[meteorite-list] Boorish Comments on A Tektite Web Page

From: kaolinite_at_ctc.net <kaolinite_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:14 2004
Message-ID: <1082039598-kaolinite-4.smmsdV2.0.3_at_localhost>

Where is Proud Tom when we need him? While searching
the Internet for information about tektites using Google, I
came across some rather rude, crude, and obnoxious
comments from a rather prominent collector and seller
of meteorites, tektites, and related materials at:

http://tektitesource.com/Argentine%20Escoria.html

I know that the relations between professional
scientists and avocational collectors is often strained
and heated and differences of option often exist about
collecting versus curating. However, indulging in childish
name-calling, i.e. "self-ordained high priesthood"
normally used by anti-science and anti-intellectuals
such as Young Earth Creationists and making denigrating
accusations of an individual as being "a poor ambassador
of science" is certainly no way of resolving such issues.
All they do is to further antagonize people on both sides
of the fence and further divide both groups. As far as I
am concerned the "footnote", in which such name-calling
occurs is nothing more than a self-righteous temper
tantrum on the part of the author. Surely, the differences
between the researcher and the author could have been
resolve privately.

In my opinion, the academic being abused by the comments
made in the above web page certainly has no obligation
to contribute to a completely commercial profit-making
operation that has absolute no scientific purpose. The
author complains that taxpayers paid for this research
and, thus, he has a right to demand that the academic
answer his questions. I would argue that such reasoning
is incorrect and silly. As a taxpayer myself, I would
argue that the author of this web page has absolutely
no right to demand that taxpayer money, in the form
of the researcher's salary, be used to subsidize his
commercial venture. As a taxpayer, I quite happy that
the researcher being denigrated by the author of the
article chose to devote his time to conducting
research instead of wasting it on a nickel and dime
profit-making scheme that will neither create new jobs
nor contribute significantly to the economy. The
author of the web page needs to understand that us
taxpayers are ***not*** paying the researcher, whom he
berates so rudely, to be his copy-editor. I am glad
that the researcher didn't waste his time and my
tax money assisting the author of the article make
more money, but rather devoted it to the research
that it was intended to be spent on. Besides, the
information has been published in literature where
it is freely available to the author and anyone
else where he can read it. Thus, the researcher
contrary to the web page's author claims has
fulfilled his duty to the taxpayer.

In addition, I believe it would be rather silly for
someone to agree to something that might contribute
to the destruction of what he is trying to study. As
an amateur fossil collector, I have seen too many
wonderful fossil-collecting localities either
destroyed or put off-limits by commercial collectors
who "strip mined" them for commercial purposes. For
example, the commercial collecting of shark's teeth
at the Clarke Creek fossil location in Alabama
resulted in property damage that angered the owners
so much that they have forbidden anyone, amateurs,
scientists, and commercial collectors from visiting
the site for decades. When someone decides to make
a commercial venture out of selling mass quantities
of certain item, instead of just collecting it for
their personal collections, amateur collectors and
research scientists do have to be concerned that the
mass collecting of this item will damage or destroy
the source of it or cause it being put-off limits
by irate landowners or governments.

As an amateur collector of fossils, I certainly
wouldn't feel obligated to assist a commercial
collector "strip mine" my favorite fossil location.
Similarly, I wouldn't expect a scientific researcher
assist a commercial collector popularize the
commercial collecting and sale of what he or she is
studying. In fact, it would rather stupid of a
researcher to contribute to the efforts of a
commercial collector that might either damage
or destroy the resource base that his research
depends upon simply for the collector's profit.

The real sad thing about the "footnote" in the above
web page is that it's author decided to engage in the
public assassination of the character of a fine
scientist simply because he judged that the taxpayer
money, the salary for the time involved, would be
better served conducting scientific research instead
of being a lacky copy-editor for someone's commercial
venture. The laughably self-righteous and unnecessarily
rude, crude, and obnoxious wording of the "footnote"
is also quite "sad" because it only contributes to
the acrimony and disharmony between collectors and
scientists. In my opinion, the "footnote" is a classic
examples of how the actions of arrogant, self-righteous
ill-tempered people poison the relationships between
collectors and scientists.

Yours,

Keith Littleton
St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana
Received on Thu 15 Apr 2004 10:33:18 AM PDT