academic retribution

[archaeologist]

on my website, someone posted the following article by william dever and as i read it i came across this tidbit which i would like to discuss further here:

http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BAR/indexBAR.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=34&Issue=2&ArticleID=11

As a result of this article in BAR, we learned of another important house shrine in a private collection that should figure prominently in the debate about whether Yahweh had a consort.
The owner wishes to remain anonymous, lest he be subject to the vitriol the establishment now commonly heaps on collectors. Professor Dever, who is retired and therefore not subject to academic retribution, has agreed to discuss this house shrine here, but only if we “publish” it first.

i have bolded the words which are the subject of this topic and it concerns me that such fears and actions are present in a community supposedly out to find truth and what really happened inthe past.

what i gather from those two sentences is that the academics are only going to allow what they want to be released and nothing else.  kind of reminds me of what evolutionary scientists do to those who contradict their theory.

to me this is seen as childish and censorship but i would like to hear from others what they think or know this entails.

[JohnStevenson]

Black market operations in the area of archaeology is older than archaeology itself and goes back to the days of the pharaohs when tombs were being plundered by the very people who dug them.  The rationale among those who would bring such retribution against those who recognize unofficial finds is that ignoring it will make the problem go away.  Of course, one of the most obvious exceptions to this stance has been the Dead Sea Scrolls who were themselves originally obtained on the black market.

I am rather fond of Sir Flinders Petrie who made it a point to pay his diggers the market value of any finds so as not to lose portions of his dig to the black market.  Someone has commented that before he came along archaeologists used to only find large items.

[Buck2419AD]

Frankly I am not surprised. I am going to see Expelled with Ben Stein this weekend to see his take on academia on a different subject. I suspect the problem is that acadmeia is putting ideology above the data they don't like,  can't fit or spin in.

[archaeologist]

[Frankly I am not surprised. I am going to see Expelled with Ben Stein this weekend to see his take on academia on a different subject. I suspect the problem is that acadmeia is putting ideology above the data they don't like,  can't fit or spin in./quote]

this was the impression i got and not the one from stevenson.  knowing what evolutionary scientists do to those who disagree with evolution (and it is not pretty) i wonder if they are referring to the same sort of retribution.

[archaeologist]

how was the movie 'expelled'?  i have heard two sides of the story but as far as i know it is not in tis country and will have to wait till it comes out on dvd to see it.

[chrstnsln22]

Well, I think it's already out.. Haven't seen it thought but I just can't wait and give my feedback about it.


Christine