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Jerry Hodges wrote...
>I think of professionals as someone with a degree (some don't have a
degree) whose job is to find, gather >and publish data for the greater good
of the public, and/or academia (same thing?). Amateurs are those who
>find specimens, and they may or may not gather data, and they seldom
publish. I haven't addressed what >happens to the
specimens..[snip]..Then there is, of course, the strict definition that simply
says that if one is >paid money, they are a professional.
There is a huge
amount of overlap between your definitions. Professionals do field work
and collect specimens too, amateurs sometimes publish, and degreed professionals
in paleontology don't always get paid money, but amateur collectors
might.
In my opinion,
professionalism is a state of mind, attained through a combination
of acquired knowledge and disciplined thinking. A person can get both of
these things without going to school for a degree, but he second is more
difficult. It is invaluble to have some kind of mentor who forces you to
rationalize your thinking and find the weak or poorly explained parts of an
argument. I've heard the opinions expressed on this
list along the lines of
"I know what I think and don't have to rationalize my veiwpoint to
anyone" (an odd thing to say if you are posting it to an entire mailing
list), but in science this is a reprehensible attitude. If someone uses legal arguing tactics to squirrel out of
answering criticisms to their ideas, then they are missing the point of doing
science in the first place. Learning to critically attack your own arguments
from all angles and consider opposing veiwpoints is a big part of
professionalism, and I think this is the main reason why a lot of amateurs who
are very familiar with the literature still have a hard time breaking into
mainstream paleontology (of course, having a non-paleontological day job that
you have to work in order to eat and pay rent can really suck up research
time).
>I believe that for both categories, a great many specimens in up in
drawers; too many.
If you were to browse
through a museum's collection, what criteria would you use to decide which
specimens make it "to many" ? Where should these extra specimens
have gone? A private collection? Left to weather? The secret
room in the Pentagon where the extraterrestrial artifacts are
kept?
LN
Jeff
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