To Aaron and all contributors to the List:

Certain contributors have gotten into the habit of attributing quotes or
hypotheses to researchers or other beekeepers who don't normally follow
Bee-L.  In the past two weeks, I've checked with some of those whose names
were dropped, in order to determine if the quotes attributed to them
accurately reflected their views or research.  In each case, they did not
appreciate being quoted without permission, and felt that the the quotes did
not reflect their views.

In my opinion, this constitutes a serious problem for the List.  If
researchers who follow Bee-L, such as Drs. Nasr or Bromenshenk, are
misquoted, they will reply in order to correct the misinformation.
Unfortunately, researchers or beekeepers who don't subscribe are unlikely to
do so.  So that leaves the readers in a quandry:  do we all need to check
with the source quoted to confirm the accuracy of each attribution?  This
would overwhelm the researchers.  If we don't check, we must either accept
the attributed quote as accurate, or discount it out of hand due to lack of
faith in the contributor who submitted the quote.

In my opinion, these misquotes give the entire List a black eye.  There are
reasons that most researchers don't subscribe to the list!  This is truly
our loss.  Researchers and commercial beekeepers are justifiably concerned
about their reputations.  They word their written results and opinions
carefully.  On this list, we should feel free to discuss opinions, wild
ideas, or be able to change our individual opinions as much as we want.
However, this does not give us license to misquote others in an effort to
support our own views.

May I ask the moderators to reject posts that attribute opinions to a named
researcher without substantiation?  Any accurately quoted published material
would, of course, be appropriate to post.  Failing that, could any
questionable post be forwarded to the appropriate researcher by the
moderator, so that the readers know that the researcher has been given the
chance to respond?  Or better yet, could the contributors show some
restraint in name dropping, and contact the researcher themselves to obtain
permission to quote them.  I have, in my research, found that they are happy
to be accurately quoted.

Randy Oliver

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************