Re: Colin Patterson/Luther Sunderland

Jim.Foley@symbios.com
Tue, 26 Mar 96 12:48:59 MST

>>>>> On Tue, 26 Mar 96 06:35:32 EST, sjones@iinet.net.au (Stephen Jones) said:

>> I am still trying to get a copy of this 1981 transcript of Patterson's
>> address to the American Natural History Museum. Do you (or anyone on
>> the Reflector) know where I can get it?

Paul Nelson is working on it, and I'm sure will let us know when done.

>> I think there is confusion here. Sunderland, as is normal practice,
>> tape recorded his personal interviews with Patterson and other
>> curators of natural history museums. I think Dodson is getting that
>> confused with that. In fact I cannot see in Sunderland's book
>> "Darwin's Enigma" where he even mentions Patterson's 1981 address to
>> the AMNH!

Steve, the confusion is yours. Dodson and Howe were talking only about
the tape of Patterson's talk at the AMNH, which was reported in an ICR
Impact article in 1982. Sunderland's book, and his taped interviews
with Patterson were never mentioned and had nothing to do with it.

JF>Dodson replied and retracted his suggestion that Sunderland might have
>been at fault, but maintained (correctly, I think) that it had been a
>reasonable question. He agreed, in a later letter, with Patterson's

>> How can it be " a reasonable question" if Sunderland did not even
>> mention Patterson's 1981 address? I suspect that Dodson did not
>> even bother to read Sunderland's slim book.

Dodson rightly pointed out that taping of a talk without informing the
speaker is at best rude, and assumed, reasonably but wrongly, that it
had been Sunderland who had done so. The Impact article and transcript
that Dodson read *were* about the AMNH address. Sunderland's book was
never discussed.

>> Well, after getting such a simple matter as Sunderland's tape recording
>> of his interview with Patterson's in 1979, with a tape recording by an
>> unnamed person at the AMNH in 1981 (which matter is not AFAIK even in
>> Sunderland's book), Dodson does not have much credit with me for
>> objectivity in this matter.

Having read Dodson's letters, I think he handled the matter very fairly.
This is the *second* time you have confused the AMNH talk and
Sunderland's interview.

-- Jim Foley                         Symbios Logic, Fort Collins, COJim.Foley@symbios.com                        (970) 223-5100 x9765  I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call  it a weasel.      -- Edmund Blackadder