[Coral-List] Transplanting coral fragments (Shinn)

[Peter Sale]

Hi all,
I cannot resist commenting on the last paragraph in Gene Shinn's interesting post on work he did back in the early 1960s.  He states, "I would be the first to admit that these unsophisticated self-funded
studies would be unacceptable in today's technical world. However, no one was attempting this kind of work at the time and no funding agency would fund such work. This was a time when diving related work barely existed and computers were far in the future. However, as simple as it was these studies answered the questions we were asking."

Two interesting points - no one was attempting and no funding agency would fund - and - these studies answered the questions.  To the point about funding I'd also bring in his comment about such studies being 'unacceptable' in today's technical world.  Too often we are blinded by technology, and believe wrongly that simple experiments done without sophisticated technology cannot be illuminating.  Certainly the funding agencies are guilty of a technology bias, but they get that from we reviewers.  Scientists reviewing grants need to focus on the questions being asked rather than on the number of thousands of dollars-worth of equipment or software being employed to answer them.

As for his second point... does it not suggest that there may be other little gems of knowledge hidden in papers published decades ago?  Gems that most of us never bother to look for because we are taught that it's only the recent stuff that needs to be read and cited.
Guess I am just getting too old.
Peter

Peter F Sale
University of Windsor
sale at uwindsor.ca<mailto:sale at uwindsor.ca>
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