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| Dear palonetters, a few weeks ago I posted a request answering some questions for a little survey on the topic "Paleontology today". Until now I got 76 answers, from all over the world reflecting a diverse picture of opinions and ideas. I thank all who answered the questions - you will from the result at the end of the year. For those who did not answer the query yet and think I deserve more response you can still submit at: Bjoern Kroeger in short: I work on a paper on “The discourses in paleontology in the conflicting perceptions between public and community”. One aspect of my investigation is to get a cross-section of opinion of the protagonists, on “What is Paleontology today?” Please click at and answer my few questions. Thank you. --- In more detail: Paleontology is a small science in terms of numbers of chairs, of journals and third-party funded projects. However, we are not a wallflower; the public interest for our science is remarkable. It is a commonplace that the monetary social product that a science receives is in direct relation to its positive public attraction. This would imply full accounts for us. Obviously this is not the case. Moreover, it seems that the usual methods of measuring the attention (citation rates, print run, number of visitors, audience rating etc) not work for us. All these methods of attention measuring have in common that they delete the content of the things they count, they work like money at market. My suspicion is that between the public and the paleontological community is a large discrepancy between of what we think is paleontology (what is cutting-edge, what is genuine in paleontology what are the most important paleontologists etc.) and that these discrepancies can cause for the paradox of increasing attraction and decreasing funding in paleontology (which is a fact at least in Germany these days). A better understanding of these questions would help to improve the public relations of paleontology. The little online survey at http://www.palaeontologische-gesellschaft.de/palges/tagungen/pop.php is intended to get a cross-section of opinion of the paleontological community on “What is Paleontology today?” The online survey is a qualitative survey. Thus I am rather interested at the content of the answers than on statistical distributions. Thank you for answering the questions. Björn Kröger ' ---------------------- Dr. Björn Kröger Museum für Naturkunde an der Humboldt Universität Berlin Invalidenstr. 43 D-10115 Berlin Germany |
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