I chose the title because also want to bring the news itself to people’s attention, and to give some of my thoughts on it. Horrible as it is, it is sobering to understand that ‘one of us’, as in a fellow naturalist and researcher, is guilty of these acts. He is also the second ‘TV crocodile guy’ from Australia to run afoul of the law. Matt Wright’s case is still before the courts, though he is a wrangler, not a researcher, and his scandal, while serious, is far less grotesque and traumatizing to read. His shows have since been pulled from Netflix, but he’s still a tourism icon with full-sized cardboard cutouts of him displayed at the usual tourist joints.
If I might add some of my personal biases as a naturalist working in remote Australia who isn’t of either man’s skin colour, nature TV viewers really seem to love their tall, suntanned, beefy, charismatic, white rough-and-tumble blokes with a twinkle in their eye, a knife on their belts, who are good at hiding heinous wrongdoing. But diversity in nature programming is a topic for another day. I think that both men may have caused a serious blow to the reputation of herpetologists in Australia, but maybe I’m overestimating the attention span of the average casual TV viewer.
@astra_the_dragon Understood. I have omitted details which are now widely published in print and online news media though these are accessible to children, and would want to keep the thread that way.
@SQFP @jnstuart Thank you, I respect that perspective. There is a good chance that I, or more likely my colleagues, will probably have to consider citing Adam Britton in the future, even if it makes us feel like we’ve bathed in vomit. In addition, the scope of his co-authorship also includes non-Australian crocodilian taxa and researchers, and at least one prehistoric species. @williampaulwhite17 I would definitely severely scrutinize his previous work, and if he ever steps out of prison, will do everything in my power to avoid his future work.