SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Sunday September 09 2018, @07:52PM (6 children)
So basically (the gamer section of) the Internet, but with better grammar and complete words? And few enough insults that you can keep a list of them? This sounds like a great example of what "academic elite butthurt" might look like. I bet he could collect and analyze the responses she's received and publish it as a paper!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday September 10 2018, @09:09AM (3 children)
Really? Butthurt?
I don't know what you do for a job, but anyone in a normal professional career can reasonably expect to get through their day/week/year without being insulted or threatened by their peers. There is absolutely no call for those kinds of statements in normal civil discourse. I've had disagreements with colleagues and customers, but I've never been called anything like that, and I've certainly never had death threats, and I'd be shocked if I did. Someone would end up on a disciplinary if that happened. Are you seriously telling me that if one of your colleagues or peers wrote that you should be stoned and burned at the stake, you'd be completely cool with it?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 10 2018, @12:53PM
Who knows? Maybe she can too. Anonymous threats look the same whether they come from an upset peer or a layman stranger. And once you include the latter, there are many professional jobs that have to take some degree of insults and such from the public.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday September 10 2018, @10:54PM
"Butthurt" is probably the wrong term here. I really meant just taking the kind of stuff you see on the worst of the Internet's discussion media over niche concerns, and presenting through the higher-quality grammar you get in common academic communication standards. Acacdemic elite "bile"? There must be a better slang word for the demonic ad-hominem sentiments you see all the time, I just don't know what it is.
In a higher-quality professional (especially academic) environment? Certainly. If an actual colleague said I should be stoned and burned at the stake over an academic theory, one thing I'd do is forward their message to their department and ask them if they, well, maybe needed a little time off.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday September 10 2018, @10:57PM
Whoops, sorry, I misinterpreted your post. I meant the lab-bench tough guys (not her) being "butthurt" enough to write stuff like that over an academic theory.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Monday September 10 2018, @12:47PM (1 child)
They have the same reaction to anything politically right of Marx, so your observation is likely accurate, thats how they do the "butthurt thing"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @06:02PM
Sounds like we found the real butthurt-bro. What did someone insult you with a bigger dildo than your usual "romp night" equipment?