Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Science learns from its mistakes. To find them, scientists must cri-
ticize, or dissent, at least for a while. Outsiders, not being caught
up in the mores and personal relationships of their newly chosen
discipline, are in a particularly strong position to dissent from the
prevailing view. The best scientists dissent from even their own con-
clusions, as when Luis invented a new theory every week and (suc-
cessfully for a while) shot each down in turn, or when Raup tried to
"kill the periodicity." Only after they have been unable to falsify
their own results do they publish. When scientists initially fail to
dissent from their own still tentative conclusions (often by avoiding
the obvious, definitive test), they run the risk of dishonoring them-
selves and forsaking their discipline. The false claims of cold fusion
provide the clearest recent example.
Styles of dissent run the gamut from friendly critic to bitter
enemy. Although personal relations may suffer, science ultimately
cares little about the form and style of dissent as long as some gen-
eral rules are followed. Nice people and nasty ones alike can finish
first, last, or in the middle. Among the rules are these: Criticism is to
be based on new evidence or on a better interpretation of the old
evidence. Rebuttals are not only to be voiced at professional meet-
ings, they are to be written up and submitted for peer review and
publication.
Ad hominem
attacks are frowned upon. Ideally, oppo-
nents share data, microscopes, and outcrops. Blind tests are cheer-
fully conducted. And so on.
This brings us naturally to the role of Charles Officer, that most
vociferous and untiring critic of the Alvarez theory. His opposition
culminated in 1996 with publication of his topic with Jake Page,
The
Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy.
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His dogged, constant, and
long lasting resistance is bound to tell us something about how sci-
ence works.
How far, for instance, will a scientist on the losing end of an argu-
ment go? Judging from his topic with Page, Officer is willing to go so
far as to leave science altogether. Officer's and Page's overall position
is given away by this astounding statement: "Most of the 'science'
performed by the Alvarez camp has been so inexplicably weak, and
the response to it so eagerly accepting by important segments of the
scientific press, never mind the popular press and the tabloids, that
some skeptics have wondered if the entire affair was not, on the
impact side, some kind of scam."
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They go on to employ a set of strat-
agems that seem hauntingly familiar; suddenly one realizes that they
are the very ploys used by creationists and others who have no plat-
form of logic. They try, for example, the Confident Assertion: "One of
the things that did not happen at the K-T boundary was an impact
