Recently, a CONCH-L discussion covered some aspects of
poor, bad, and false data for shells.

While searching around the WWW on a cowry-
related quest, I encountered the following link--
http://abbas0.chez.tiscali.fr/pagecyptessellata.html
--and although the caption says "Pearl City, Hawai [sic]
-40m", it is false due the following:

--Pearl City (Oahu), Hawaii, is located on the far leeward
side of Pearl Harbor, a harbor which has a maximum
depth of 18 meters (~60 feet) (see info at
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7545/pearl/
and there are other sites where this info is available). No
one, repeat, NO ONE, dives or dredges in Pearl Harbor.
Only the U.S. Navy sends divers down in its waters because
there are tons of unexploded ordinance scattered on and in
its bottom. There has never been a reported collection of a
Cypraea tessellata from Pearl Harbor, mainly for the above
reasons.

This particular instance of false data has been on-line for
nearly two years. If it requires someone like myself--who
actually worked in Pearl City, Hawaii, for years and knows
about the local geography and military restrictions--to spot
this obvious error, what chance does even a skilled shell
enthusiast have to spot false/bad data on shells supposedly
taken in the far-flung corners of the world?

That points to the ‘real’ data problem: the person who is not
self-collecting must have confidence in the source providing
the shell and its data. Then obtaining shells becomes a kind
of “confidence game” and it is no longer a matter of Nature
or science, it is a matter of human perception and desire.

There worse cases of data ‘fraud’ but this makes what I feel
is a valid point: Its all about trust if you’re not collecting
the shells yourself.

A Happy 2003 to those using the Common Era calendar.

Bob Dayle (a.k.a. ‘makuabob’)
http://www.cowrys.org


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