Ecolog:
This forum has considerable potential (9,000+ subscribers?) to make an
end-run around the restrictive aspects of the "publish-as-usual" syndrome in
the realms of theoretical and applied ecology, if only participants would
"sign on" for the duration of a discussion rather than to fizzle when the
going gets tough or to outright discourage further discussion.. While there
will continue to be a place for formal publication attached to money and
"position," it is either "sort of" reasonable or sort of unreasonable to
conclude that this forum need be limited to a place to post job
announcements, rant, and indulge in chit-chat, of a both "high-" and
"low-level" nature.
Any disciplined discipline needs to be continually sharpening its cutting
edge lest it become dull and doctrinaire. And certainly it must ignore
naysayers and dictators while embracing criticism as opportunity and
widening the discussion rather than restricting it, giving it cohesion and
courageously recognizing slipperiness and attempts at control and domination
for the sake of some establishment or individual ego. This fosters a healthy
conflict between forces of control and domination and the neutral testing of
all concepts. Therefore, this conflict will not end because of a single
post, but it seems worthwhile to reassert the obvious periodically, largely
because some subset of the list population may not yet have considered such
principles or have been forced away from them.
It is the responsibility of the discipline of ecology to render its products
with more clarity than obfuscation and to continue to test its theoretical
foundations so that the applied measures serve as tests of theory and of the
basis for the applications via empirical feedback loops into theory in a
state of dynamic and continuing complimentarity. Applications need critical
review; perhaps the worst possible result of the formation of an application
is for any of them to develop a "fan base."
Eventually, as the quality of the forum discourse develops further, and the
casual becomes its own casualty, more of the most well-recognized leading
authorities in the field may deign to participate.
WT
"The worst kind of ignorance is not so much not knowing as it is knowing so
much that ain't so." (Paraphrased from Henry Shaw)
