[meteorite-list] Social media might destroy meteorite collecting and selling!

[Marco Langbroek]

Peter Davidson <P.Davidson at nms.ac.uk> wrote:

> My concern is that, having given a negative answer (and they almost without
> question are) to an enquiry about a possible meteorite, I (or any
> curator/collector) become the subject of a vicious trolling campaign and find
> that our professional (and sometime personal) reputation is brought into
> question for no other reason than we gave the "wrong" answer.

I have a similar experience, unfortunately.

This is not restricted to meteorites by the way. I am a stone age archaeologists 
and quite often when I tell people that their fractured rock is not a handaxe 
(and in fact not even an artefact) the response is to question my expertise.

Part of the problem is that people tend to believe their own often inadequate 
internet "research" over the opinion of experts, and that there is a wider 
tendency nowadays to distrust scientists (and praise charlatans simply for their 
contrarian opinions). You see the same phenomena with regard to vaccines, GMO, 
global warming, etcetera. It's a wider cultural problem that I think has little 
to do with social media (even if these do play a role in it: but I don't think 
they are the source of it, merely a vehicle). It rides along with the increasing 
shallowness of discourse in our western society and the increasing indifference 
to expertise and devaluation of science. People start to confuse opinions with 
fact-based assessments.

- Marco

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Dr Marco (asteroid 183294) Langbroek
Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)

e-mail: dms at marcolangbroek.nl
http://www.dmsweb.org
http://www.marcolangbroek.nl
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