Re: paleontologists

[Phillip Bigelow <bh162@scn.org>]

pwillis@ozemail.com.au (Paul Willis) wrote:

someone asked:
> >If there was to be a paleontologist of the century, who might it be?
> >jc

> Gupta.

I'm assuming you are referring to the <in>famous V.J. Gupta,
and not the two or three other paleontologists who have that
same last name, and are, as opposed to ol' V.J., legit paleontologists.

Ha! Good one, Paul! I'll second it!
After all, who said the "paleontologist of the century" had
to be a good guy?

For those of you who are now totally confused,
and if you have access to Journal of Paleontology
back issues, check out this ref:

Webster, G.D., C.B. Rexroad, and J.A. Talent. 1993.
   An evaluation of the V.J. Gupta conodont papers.
   Journal of Paleontology 67(3):486-493.

The report is a documentation of the fraudulent published
research by V.J. Gupta.  He published 450 conodont papers
in his career, most of them based on fraudulent claims
and purposeful distortions.
Until this paper by Webster et al. came out, Himalayan
biostratigraphy was a mess.  V.J. Gupta was ubiquitously
cited in major works that dealt with Himalayan geology,
biostratigraphy, taxonomy, and paleogeography.  The
papers that cited him were themselves cited.
It's a real paleontological horror story.
The authors state as their concluding remark:

"Our objective in this report is to evaluate the Gupta
conodont papers and inform investigators and the geologic
community of the papers that are of a spurious and dubious
nature as well as those that have been verified.  Hopefully,
sufficient citations of this report will continue to be made
so that future workers will become aware of the problem and
citations of his fabricated work will cease." (p. 486)

                       <pb>