RE: paleonet AGI Report

["Andy Rindsberg" <arindsberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Message

Lukas, this comes as a shock. PaleoNet readers, please see this link for more information:

http://www.unibas.ch/earth/

 

How many of these faculty positions will be shifted to other departments, or eliminated altogether? In my own field of ichnology, two of the world's most respected researchers, Andreas Wetzel and Christian Meyer, are on the list. We need these people!

 

In times of trouble, it is usual for people of good conscience ask themselves if they brought the trouble on themselves, and it does you credit to ask this question with regard to the local and regional situation. But it is important to realize that geology would be undergoing difficulties regardless.

 

Just as you say, universities (and museums too) are run like businesses these days, so a department rises or falls on the strength of its income from teaching and from research grants. Even the most brilliant teaching cannot conceal the fact that the number of jobs for graduating students is inadequate. Let's face it, after 300 years of growth, science has absorbed so much of society's population that further increase is unlikely; we have reached the plateau stage of the growth curve. Sports medicine is a growing field; geology is not. We are now, at best, only replacing ourselves, and this means a greatly reduced student population.

 

Given zero growth (or perhaps we should honey this as a "steady state" or "sustainable society"), the average faculty member would be able to have one, ONE, student as a protege, in addition to others who entered careers in industry or government, and the many others who attend classes for general learning. Under these circumstances, the advantages and disadvantages of a single professor mentoring a "stable" of graduate students should be reconsidered.

 

I see this as an exciting time for paleontology -- not merely a time of inventorying. We are beginning to understand, as never before, the mechanics of evolution, the great extinction events, the puzzling radiative events such as that of the Cambrian. Paleosols, terrestrial paleoecology, verterbrate footprints, even the hint of xenopaleontology to come. Computerized methods from improved archival access to cladistics and automated graphic analysis. Public interest in paleontology is deservedly high.

 

But over and over again, I see students of great promise being shunted into other fields not because their science was poor, but because they can't find jobs in paleontology. It is not all bad. Successful paleontologists are sharpened by the need to stay informed, and unsuccessful paleontologists inject our ideas into other fields. Truly, there is more than one way to succeed in this field, and many paleontologists are finding jobs in biology departments, for instance. But I think that paleontology would have progressed even further in the past 20 years if social conditions were stabler. I don't have a solution to the problem.

 

Lucas, please keep us informed, and rest assured, you do have the sympathy of others. You did not bring about this unfortunate event, it is bigger than that.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

Andrew K. Rindsberg

Geological Survey of Alabama

 

-----Original Message-----
From: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Lukas Hottinger
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 7:51 AM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: Re: paleonet AGI Report

Don't cry, Argentina, don't cry !

The University of Basel, Switzerland, has decided to close the department of Earth Sciences alltogether after having reduced Paleontology to almost nothing some years ago. (There is similar treatment for Astronomy, theoretical Mathematics, Analytical Chemistry and Slavistics). For the Earth Sciences,this means a reduction of research capacities of about 20-30% on the national level. Basic argument in all cases: too few students. Such decisions are possible only since the university got some independance from the state (i.e. the Kanton Basel), with a global budget, and is run like a large firm in the pharmaceutical industry. The society has thus given up to bear the responsibility for the teaching and reseach portfolio in its number one cultural institution.  However, is the closure of the Earth Sciences in particular, to some extent also our own fault, i.e. the fault of the generation of researchers active during the last 25 years in the Earth Sciences?

The big boom of the Earth Sciences is over. It came in the sixties with plate tectonics, profoundly changing our view of the world and of its history. It was triggered by new techniques in satellite positioning of ships and new seismic techniques much enhancing the resolution power, which in turn were a result from forced technical advance during world war II. Giant, unprecedented world-wide research projects such as ODP followed and produced data and material for further research still very far from being exhausted. In crystalline rocks, the understanding of chemical equilibria under high pressure and temperature and the role of water together with deep seismics, made a lot of progress and enhanced the understanding of deeper crustal processes, mountain building and volcanism. In Paleontology, many microfossil groups were discovered and inventorized permitting to refine the timescale for at least one order of magnitude, and to recognize environments of deposition of sediments in small samples, in particular from boreholes. However, basic research in order to understand paleoecological and evolutionary processes did not progress at the same pace, in spite of the discovery and/or reinterpretation of fascinating groups such as Mesozoic Mammals, Vendobonita or Archaean bacteria.

What are the innovations of the last 20 years in Earth Sciences? Sequence stratigraphy? Isotope geochemistry? Are they reflecting the genius of our time (Catastrophism) or do they really contribute to our understanding of the processes shaping Earth History? Maybe they do, to a certain extent, but they do not revolutionize our world view as plate tectonics did before. And in Paleontology, what are the innovations there besides the always necessary, never ending, basic supplementation of the inventory of organisms? Are there any? Cladistics?  Counting genera or higher taxa over time? Measuring the distribution of taxa in "ecological", illdefined and poorly understood gradients? In varying the same basic ecological model mutatis mutandis for every epoch in Earth History?

Currently, what happens in Paleontology to morphological analysis in an epoch, where face recognition is a frontline research in antiterrorism; what to functional morphology in the vertebrate skeleton, when sports medecine advances rapidly in the search for the optimal functioning of the human body; what to evolutionary theory in a moment, when genetically modified organisms are set free into nature? - Nothing! Sorry, is such a science worth keeping up? This is a serious question, not a negative statement disguised behind a question mark. I can only hope for contradictions and that you join me to find some valid answers. It doesn't help to cry over lost resources.

Lukas Hottinger

PS Its carneval in Basel, time for a carneval jester's speech !