The DinoBase Public Forum

When I sent out the initial request for answers to my survey I got an almost immediate (and as you will have read, thorough) set of responses from Matt Wedel (aka Dr Vector). He immediately suggested that in addition to my posts we use the set of questions to generate a blog meme and I readily agreed. This would allow others to voice their opinions in a more systematic manner (that just adding comments to my posts) and to spread the idea to a wider audience which is good for all concerned given some of the issues being highlighted – it should be of real interest to palaeontologists, professional and amateur, other academics and the public as a whole. Spreading it around and inciting new ideas and opinions if of course therefore key.

Despite my commentary on the posts however, I wanted to have my say too, and I had found it especially interesting to comment of the thoughts of others – whether they matched or were completely at odds with my own. As a result I suggested a simple shift in the concept – I have sent my answers to the questions to Matt, he will add his comments and then send his answers onto the next target and so on. Obviously this process has already started, so to catch this at the start and see what *I* think about all of this, you can start on Ask Dr Vector here: http://drvector.blogspot.com/2008/06/st … -meme.html

If I have the energy and enthuasiasm, I'll keep track of the subsequent answers here, but don't bet on it...



This is finally the actual last in the seres for now. I must say the readership and comments have been disappointingly muted, if nothing else there is a huge variety of opinions voiced and these issues affect not just palaeontologist, but other academics, and the public as a whole. They are worthy of debate, or at least need to be aired more widely. Palaeontology really is undergoing soemthing of a revolution right now and we need to think about how this will affect research and beyond, and that can only be done through discussion - though that is in itself soemthing that does not seem to be happenning much right now.