In Response to Russ Graham's post re: native plants and mycorrhizae, Elaine
Ingham said:
What annoys me about your e-mail is the fact that you seem to feel that
someone else is to blame when you can't get the knowledge that you want,
right when
you want it.
Maybe mycorrhizal people should be resentful of the fact that you expect
them
to hand you everything you want to know, without paying for or supporting
the
work that has been done. It has not been an easy battle to get people to
accept that mycorrhizal fungi are important. We are lucky to know about
mycorrhizal fungi for commercial plant species.
If mycorrhizal researchers had been paid to do the work of assessing whether
the plants you want to know about were mycorrhizal, they would have done the
work. So, you expect scientists to work for free? Can we expect you to
work
for free?
You are being given the best information possible, given our current state
of
knowledge. People don't know everything yet. Pay someone to find out what
you want to know instead of being resentful and frustrated.
I reply:
There are a group of scientists who want their science to be openly
available, and a journal has been started called PLoS Biology (People's
Library of Science). It will be interesting to see what gets published and
how this journal fares. The range of subject matter is wide, and this month
marks the first publication online of this journal. I cannot comment on the
economics of their being able to make their information available --
presumably some grant paid for them to do it, so it's not by any notion
"free", but this is a move to unlock research from pay-per-view journals.
http://biology.plosjournals.org/information/index.html
I would be interested to learn the names of mycorrhizal researchers whose
work is available for a price. Are you referring commissioning research,
logging into an Elsevier publication, or hiring a consultant? It is not
immediately clear where to start, so your recommendations/contacts would be
welcome additions to the general knowledge.
The suggestion that mycorrhizal people should be resentful does not make
good business sense. The software companies sell technical assistance to
people who buy their product; it would make more business sense for the
mycorrhizal people to sell technical assistance or simply inform the
customer of the limits of their available knowledge than to waste one second
on resentment.
It is how it is until it's some other way. Energy to change things is well
spent. Hopefully the mycorrhizal people will realize that pouring angst on
ill-chosen targets is not one of the ways to change it.
Chris Reid
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Received on Fri Oct 10 2003 - 10:54:22 EDT