit as a spokesorganization for the geosciences and to fulfill their task of advising students. I should think the major palaeo. professional organizations would have a similar interest-and maybe the resources to fund?-a study that focuses specifically on our science. Karl's study is known to many and sometimes cited. But we're coming up on 10 years from its upper cutoff. A lot can happen in 10 years. Maybe it's time for a revisit. Second, the thing that really bothers me about the AGI study is that, according to their data, numbers of MSc and PhD geoscience degrees have recently started to fall. If this is true for geosciences in general and paleontology in particular, it is an ominous development. Undergraduate enrollments are already very low and we've heard before how paleontology is no longer considered a required body of knowledge that needs to be assimilated by all holders of geoscience degrees. Those enrollments are unlikely to pick up in the short or medium term. If MSc and PhD enrollments now fall, what is going to be the rationale for retaining academic paleo. training programmes in any form? Here at the NHM we're getting an increasing number of requests to teach courses in palaeontology for local geology departments. This is good for us on the revenue side, but in effect means that university departments would rather fold its paleo. instruction into a set of outsourced short courses than spend a faculty position on a paleontologist. That can't be a good sign. I also agree with Rich that external perception accompanied by an internal lack of community are parts of the problem. I don't think there's much dispute about this. I don't see much being done about it, but would be happy to learn this is a false impression. Is it? Yes, I'm aware of the paleobiology database project and CHRONOS. These are good initiatives. But they're not galvanizing the whole community and are little known within (and almost completely unknown outside of) it. These are also US initiatives and, as well all know, the paleo. community is global. Effective community action is going to need to be global as well. What is the state of connections/collaborations between the major US societies and their counterparts in the UK and Europe? And what about Europe? Who speaks for paleontology in Europe? There is the International Paleontological Association, but what does it see its role as being in all this? In the end I suppose I'm going to end up agreeing with Xavier Panades I Blas as well, though perhaps not in the sense he meant. Paleontologists seem to lack a kind of basic political common sense. We all love to gossip and run each other down (e.g., we're great, the guys next door are OK, but all those 'others' are just hopeless). We find it easy to see ourselves as individuals waging a lonely war against all comers. But we find it but much more difficult to see ourselves members as a community whose individual fates are tied to the larger group. When Scott says 'we disguise ourselves as paleobiologists, paleoceanographers or paleoclimatologists', there is another way to look at it. Maybe there isn't any such thing as paleontology per se any more. Maybe we're not disguising ourselves. Could it be that paleontology has already fragmented (speciated?). Maybe these new quasi-paleontological proto-communities really don't have enough in common with each other to form a viable, larger entity.Perhaps each will have to look out for itself in future? Is this the sort of future we want? If not it is all down to some form of community-centered action. As Ben Franklin said, 'We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.' 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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