Greetings

This whole issue of funding of bee research has been completely distorted, over-simplified, and misunderstood. I was at the 1st International Conference on Pollinator Biology, this summer and was please to see that it was sponsored by a broad variety of sources, but many of.these divergent interests were on the program, presenting their points of view without fear of vilification. I have gotten personally acquainted with a lot of the players and respect the validity of their positions.



Trying to attack the motives of researchers by way of pointing to their funding shows a lack of awareness of the difficulty of getting extremely expensive work done. Furthermore, to suppose that if such and such a researcher is doing better, more important or more impartial work simply on the basis of what funding he or she was able to attract is equally foolish. No self-respecting researcher would accept funding  to do scientific work if the funding was in any way dependent on the outcome.



That may be how politics is done, but science has a different set of ethical standards.



Peter Loring Borst



* * *



1st International Conference on Pollinator Biology

The conference organizers would like to thank the following sponsors 



Penn State Department of Entomology

College of Agricultural Sciences

Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences



Häagen‐Dazs

Anthropologie/Urban Outfitters

Bayer CropScience

Syngenta

National Honey Board

The Almond Board of California





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