Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
with temperature and sea level changes, the spread of diseases by
migration and other complex events. But the catastrophe people
don't seem to think such things matter. In effect, they're saying this:
'We high-tech people have all the answers, and you paleontologists
are just primitive rock hounds.'"
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Luis Alvarez liked a fight and gave as good as he got. In a second
article in the
New York Times,
Browne quoted from Luis Alvarez's
just published autobiography: "I don't like to say bad things about
paleontologists, but they're really not very good scientists. They're
more like stamp collectors."
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(Showing that they did agree on some-
thing, Jastrow had a couple of decades earlier compared geology to
the collecting of butterflies and beetles.)
Alvarez was echoing the great British nuclear physicist and
Nobelist, Ernest Rutherford, who divided science into physics
and stamp collecting.
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Rutherford's offensive statement may have
stemmed from a burst of professional pride and can be excused as
such. Alvarez's remark, on the other hand, like Bakker's, seemed
much more personal and demeaning of an entire field of scholarship.
It got worse. Jastrow told Browne, "It is now clear that catastro-
phe of extraterrestrial origin had no discernible impact on the his-
tory of life as measured over a period of millions of years."
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Alvarez
retorted: "There isn't any debate. There's not a single member of the
National Academy of Sciences who shares Jastrow's point of view.
Jastrow, of course, has gotten into the defense of Star Wars, which
for me personally indicates he's not a very good scientist. In my
opinion, Star Wars doesn't stand a chance."
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Jastrow rejoined by pointing out that Alvarez had flown on the
companion plane to the
Enola Gay
in the raid that destroyed Hiro-
shima and had been one of only five physicists willing to appear be-
fore the Atomic Energy Commission to denounce as a security risk
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had headed the Manhattan Pro-
ject, on which he had been Alvarez's superior. In his autobiography,
however, Luis Alvarez wrote that he had told the Oppenheimer
inquiry panel that he had no doubt of Oppenheimer's loyalty to the
country.
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The Alvarez-Clemens debate continued in Browne's
article, with Alvarez saying that "he considers Clemens inept at in-
terpreting sedimentary rock strata and that his criticisms can be dis-
missed on grounds of general incompetence."
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Tragically, as this debate sank to ever lower depths, Luis Alvarez
discovered that he had terminal cancer of the esophagus. He told an
interviewer, "I can say these things about some of our opponents
because this is my last hurrah, and I have to tell the truth. I don't
want to hold these guys up to too much scorn. But they deserve
some scorn, because they're publishing scientific nonsense."
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