Just saw a thread re. the current palaeontology drama that boils down to "researchers regularly keep museum specimens for study at home" and- no? That's not allowed? Do people think that's acceptable?
Well, I know of cases where people were allowed to store fossils at home because the institution had no safe work place for them.
Says it all, doesn't it?
The only correct way is to provide safe work spaces and keep the fossils inhouse. Period.
One time me and another researcher were going to re-describe some arthropods (I was working on Crustacean phenotypic plasticity at the time) and we couldn't because the museum in Novosibirsk let us know that the last person to describe them 10 years prior had never returned the fossils.
Well, if the fact that people like to keep sacred artifacts for themselves rather than returning them to the proper tribe is any indication of reaction to what’s allowed to with objects…then the answer is too many people thinking it’s acceptable…
