Talk:Howard T. Odum

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The article needs to do a better job of justifying its existence. It simply throws out facts relating to Howard Odum in semi-random order, without regard to what's important or what relates to what. It doesn't even specifically say what Odum profession was!

Suggested organization: (1) Brief statement of who he was and why he was imporant (Something like, "Howard Odum was a system ecologist who pioneered...") (2) Biographical sketch; (3) Summary of Odum's important contributions and accomplishment. The book references are fine, but you might also want to sort through the many references to Odum on the web, and link the better ones.

The article also needs a some basic copy editing, but I can do that for you, once you get a proper article structure in place. ---Isaac R 06:57, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Ecosystem ecologist" sounds tautological. Perhaps you mean "system ecologist" (a term I've heard applied to Odum)? If so, a separate article defining the profession is would be informative, since many people (well me, anyway) have no idea what such a system ecologist is. ---Isaac R 19:29, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, ecosystem ecology is a real subfield, one of the major subfields in ecology. Systems ecology is a term that has been used by some - Odum editted a 1983 book by that name - but it is not the same as ecosystem ecology, and it's not that widely used. I agree that an article on ecosystem ecology is needed - it's been on my "to do" list for a while. I'll make a stub and work from there. Guettarda 20:19, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The questionable choice to label this thumbnail biography "pseudoscience"

Hello. My question is whether, in this particular case, Mr. McCready's application of the “pseudoscience” categorization was unjustified.

H.T. Odum earned a B.S. in zoology (Phi Beta Kappa) at the University of North Carolina, worked in the Air Force as a tropical meteorologist, and earned a Ph.D. in zoology at Yale University. He then entered into the field that his brother Eugene Odum was pioneering: systems ecology. Howard Odum later founded the Center for Wetlands at the University of Florida, and by the end of his life had written some 300 scientific papers.

Odum got his degrees in the science departments of solid, respectable universities, one of them being Yale. As to ecology itself, it is accepted as a science and taught in countless university biology departments around the world. That it is a young science, barely over 50 years old, does not make it a pseudoscience.

Granted, "systems ecology" is a specific line of inquiry and hypothesis/theory within ecology. Again, I doubt this makes it pseudoscience. But, in any case, the article in question is a thumbnail biography.

I'd like to hear some other opinion as to whether there can be any justification at all for labelling the Howard T. Odum biographical article as a "pseudoscience article". Joel Russ 15:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Commented out pending sourcing. Guettarda 15:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)