Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
SIX
ON THE
ROAD
A
UGUST 1998
Paul and Dan's Snowball Earth paper was published in
Science
.
1
There was an immediate flurry of in-
terest, and the next step was to turn that flurry into a storm. Dan began calling his friends, and Paul took
to the road. In the autumn of that year Paul went from one institution to another, purveying the good
news. He was a very talented speaker, giving persuasive lectures that were both clear and impassioned.
He had never, he said repeatedly, been so convinced that something was right.
Science is often messy. When you're judging any new theory, it's rarely as simple as yes or no,
right or wrong. This is particularly true in geology. Reading the messages hidden in rocks is a craft, and
different researchers invariably notice different things. Theories in geology can rarely be accepted or
dismissed out of hand. Even the ones that turn out to be broadly right often need to be massaged and
modified, and given the initial benefit of the maybe.
But when a big new idea hits the scene, there's almost always a pattern of polarization. Though
a few researchers keep a genuinely open mind, others immediately entrench either into pros or cons.
These vehement souls will fight, criticize, and try to pull one another down. The survival of an idea can
depend as critically on the quality of the rhetoric as on the robustness of the data.
That's exactly what happened when Paul went on the road. The more he promoted his idea, the more
other researchers reacted against it. Many of them did so
because
Paul was promoting his idea so vehe-
mently. He made no secret of his fervour. What he did, relentlessly, was force his opponents to face the
Snowball theory, in a continual stream of public lectures and private seminars, papers, comments, re-
views, e-mails and faxes, on stairwells at conferences, over lunch and around the campfire. He worked
to get influential scientists on board and—yes—to squash those who disagreed. Sometimes it seemed
as if he was trying to achieve the Snowball Revolution by the sheer force of his energy.
He even divided the science world into Snowball “believers” and “non-believers”. When he was ac-
cused by one bitter critic of founding the “Church of the Latter-day Snowballers”, Paul found the com-
ment merely amusing—partly, I think, because he had a great riposte: “Someone once asked Charlie
Parker if he was religious and he said, 'Yes, I'm a devout musician.' Well, it's the same for me. My
approach to geology is that I'm a religious fanatic.”
And Paul's relentless advocacy of the Snowball brought him continual criticisms that he lacked that
most precious of scientific commodities: objectivity. His response was to liken himself constantly to
one of his heroes. Alfred Wegener, the German meteorologist who had first championed continental
drift, and who had perished at the age of fifty on the Greenland ice cap.
