29 October 2004

Credit where credit is due

Amateur scientists who report significant findings to professional scientists often receive recognition in the form of acknowledgements in scientific papers. Sometimes they even co-author the papers. However sometimes they are all but ignored.

Consider a news article in the journal Science about a major archaeological discovery in Wisconsin (Terrence Falk, "Wisconsin dig seeks to confirm pre-Clovis Americans," vol. 305, 30 July 2004, p. 590). This article describes one of the most important North American archaeological finds in recent history. Wooly mammoth bones dated to 13,500 radiocarbon years before present suggest that Clovis hunters were in North America some 2,000 years before their earliest assumed arrival.

The article in Science describes a major dig at the site where the mammoth bones were uncovered years ago. Key scientists are named and quoted, but the amateur scientist who first identified the evidence for human interaction with some of the bones is not.

According to the article, the excitement in Wisconsin dates back to 1990, when "an amateur archaeologist found butcher marks on mammoth bones stored at a local historical museum."

But the "amateur archaeologist" is not named! Nor is the original discoverer of the bones named.

A Google search eventually led to www.woollymammoth.org/ and the identity of the unnamed amateur scientist. According to this source, he is avocational archaeologist Dave Waison, who in 1990 served as a volunteer worker at the Kenosha Public Museum of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

When Waison was helping out at Kenosha Historical Society Museum, the museum showed him mammoth bones that had been found nearby more than half a century earlier. Waison immediately recognized marks on the bones as the same kind of markings left by manmade tools. This discovery led to the current dig nearby.

The article at www.woollymammoth.org/ named amateur archaeologist Phil Sander as having drawn a detailed map of the area now being excavated. He drew the map in 1964 after mammoth bones were accidentally uncovered on a farm, but he is not named in the Science article.

Do amateur and citizen scientists deserve credit where credit is due? Send you comments to "Backscatter" (type "Mammoth" in the subject line). You can let the editors of Science know what you think about failing to credit amateur scientists by sending e-mails to Science here. Diplomatically written letters that include the citation of the article in question (see above) stand a better chance of publication.