Abstract
Motivation for this comment Recently, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has sent around 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). The signatories of this letter request significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology. With our present, multi-authored comment, we aim to argue why these suggestions will not lead to improvement of both practice and ethics of palaeontological research but, conversely, hamper its further development. Although we disagree with most contents of the SVP letter, we appreciate this initiative to discuss scientific practices and the underlying ethics. Here, we consider different aspects of the suggestions by Rayfield et al. (2020) in which we see weaknesses and dangers. It is our intent to compile views from many different fields of palaeontology, as our discipline is (and should remain) pluralistic. This contribution deals with the aspects concerning Myanmar amber. Reference is made to Haug et al. (2020a) for another comment on aspects concerning amateur palaeontologists/ citizen scientists/private collectors.
Highlights
Extended author information available on the last page of the articleThe Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) letter rightly raises concerns over the recently highlighted issue of ’blood amber’ from Myanmar in the context of “fossils in and from conflict zones” (Rayfield et al 2020: p. 1), based on popular articles that appeared in the New Scientist (Lawton 2019), Science (Sokol 2019) and New York Times (Joel 2020)
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has sent around 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)
The SVP letter rightly raises concerns over the recently highlighted issue of ’blood amber’ from Myanmar in the context of “fossils in and from conflict zones” (Rayfield et al 2020: p. 1), based on popular articles that appeared in the New Scientist (Lawton 2019), Science (Sokol 2019) and New York Times (Joel 2020)
Summary
The SVP letter rightly raises concerns over the recently highlighted issue of ’blood amber’ from Myanmar in the context of “fossils in and from conflict zones” (Rayfield et al 2020: p. 1), based on popular articles that appeared in the New Scientist (Lawton 2019), Science (Sokol 2019) and New York Times (Joel 2020) We are deeply concerned with the humanitarian situation in Myanmar and think that a response from the palaeontological community is clearly warranted In this respect we very much agree with this sentiment expressed in the SVP letter. Amber is found in Tilin, Magway Region and Khamti, Sagaing Region, all of which are not conflict areas (see Zheng et al 2018 for details on the age and geographic location of these mines) In these latter areas, the miners have governmental permits from the Myanmar Gems Enterprise, their amber is legally traded at the biannual Myanmar Gems Emporium and tax is paid to the government Who decides which governments and nations should be boycotted today? What ethical standards should be applied? Such decisions should be broadly supported instead of unilaterally imposed, and perhaps the SVP should strive to develop an ethics code amongst its members to decide where the boundaries lie for palaeontological studies, regardless of political motivation, influence or agenda
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