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Bob O'H



Posts: 2564
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 11 2014,15:12   

Quote (Dr.GH @ Aug. 09 2014,19:37)
A part time technician does not get to do independent research using University facilities.

A "permanent part time technician" was taking liberties that a faculty member would not have taken.
...
Reading the article, and ironically his lawyer prepared complaint, showed a huge glaring reason to fire him. It was the amount of equipment, staff time, and lab stockroom supplies that were used on the one hand, and the total lack of funding or authorization on the other. And, as this "research" is already published, there is no possible way that those costs can be recovered. Armitage potentially stole $thousands$ from the University, unless he paid out of pocket. (I'll take bets he didn't).


I gather from some email contact I've had with a couple of people that the department were happy for Armitage to do the work using their machines. I assume that the costs are seen as fairly low, so they wouldn't be too worried.

 
Quote
It is also obvious that few people actually read the "research" paper supposedly at the center of this little storm.

Mark Hollis Armitage, Kevin Lee Anderson
2013 "Soft sheets of fibrillar bone from a fossil of the supraorbital horn of the dinosaur Triceratops horridus" Acta Histochemica, Volume 115, Issue 6, Pages 603–608

I have. It is crap.

The age of dinosaur bone is based on the formation it is recovered from and not the condition of the bone. There was no competent stratigraphic analysis of these fossils to associate any radiometric data and the recovered material. (Armitage also denies elsewhere the validity of all radiometric dates). The fact is that the fossil was found in a shallow secondary deposit. It was cracked and open to the environment. It was observed to have rootlets growing through it! None of the reasonable tests for the age of the material were performed (especially amino acid racemization analysis if as I suspect the "soft tissue" is recent plant and microorganisms). Armitage and Anderson soaked chunks from the horn core in Glutaraldehyde which is a cross-linking and tanning agent. In short, they made plastic out of any bacteria, fungi, or any other organic sludge on the bone. The attempted to demineralize other samples with sodium EDTA was incomplete. There are other problems as well.

The journal will be humiliated as soon as I find time to review it for publication.

I'd suggest you write a (polite!) letter to the journal about this. My impression is that the editors aren't used to receiving manuscripts about field collected samples, so they may not have looked at that side of things.

I don't work in palaeontology, so I can't comment as an expert, but it did feel as if there was a lot of material missing, e.g. the precise location where the fossil was found, including surrounding strata, and what precautions were taken to prevent contamination. There was also nothing about the age of the fossil, but given the context that's not a surprise.

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It is fun to dip into the various threads to watch cluelessness at work in the hands of the confident exponent. - Soapy Sam (so say we all)

   
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