Re: paleonet AGI Report

From
Date
Reply-To
I have been asked to provide a more extended answer to my comments to the 
Agi Report. Unfortunately, I would have to write a whole report on 
social-political causes of the demise of palaeontology. Unfortunately, I 
have a PhD to work on and I am busy. Though I like discussing anything in 
order to improve our science. Instead of, I will suggest a couple of things 
from from a quote from our list owner, I think is the root of lack of 
unification as a community. Please, let me know what you think!

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"

I want palaeontology to survive! therefore, becoming an area reaching all 
layers of society without looking at their origin, background etc. Unlike 
now that is dominated by certain layer social layer reven in third world 
countries (look at government statistics in the UK, not my opinion).

I want that the format, grades, and the origin of paleontologists be as much 
important as experience, publications, enthusiasm characteristic when they 
are chosen for a position. (remember that in exams you only demonstrate your 
capacity to memorise, so, a 100% does not mean the student is for example 
creative, enthusiastic)

I want to ask yourselves why palaeontologists do not get involve in politics 
usually as everybody else. Is that for example to preserve their traditions, 
a space left of a type of class that dominates this area?  Ask yourself why 
you do not want palaeontology get involve in politics? How are we going to 
obtain support from governments, people that concedes funding?  Keeping 
ourselves locked in a room like your propose will provide us with more 
resources? Or organising ourselves and sharply lobbying!


I love palaeontology with all my heart, and I would like to develop anything 
to assure its survival. Thus, I propose an international palaeontological 
body that will deal with this situation. If paleontologists would like to 
preserve our science really.......

I have to work on my project...However, a pleasure disccussing anything to 
improve this science.


Respectfully,

Xavier Panades I Blas, Ms

Please, send letters to:

55, Marksbury Road
Bedminster
Bristol BS3 5JY
England
European Community
cogombra@hotmail.com















From: "N. MacLeod" <N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk>
Reply-To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: Re: paleonet AGI Report
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 17:43:16 +0000

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)

___________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________
It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! 
http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger