Russell Potter, a Rhode Island professor who describes himself as "not a journalist, nor a partisan (I'm not Canadian and have no horse in the electoral race there), just someone who has spent 25 years studying and researching the Franklin story" is unconvinced by the Paul Watson critique of how last year's discovery of the Erebus was handled. (See my post of yesterday here or directly below this post.) In a long post called "The Politics of Exploration" at his blog Visions of the North, Potter argues that:
While Watson's article certainly shows that there was a fair amount of squabbling and bitterness among some of the parties involved in the 2014 search, and that some details were, at first, imperfectly conveyed to the public (understandable in the great excitement of the moment), the evidence for any deliberate deceit -- especially on the part of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's John Geiger -- is simply nonexistent.Potter notes he was lead historical consultant on several international versions of a documentary on the Franklin discoveries, pointed to by Watson as one of the venues in which the RCGS's role in the discovery was inflated.
Clearly this debate will have legs. Note the discussion in the comments to Potter's post.
