I have the issue but have not yet sat down to read the article in its entirety. This is the article that I posted about here when Russel Shor started collecting information. What did you think of the article?
So far I just skipped ahead to page 216 because the article I wrote with Doug Fiske is referenced there. That paragraph bothers me tremendously, however.
This part in particular:
In recent years, though, some Chinese pearl farmers have had considerable success with shell bead nucleation of hybrid (H. cumingii and H. schlegelii) mussels to better control shape (Fiske and Shepherd, 2007)
There were three important facts we expressed in the article. Actually there were more than three, but these three are very important.
1. Chinese farmers are having considerable success with shell bead nucleation.
2. The Chinese are now using the Biwa pearly mussel (
H. schlegeli) in pearl production, and we found evidence of a hybrid mussel being used as well (
H. schlegeli and
H. cumingi).
3. The coin bead spherical bead process helps control the shape and increase the likelihood of success in shell bead nucleation.
The quote from the G&G article took these three points and combined them in a way never intended - which makes it completely wrong. We found no evidence the Chinese were using the hybrid for bead nucleation. In fact what we found was evidence to the contrary. They are using
H. cumingi. Also, controlling the shape is due to the process, not the type of shell.
After the editing process Doug and I went through for that article a mistake such as this is nearly incomprehensible to me - especially because the quote comes from their own journal.
It is possible to get permission to republish articles from G&G on other news sources, but I know it is difficult. It will probably be even more difficult after I hit "submit post" on this thread...
