In praise of the big picture

When ambitious large-scale projects are proposed, like the Paleobiology Database (Alroy et al. 2001) and Panama Paleontology Projects (Jackson and Johnson 2001), there is inevitably a negative reaction from various quarters, which is quickly forgotten when the projects start to yield results. Given...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Paleobiology 2003-01, Vol.29 (1), p.8-10
Main Author: Nee, Sean
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity
Biological taxonomies
Birds
Ecological genetics
Evolution
extinction
global
Matters of the Record
Matters of the Records
Paleontology
Phylogeny
Poetry
Songbirds
speciation
Species
Species extinction
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Summary:When ambitious large-scale projects are proposed, like the Paleobiology Database (Alroy et al. 2001) and Panama Paleontology Projects (Jackson and Johnson 2001), there is inevitably a negative reaction from various quarters, which is quickly forgotten when the projects start to yield results. Given that, it may be useful to sing the praises of “big picture” science more generally and I will do so after briefly addressing this discussion starter in the context of my own research.
ISSN:0094-8373
1938-5331
DOI:10.1666/0094-8373(2003)029<0008:IPOTBP>2.0.CO;2