I thought I should post this here regarding the curator's statement, "You don't want to confuse people with so many competing theories."
After reading Golb's review of the exhibit, a friend of mine emailed the Waitt Foundation (one of exhibit's main funders), referring them to the review and suggesting that the foundation's money might have been misused. A few days later, he received a reply from Dominique Rissolo, Director of Research of the foundation. A google search shows that Rissolo got his Ph.D. in 2001 and, before joining Waitt, was a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at San Diego State University, where Dr. Kohn the curator also teaches.
In his email, Rissolo defended the exhibit's "combined interdisciplinary and interfaith efforts" and said, "the exhibition itself was not designed specifically to confront or otherwise emphasize the controversies or debates that are discussed by Dr. Golb in his commentaries... The level of discourse in which Dr. Golb engages is certainly familiar territory to the curators of the exhibition (and one from which they do not shy away); however, there seemed little value in foisting such arguments on the general publicvia the exhibition."
To which my friend responded:
"You avoid addressing the allegation that the exhibitors undertook to defend one point of view in those controversies and debates, while carefully hiding from the public the evidence supporting the other point of view... I am somewhat surprised that you would describe the normal process of helping the public comprehend the terms of a scientific debate as 'foisting such arguments on the general public.'"
Truemors
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at 15:41 on November 6th, 2007
I thought I should post this here regarding the curator's statement, "You don't want to confuse people with so many competing theories."
After reading Golb's review of the exhibit, a friend of mine emailed the Waitt Foundation (one of exhibit's main funders), referring them to the review and suggesting that the foundation's money might have been misused. A few days later, he received a reply from Dominique Rissolo, Director of Research of the foundation. A google search shows that Rissolo got his Ph.D. in 2001 and, before joining Waitt, was a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at San Diego State University, where Dr. Kohn the curator also teaches.
In his email, Rissolo defended the exhibit's "combined interdisciplinary and interfaith efforts" and said, "the exhibition itself was not designed specifically to confront or otherwise emphasize the controversies or debates that are discussed by Dr. Golb in his commentaries... The level of discourse in which Dr. Golb engages is certainly familiar territory to the curators of the exhibition (and one from which they do not shy away); however, there seemed little value in foisting such arguments on the general public via the exhibition."
To which my friend responded:
"You avoid addressing the allegation that the exhibitors undertook to defend one point of view in those controversies and debates, while carefully hiding from the public the evidence supporting the other point of view... I am somewhat surprised that you would describe the normal process of helping the public comprehend the terms of a scientific debate as 'foisting such arguments on the general public.'"
My friend hasn't heard back from the foundation.