Update on the Brazilian primate researcher case 8 Aug 200718 Sep 2017 Nature [subscription required] is reporting that Brazilian ecologists are threatening a strike if Marc van Roosmalen is not released. You’ll recall that I posted on his case before. Van Roosmalen is a maverick primate researcher who has effectively been imprisoned for 16 years for political reasons. Brazilian researchers are justifiably concerned that if he can be, so can they, in the course of their doing their ecological research. Nature reports: …in 2002, van Roosmalen was charged with taking four monkeys from the forest northwest of Manaus without permits. The charges led to a federal congressional inquiry, a criminal case and, in June this year, a prison sentence of 15 years and 9 months. Van Roosmalen was convicted of keeping monkeys in a rehabilitation facility at his Manaus home without permits; auctioning names of new primate species to wealthy donors; and selling materials that had been donated to his former employer, the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) in Manaus. The sentence has other researchers in Brazil worried. “My main concern is the precedent,” says ecologist Regina Luizão of INPA in Manaus. “If this is happening to him now, how can we tell that we are not next?” The ostensive concern, they say, is biopiracy, but it increasingly looks like this is being used, in other places as well as Brazil, as a way to control access to the natural resources by those wishing to exploit it, rather than stopping that sort of exploitation. Ecology has a habit of saying things governments and vested interests would rather not hear. Ecology and Biodiversity Politics
Politics A personal revelation 8 Dec 2007 John, hear me. What? Who said that? It is I, God. Oh come on. PZ, is that you? I’m not buying it. It is I, God. Look, I’ll prove it. [Clouds in the sky form the letters “Yep, It’s Me” for a minute and then evaporate.] Ummm, OK, for the… Read More
Evolution Nationalism and evolution 3 Dec 2007 Way back in the 1910s, when human evolution was poorly known, some trickster, probably Charles Dawson, its discoverer, set up a hoax: Piltdown man. This was enthusiastically accepted by many British experts because it made Britain, and in particular, England, a leading locale in human evolution. This was the era… Read More
Academe Rant: Old people 13 Mar 201413 Mar 2014 The Australian government is looking at extending the pension age to 70, so that older Australians, especially those in the Baby Boom demographic, will be free of the public purse for another 5 years over the present age of 65. Except that it is not the case that older Australians… Read More
I think you are right, but “sapismo” may also be playing a role here. It’s sad to say, but ego plays a big role in science, and in Latin America the big sapos (toads) often tolerate only small non-threatening sapos in the same pool. When a smaller sapo starts to grow, it is eaten alive. One of the more interesting sapismo stories was that of a Brazilian herpetologist, who was fired from his post when he became a zoological celebrity. As a down-and-out persona-non-grata zoologist he started to write popular songs of the romantic genre, became a muscial celebrity and made a small fortune. He returned to the zoological pool as a very large sapo. There is still hope for van Roosmalen.
The ostensive concern, they say, is biopiracy, but it increasingly looks like this is being used, in other places as well as Brazil, as a way to control access to the natural resources by those wishing to exploit it, rather than stopping that sort of exploitation. Ecology has a habit of saying things governments and vested interests would rather not hear. There is no idea so pure, good and well-intentioned that someone can’t find a way to exploit it.