Citizen Science
In April 2020 the SVP sent a letter to more than 300 paleontology journals with proposals for “significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology”.
Carolin Haug and more than 40 colleagues welcome the initiative but consider the proposals to be counter-productive. The authors explain this in their comments.
“The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has recently circulated a letter, dated 21st April, 2020, to more than 300 palaeontological journals, signed by the President, Vice President and a former President of the society (Rayfield et al. 2020). In this letter, significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology are requested. In our present, multi-authored comment, we aim to demonstrate why these suggestions will not lead to improvement of both practice and ethics of palaeontological research, but conversely, will hamper its development. Despite our disagreement with the contents of the SVP letter, we appreciate the initiative and the opportunity to discuss scientific practices and the underlying ethics. Here, we consider different aspects of the suggestions of the SVP in which we see weaknesses and dangers. Our aim was to collect views from many different fields. The scientific world is, and should be, a pluralistic endeavour. This contribution deals with the aspects concerning amateur palaeontologists/citizen scientists/private collectors. Reference is made to Haug et al. (2020a) for another comment on aspects concerning Myanmar amber.” Read more