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posted by martyb on Sunday September 09 2018, @12:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the Better-right-than-dead dept.

A Princeton geologist has endured decades of ridicule for arguing that the fifth extinction was caused not by an asteroid but by a series of colossal volcanic eruptions.

Interesting info about science, history, death, un-scientific feeds and the value of persistence.

Here's an excerpt from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/dinosaur-extinction-debate/565769/:

While the majority of her peers embraced the Chicxulub asteroid as the cause of the extinction, Keller remained a maligned and, until recently, lonely voice contesting it. She argues that the mass extinction was caused not by a wrong-place-wrong-time asteroid collision but by a series of colossal volcanic eruptions in a part of western India known as the Deccan Traps—a theory that was first proposed in 1978 and then abandoned by all but a small number of scientists. Her research, undertaken with specialists around the world and featured in leading scientific journals, has forced other scientists to take a second look at their data. "Gerta uncovered many things through the years that just don't sit with the nice, simple impact story that Alvarez put together," Andrew Kerr, a geochemist at Cardiff University, told me. "She's made people think about a previously near-uniformly accepted model."

Keller's resistance has put her at the core of one of the most rancorous and longest-running controversies in science. "It's like the Thirty Years' War," says Kirk Johnson, the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Impacters' case-closed confidence belies decades of vicious infighting, with the two sides trading accusations of slander, sabotage, threats, discrimination, spurious data, and attempts to torpedo careers. "I've never come across anything that's been so acrimonious," Kerr says. "I'm almost speechless because of it." Keller keeps a running list of insults that other scientists have hurled at her, either behind her back or to her face. She says she's been called a "bitch" and "the most dangerous woman in the world," who "should be stoned and burned at the stake."

[...] "It has all the aspects of a really nice story," Keller says of the asteroid theory. "It's just not true." (Cole Wilson)

This dispute illuminates the messy way that science progresses, and how this idealized process, ostensibly guided by objective reason and the search for truth, is shaped by ego, power, and politics. Keller has had to endure decades of ridicule to make scientists reconsider an idea they had confidently rejected. "Gerta had to fight very much to get into the position that she is in right now," says Wolfgang Stinnesbeck, a collaborator of Keller's from Heidelberg University. "It's thanks to her that the case is not closed."

Background:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerta_Keller


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 09 2018, @12:58PM (4 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 09 2018, @12:58PM (#732467) Journal

    Maybe - just maybe - the volcano theory is right on track. They trashed the place (earth) with so much poison that all the critters were dying. The earth was already in something similar to a "nuclear winter" - when the asteroid hit. So, now, you have an already dying population of almost everything on earth, hammered with a huge asteroid, which pumped even more poison into the atmosphere. The existing nuclear winter was made worse by an order of magnitude.

    One disaster or the other may or may not have resulted in the mass extinction, but the two of them combined ensured the extinctions.

    And, this way, I don't have to choose which side is more competent. Sneaky, huh? :^)

    Had another idea, that the asteroid caused some serious shockwaves that carried through to India, setting off those volcanoes. Problem with that is, the slow extinction process seems to have preceded the rapid extinction caused by the asteroid. So, that theory died in the womb.

    And, I'm back to my old theme: No one can "prove" any of these theories. They are all extrapolated from random data that we find, which we hope we can sorta understand. There were no cameras back then, no seismographs, no sound recordings. We're just pretty sure of a lot of things, but there is no proof that it happened like we think.

    One day, we'll get around to building a time machine, with which we can send camera drones back to see what REALLY happened! We should get a few drones back. Pteradatcyls shouldn't catch them all, if we send a bunch.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday September 09 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday September 09 2018, @03:08PM (#732483)

    Read an article many years ago where someone theorized that asteroid impacts large enough sent a shock wave plume of material through the mantle, which could be the cause of massive eruptions such as the Deccan Traps, if it happened to be strong enough to breach the surface. They also theorized that perhaps such impacts and their resulting plumes are the cause of the "hot spots" around the globe.
    It seems to me that people arguing about their pet theories always seem to be arguing all or nothing, although that could just be the way it is presented in the media. If there is enough evidence to support multiple theories, it is likely that a blending of the theories is the more accurate description of what happened.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:05PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday September 09 2018, @06:05PM (#732510) Journal

      > could just be the way it is presented in the media.

      Count on it. The media is far more biased towards drama, towards "fight, fight, fight!", than they are to the left or right.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:46PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:46PM (#732497)

    Non-falsifiable science = pseudo science
        - Karl Popper

    Generally regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers of science

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:36PM (#732538)

      The problem with this quip is that there are very few things that allow themselves to be tested in such a tidy way.
      Are we then to place off-limits any investigation into most of the phenomena of the world? Science is neither math nor logic, fields that are the ultimate in precision but also completely self-contained. What science DOES need is humility in acknowledging certitude in theories that explain things that happened 10's of millions of years ago. But wishy-washiness does not advance scientific careers. People have love only for those who are "certain."