Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
peer-reviewed papers . . . 'freedom of speech' cannot mean 'equal
space' for all points of view."
1
5
Walter Alvarez passes over these and other unpleasant aspects of
K-T debates, saying that "The field as a whole did reasonably well in
maintaining a civilized level of discourse."
1
6
Anti-impactors such as
Officer and McLean, and many others, would surely disagree. Wal-
ter's claim contrasts vividly with McLean's poignant open letter to
Luis Alvarez, and with other information provided on McLean's
web page.
1
7
According to McLean, Luis Alvarez tried to destroy McLean's
career starting at one of the first K-T conferences:
Luis Alvarez's response was to take me aside at the first coffee break and
threaten my career if I opposed him publicly. I had written the first paper
showing that greenhouse warming can trigger global extinctions (for the
K-T). Alvarez warned me on what happened to a physicist who had
opposed him: "The scientific community pays no more attention to him."
Alvarez followed through on his threat.
That situation devastated me. By my own originality, I was a principal
in a great scientific debate with one of the world's most creative living
geniuses, himself working in an environment predicated upon creativity,
and I had been undermined, and nearly destroyed, in my own! The
stresses over the damage to my career here at VPI did its work. Through-
out 1984, nearly every joint in my body was so inflamed, and swollen,
that any movement was excruciating; medication kept me nauseated.
Vicious politics by Alvarez, and some paleobiologists, were injected
into my department, and used to undermine me in the early-mid 1980s.
They nearly destroyed my career, and my health. I developed a Pavlovian-
type response to the K-T such that from the mid 1980s until the 1990s, I
had great difficulty doing K-T research. My health was so damaged that I
was never able to recover, and had to retire in May, 1995.
1
8
In his 1988 interview with Malcolm Browne of the
New York
Times,
Luis Alvarez said, "If the president of the college had asked
me what I thought of Dewey McLean, I'd say he's a weak sister. I
thought he'd been knocked out of a ball game and had disappeared,
because nobody invites him to conferences anymore."
1
9
V
OLCANISM
D
ENIED
In Chapter 4 we saw how the meteorite impact theory met several
important predictions, and in Chapter 5 how it avoided falsification
