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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
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday September 09 2018, @02:31PM (16 children)
I wonder who made the "should be stoned and burned at the stake" statement. That person, whoever that is, might just possibly not appreciate what horrific torture it is to be burned alive, if the stoning didn't go on long enough to be fatal. Stoning is also torture. That person ought to be censured at the least. If it was a joke, it's not funny. That's barbaric behavior unworthy of a scientist.
Sadly, scientist are by no means above such cut-throat competition. Taking credit for others' work is the practice I hear the most about, so common that I can think of at least 2 SF/Fantasy stories off the top of my head with that as a major theme: Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed and Jack Chalker's Changewinds. Taking credit for others' work is still recognized as unethical. But it is way too normalized.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:26PM (13 children)
This ^ is why i 'hate'* people.
People are petty and slow and mean and spiteful and.....
I think that is one of the things i liked about Star Trek TOS as a kid: the idea that we could be BETTER. (And pretty, sexy green ladies!)
Sadly, that future has not arrived.
*When i find people who aren't like that (like my wife) i cherish them. Tooooo few people are cherishable.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 09 2018, @08:05PM (12 children)
Serenity. Watch it again. Or, just watch this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeT7MzDcpeg [youtube.com] At least the operative is honest - he is a monster, he knows it, and admits it not only to himself, but to Mal.
I assure you, mankind will not become "better", under any circumstances that we can imagine.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 09 2018, @08:25PM (11 children)
Why not?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday September 09 2018, @08:42PM
Because some people are shit... errrrrr I mean monsters.
You can't fix some people, and you can't get rid of them.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 09 2018, @08:45PM (8 children)
Because there is nothing new under the sun. We are the same men and women who sheltered in caves, milennia ago. The ancient philosophers knew us as well, or better, than all the psychobabble fools who are in style today. We are Man - the predatory omnivore.
Funny you should ask this, right at this point in time. I'm re-reading the Three Body trilogy. Only a few chapters ago, Ye radio'd the Trisolarians, telling them, "We need your power" to force mankind to become something better.
Problem is, we won't be mankind if/when the progressives get their way. All that power will do, is to make us bigger, stronger monsters - or destroy us. But, mankind will be gone, extinct, history - or rather, non-history.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 10 2018, @02:34AM (7 children)
I have my share of cynicism and pessimism, but on this I think our present and future is not as bleak as you fear. We are evolving into gentler, milder people. We have to, now that we have nuclear weapons. Can't afford total war ever again. WWII wasn't the "End of History", but it was a watershed.
The authoritarians, with their vicious tendencies to persecute and murder others for the damnedest flimsy reasons ("just obeying orders"), and the devil with obeying the orders in the Ten Commandments ("thou shalt not kill"), had what we very much must hope is their last hurrah in WWII. Yes, they're still around and have apparently seized power, again, this time in the US. But the rest of us are wiser to their shit now. It's like Spock said to the Captain Kirk from the universe with the evil Federation, in Mirror, Mirror: "your authority on this ship is extremely limited". That Captain Kirk was very quickly locked up. At the end, when everyone was back in their proper place, Kirk asked Spock how he caught on to the other Kirk so quickly, and Spock replied "It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians, than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men."
And so it is with Trump now. So far, Trump hasn't been crazy enough to lob nuclear bombs at other nations. Maybe he has the decency and moral character not to reach for the nukes. Or maybe, he knows that if he tries it, the order will be refused and he will be very, very quickly impeached and convicted. W. and chief neocon Cheney managed to start a war, by mangling and stretching the facts to the point it can't reasonably be called anything but a pack of vicious lies, and abusing the belief that most still had in the civilized and rational behavior of anyone who made it to the highest office. The neocons fooled us once, shame on them. Now, people like them have lied and cheated their way back to the helm, but they can't so easily steer us all into another war, too many people remember Iraq. Horses do balk, not all will blindly obey the reins when steered into something that looks really bad. Instead, Trump is facing a distinct if still unlikely possibility he might be impeached, while W. never had that problem. Another president of this stripe was Tricky Dick, and he had to resign.
All during the Cold War, the rest of us kept the vicious, warmongering, mad attack dogs on short leashes, though there were frightfully many close calls. I feel a little easier about the nukes now that the Cold War is over, but the maintainers of the Doomsday Clock are evidently more worried than ever.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @04:16AM (1 child)
Democrats have tried to impeach every republican president since at least 1980. That includes Reagan and the Bushes. It's standard democrat tactics at this point. They feel no shame.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @08:51AM
As opposed to the Republicans, who would of course, never, ever try such a thing.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday September 10 2018, @09:01AM
> ... Maybe [Trump] has the decency and moral character...
This is where I'd normally post about 3 pages of hysterical laughter, but it's just not even funny any more. It's sad.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 10 2018, @12:55PM (3 children)
Hillary lost, she was promising war with Iran and Russia and I'm not seeing M1 tanks in Tehran or crossing the Ukraine.
Also I was promised by many prominent leftists the economy would collapse due to Trump winning, but again...
And I was promised by the same kind of people that if he won the Jews would all be in camps or ovens by now.
You really can't take propaganda like CNN seriously, or if you do, its best to watch it as "opposites day".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @05:59PM
Can we all just move forward with "VLM is a piece of shit" already? He has made it obvious many times over but perhaps the above quote will get some of you conservatives to truly understand?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @09:15PM (1 child)
Well, for one thing, you need to listen to what CNN is saying, not listening to what Sean Hannity says CNN is saying. That'll probably fix most of your disconnect right there.
One should give Trump economic props for not fucking up the economy as quickly as feared. He took a very strong and roaring economy and hasn't driven it into the crapper yet. However, we've just moved a shit ton of money from the lower/middle classes to the upper classes and slapped them with some crippling taxes in the form of tariffs, and we're giving welfare to the farmers now, so it might not be in the crapper yet, but let's see how the next couple of years of this go. I think the grand welfare giveaway is only just beginning.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 10 2018, @09:55PM
Yeah, I've actually listened to CNN. A lot of people at work have listened too. Finally we got that stupid assed television changed. HR said, "It's CNN or the weather channel!" The old fat broad finally caved in and gave us the weather channel. CNN is nothing but hateful propaganda. Even Fox is better, and Fox truly sux.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @12:12PM
Because technology keeps increasing the distance between people. The evolutionary selector for being "good" is the benefits your peers allow you for having a "trustworthy" status. Do good today == get more tomorrow, but only from the people that benefitted directly from your goodness. Having more "good" interactions with people allows that status to grow, and can even carry across generations.
When the social circle widens, the amount of interactions between individual people decreases, and that both limits the positive feedback you get from being "good" and reduces the negative feedback from being "evil". In short, there is a direct benefit to screwing someone over today, and no downside if you never meet that person again -- which means that "goodness" is being selected against in the current social climate.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:36PM
From joke stealing, plagiarism, execs stealing show ideas, fast-followers ripping off ideas and out marketing innovators. Every field does this. You may have an idealistic or possibly naive view of human nature. Science is somewhat uniquely designed, intentionally, to counteract this behaviour in the long run. It may take the death of a generation to sweep out to old and usher in the new, but it generally does happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @09:53PM
Well I'm sure the comments were made non-literally. No-one is LITERALLY going to burn her at the stake.
Bear in mind, a couple centuries there were a group of people who went around LITERALLY burning women at the stake for heretical views. They weren't scientists. They were moral high ground types like those we see nowadays... raping children. But those darn scientists are SOOO NAUGHTY!!!!