After years contributing anonymously in the public interest to Wiki, I elected this personal entry. My name is Rex Bunn DSR(London) B.Com(Merit) MEc, and I'm a polymath. Since 2014, I have researched the lost New Zealand "Eighth Wonder of the World" - the Pink Black and White Terraces of old Lake Rotomahana. Unlike other researchers often funded by grants ultimately from taxpayers, (and whose work we have often found speculative or incompetent and either rebutted or refuted): I have worked pro bono in the public interest since 2014.
Personally, I must have spent 10,000+ hours on field and desk research, and on scientific and technical papers arising from those years of research. That is IMHO possibly more than the hours put in by all other contemporary Terrace investigators. Yet, we operate under the radar of Wiki and of much of the New Zealand scientific and lay media. In my view, this is largely explained by the parochialism pervading New Zealand science and the default media view there i.e. that govt. Crown entities are above reproach. The White Island eruption conduct by one Crown entity involved in Terrace research claims: is now subject to legal action indicating that such media and community confidence may be misplaced. See: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-volcano-idUSKBN2AX0RF It is also worth monitoring CRI researchers for controversy and retraction efforts on their papers.
After publishing seventeen research papers and three books on this topic, (plus fieldwork, technical reports, lectures and other research manuscripts over 2014-2020): I am now (with my colleague) the most widely published, living specialist on the Pink, Black and White Terraces and the Rotomahana Basin in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. My colleague and I base our work on the only field survey made of the Terraces, buttressed by a decade of fieldwork and painstaking international historical research. Other investigators cannot make such a claim. They are generally funded for short-term research by the taxpayers of New Zealand and rely on quick field visits to Lake Rotomahana from their offices in distant cities, secondary sources, incidental findings, old photographs and the like. By contrast, I lived 12km from the Pink Terrace location for many years and could conduct field research on a daily basis. Yet from today's Wiki page for the Terraces, one would not gather this. Why-- is a good question one could address to the Wiki editors.
Citations of our latest published papers made by other contributors (who apparently think our papers ought to be included on the Terraces' page); were removed by one editor as self-promotion. How can this be if the researchers are unknowing and the work is anyway published in technical and refereed scientific journals? This editorial conduct in my view amounts to censorship. It is against the public interest and I will no longer contribute to Wiki.
NOTE: Readers wishing to learn the uncensored, latest published scientific research on the Pink, Black and White Terraces, can find our papers for download here:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/A_Bunn.org/people/842886/overview
or here:
https://independent.academia.edu/RexBunn
and a list of my published books here: