Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
their peers, where an accelerated and more direct in-your-face form of peer review
can take place. But to have a documentary film made about your research before
theactualpaperispublished?Thischeekybehavioroftenresultsinraisedeyebrows
and much harrumphing, mostly prompted by honest skepticism but also perhaps a
wee bit of jealousy.
Soasfarasmostpaleontologistsareconcerned,adocumentary,nomatterhow
entertaining and informative, is never on equal footing with a peer-reviewed paper.
Now, what if the research results were reported in a reality-TV series in which all
of the competing paleontologists are forced to live together in the same house and
argueovertheirrespectiveresults?I'dwatchthatforsure,butitstillwouldn'tcount
as real science either. In the end, we have to write it down, have it reviewed, and go
through the formal process.
However, once an article is accepted by a journal and published, this triumph
does not imply that its methods and conclusions are inviolable. All published art-
icles are subject to further peer review long afterwards, or at least they should be.
Indeed, this is exactly what happened to Romilio and Salisbury. Just like a boomer-
ang, a major challenge to the revised hypothesis came from an unexpected source,
which was Dr. Thulborn himself. Sadly, Thulborn's colleague on the original two
milestone studies, Dr. Mary Wade, passed away in 2005, meaning her original im-
pressions and insights on the tracksite died with her. Thus it was up to Thulborn
alone to respond to the critique of their work.
Respond he did, and with ferocious intensity. Most devastating of all, his re-
action to the restudy of the tracksite was in print and published as a peer-reviewed
journal article and not aired as a scientific grievance through the more instant
media of news stories or blogs. In this manuscript, which was posted online in the
same journal (
Cretaceous Research
) that published the re-study, Thulborn poin-
ted out several significant flaws in the rebooted version, effectively sowing doubt
on its new conclusions. A minor tussle resulted, magnified by online discussions,
