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Way back on May 17, when I was out of the country, Rich Lane wrote:
> We can only reap what we have sown. If paleontologists have gotten
the short end of the stick it is only because they have remained
unchanged in their approach for 50 years. From my observations after
26 years in industry is that paleontologists IN GENERAL have not
proactively attempted to integrate their results with other geoscience
specialities as well as they could. This is critical in an
exploration and exploitation environment. Industry is not in the
business to fund hobbies. Many have wanted to remain in their office
looking down their microscopes and giving answer that only other
paleontologists can interpret, expecting specialists in other parts of
geoscience to give relevance to their data. It just doesn't happen
that way. Then when they begin losing their jobs they start to shout
stepchild. Sure we are handmaidens to the stratigrapher, but only
because we have placed OURSELVES in that role. In hard times you keep
the stratigrapher, and get rid of the handmaiden
Well...From my observations after 15 years in the industry this is
pretty much a problem of poor management. True paleontologists
generally like to look at fossils. I'll give you that. But until the
time when everybody got fired the whole structure was set up to
encourage staying the same. Back when I worked at Mobil every month we
had to turn in a monthly sample count. It was constantly stressed that
in order to keep our jobs that we had to prove that we could work more
samples cheaper than the consultants. No mention was made of spending
time making sure anybody understoodthe data generated. After I was
laid off there I started working for Shell. The emphasis was not so
volume driven but it was also made clear that if you weren't looking
down a microscope you weren't working. Chitchat with geologists
although tolerated on a limited basis was clearly something you could
get dinged for (wasting their time and yours).
Now I still firmly believe that unless an industry paleontologist has
spent a few years behind a scope they will never really understand
exactly what is going on but a career development plan would have been
nice. NO SUCH PLAN EXISTED. You were hired to pick bugs you did not
continue on on your career to be a sage interpretorof data or a person
who communicated it or anything else you just picked bugs. The
exception was the person in charge (he who did the dinging for not
looking down the scope). That person had risen to the top of the paleo
group (lord knows there is nowhere to go from there) and that person
firmly entrenched him or herself as to maintain that position till
retirement. The only person in a position to expand horizons in this
situation was the one on top. That person had no reason to. In fact
that person had reason not to (don't want some hot shot to come along
and take your job).
In addition to this situation in operational groups you had your Ivory
Tower research groups (usually off in some other city) who were
involved in coming up with complex answers to questions that nobody was
asking. They wouldn't want to talk to the lowly bug pickers to find
out what the actual problems were (just a bunch of stupid bug pickers,
what would they know?). The result was that edicts from the research
groups would come down from on high to the operations people, who would
immediately file them in the approprite location (uppity research
bastards) even if they contained some good suggestions.
Get the picture?
So we are indeed reaping. It was the people in charge who did the
sowing.
Mike
=========================================================================
Michael J. Styzen Phone: (504) 588-4308
Shell Offshore Inc. Room: OSS-2920
P.O. Box 61933 E-mail: mstyzen@shell.com
New Orleans LA 70161
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