Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE I I
The magnetic
reversal time scale around K-T
time. Dark bands represent
periods of normal magnetization
(like today); light bands show
reversed magnetization.[ After
Berggren et al.
4
]
In their 1983 paper in
Science,
Officer and Drake reviewed the
literature on magnetic reversals near the K-T boundary, focusing
their attention on six deep-sea drilling sites and nine continental sites,
including Gubbio and Hell Creek. Most fell into Chron 29R, provid-
ing no support for their thesis, but three did not, giving Officer and
Drake a foothold. A sample that came from a deep-sea core, and
another that came from the San Juan Basin in Colorado, appeared to
belong to 29N; the third sample, from Hell Creek, they assigned to
28R. If these interpretations were correct, the K-T boundary was not
the same age everywhere and therefore could not have been pro-
duced by an instantaneous event. The Alvarez theory would have
been preemptively falsified, the battle would have been over before
it began, and geologists could return to business as usual.
Officer and Drake's argument received a quick rebuttal from
the Alvarezes, who accused the pair of breaching scientific etiquette
by failing to cite any of the papers presented at the 1981 Snowbird
I conference, even though first the abstracts and then the entire
volume of papers from the conference had been published and even
though Drake himself had not only attended the meeting but,
months before the
Science
paper appeared, had published a critique
of some of the papers presented there.
5
'
6
Why was this a serious
error? Because scholarship is cumulative, with each generation stand-
ing on the shoulders of those who have gone before. To fail to cite rel-
evant papers that one knows about is a grievous error (to overlook
