Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding 'Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil‑based scientific data': Myanmar amber

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

Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding “Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility of fossil‑based scientific data”: Myanmar amber

Non peer reviewe

Optische Korngroessenbestimmung des Sohlenmaterials in Fliessgewaessern mittels Unterwasserkamera und digitaler Bildverarbeitung (UWPS) Abschlussbericht

Available from TIB Hannover: F99B919 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEBundesministerium fuer Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Bonn (Germany)DEGerman

Das Institut fuer Wasserwesen der Universitaet der Bundeswehr Muenchen. Bericht 1998

Available from TIB Hannover: RN 6966(65/1998) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

In situ Sichtbarmachung von Schwebstoffpartikeln mittels Unterwasservideomikroskop zur morphologischen Partikelbeschreibung Abschlussbericht

The underwater videomicroskop represents an optical measuring concept for visualization and characterization of suspended matter in rivers, lakes and seas. An image of the measuring volume, which spreads 0,9 x 1,2 mm, is formed by a CCD camera which is equipped with macro lenses. The image contains 512 x 512 picture elements each 2,38 x 1,79 #mu#m with a resolution of 256 grey levels. A Xenon Flash with a puls duration of 2 #mu#s and a frequency of 25-100 allows the freezing of particles with a relative velocity of up to 50 cm/s without movement blur and the determination of its relative velocity. The images may be examined visually on the monitor, stored on video tape and analyzed online by digital image analysis. The analysis may be performed offline for variation of test parameters. For the interpretation of the image an interactive or automated analysis software has been designed. The characteristic parameters are diameter of circle of same area, axis ratio of approximating ellipse and several form describing parameters (fourier coefficients, tangent angles, ratio perimeter/area). By means of the form parameters effects of a non spherical particles form may be quantified (i.e. measuring error, dynamic behavior, chemical properties). The application of these measuring technique are amongst others suspended matter transport, material characterization, water quality management and limnology. (orig.)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F97B635+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Bonn (Germany)DEGerman