Friday, 20 December 2013

Arthur Houghton III Advocates Corporal Punishment of Scholars


Arthur Houghton III writes uncompromisingly as ever, and evoking the latent violence seen in much recent antiquitist discussion in the US (especially in ACCG circles), indulges in flogging fantasies:
"Of course, any scholar who deliberately chooses to deliberately ignore important unprovenanced material in their work should be summarily dismissed from their position and taken out whipped like a cur"
I do not see the significance of "of course", especially if we are dealing with scholarship in a discipline for which origin of data is of importance. Such disciplines include archaeology, palaeontology, fossil taphonomy, entomology, conchology and meteorites, and probably a host of others.

What about those scholars making use of illictly-obtained, or illegally-obtained  data? Or about making use of data which could have been illictly or illegally obtained and there is no proof of licit origins?  Do we whip them too? What proper discipline would base any serious research on such material and consider it was "ethical"?

Vignette: Delaware Whipping Post  just across Chesapeake Bay from Mr Houghton.


Anyway, what's this coin collector talk about whipping dogs? What kind of people are these?



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