[meteorite-list] NYT story

From: Alexander Seidel <gsac_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:53:54 +0200
Message-ID: <20110405165354.81540_at_gmx.net>

Thanks a bunch, Professor Agee, for your quick personal reaction, this is well appreciated.

Unfortunately, the public perception with regards to the content of such an article in an internationally well known press medium like NYT will possibly result in a negative inclination towards the collector and dealer community in meteoritics, which is very much different to the positive way we all would like to understand it in the best of all interdisciplinary senses. As well as the suspected impact from future citations of this article somewhere else might probably work in quite a destructive manner.

So I sincerely hope someone can set the records straight as a follow-up to this article - sort of a knowledgable reader?s comment or something like that...

Best regards,
Alex Seidel
Berlin/Germany
(long time collector)


-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:28:10 -0600
> Von: Carl Agee <agee at unm.edu>
> An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Betreff: [meteorite-list] NYT story

> Since I am quoted in this article, here?s my reaction to it. The
> reporter seems very confused, in that he lumps together a story about
> the Gebel Kamil crater in Egypt and the legal meteorite trade (NWA)
> based primarily in Morocco. During the interview with him I spent a
> fair amount of time trying to explain to him how beneficial the NWA?s
> have been for planetary science research. For example, I mentioned how
> the number of rare Angrite meteorites has more than doubled due to
> African finds ? a huge enhancement to our understanding of the early
> solar system, and of course I mentioned all the lunars and martians,
> and other rare classes. I told him that I was not terribly well
> informed about the Gebel Kamil crater situation, but in my opinion the
> highest priority would be to protect the impact structure from
> degradation as these are quite rare on Earth. I also told him, that
> the Gebel Kamil meteorites on the other hand, are probably not hard
> to come by, and I?m sure if I wanted to study one for research, I
> could get a sample at a reasonable price or even get one as a
> donation from a collector, which museums benefit from frequently. I
> did get the feeling that he was hoping to hear something negative from
> me. As such he ended the interview rather quickly, but said something
> like ?oh, the NWA meteorites sounds like an interesting story, I need
> to come back to that at a later time?. So of course I was
> disappointed to see what mess the final NYT version was.
>
> --
> Carl B. Agee
> Director and Curator, Institute of Meteoritics
> Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
> MSC03 2050
> University of New Mexico
> Albuquerque NM 87131-1126
>
> Tel: (505) 750-7172
> Fax: (505) 277-3577
> Email: agee at unm.edu
> http://epswww.unm.edu/iom/pers/agee.html
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Received on Tue 05 Apr 2011 12:53:54 PM PDT