Internet Unprofessionalism

            At this era of unlimited access to all kind of information please be careful. Like I said in a earlier post, sharing the scientific information to the general public stands one of the most important task of the scientific community but it has to be in a relevant, respectful, and at least in a vulgarized scientific way. Today, my professor suggests us to take a look at small video that runs through the Facebook community and for me it was chocking how unprofessional it is.

            In this video we see some, definitely, unprofessional archaeologists digging up some skeletal remains from the World War II. Both by their improper technic and their poor knowledge of the skeleton: e.g. they took a femur for a humerus because it was close to the skull and they did not know how to lateralized it, they dishonoured the discipline.

             This week the topic of discussion in class is about the respect of the dead and the burial. I think that this short video just does the exact contrary of what respect means. Even if they are very sensitive, crying and praising this individual, they have no idea of how to extract the remains; they dig up the individual out of the soil very carelessly. In my point of view, they should be arrested for destroying an archaeological site, because excavating human remains without a proper formation and permits is an illegal activity. Moreover, I just can't believe that a popular and fairly reliable vulgarized scientific magazine such as Natural Geographic would encourage those unprofessional actions.

        With the unlimited access to the scientific information in the Internet, people stopped questioning the sources of the information. As we know Internet is a useful tool for getting information, but it is not a really good one for getting knowledge, so therefore there is always the need to double check the sources. Excess of information versus actual knowledge maybe this is where Internet leads us.

The video has been shut down but you can still go see who had done it. Here is the link to their webpage:

http://natgeotv.com/za/nazi-war-diggers/videos/human-bone-removal

Today (April 1st, 2014), just wanted to give you an update on what happens with this. So the "grave diggers" are pulled out indefinitely according to this article:           http://conflictantiquities.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/national-geographic-clearstory-nazi-war-diggers-pulled-indefinitely/.