"The Dinosaur Heresies", by Robert T. Bakker, outlines the truly incredible situation which prevailed in paleontology for a number of decades, in which a number of obvious facts about dinosaurs, some previously known, were discarded and then solidly denied by all experts in the field.
The situation in paleontology is all the more interesting because the logjam was broken, in part by work by Bakker. Consequently, the controversy is (essentially) over, and the experts have all lined up on the *other* *side* of the line. This makes it unnecessary to argue over whether or not the "heretics" were correct; they clearly were. So, we can pay attention, rather, to the more interesting question, which is this: What happened to "freeze" the entire field of paleontology into an incorrect mold, in which new and more rational ideas were automatically rejected as lunacy? And what caused it to "stick" in that state for decades? The fact that such a thing could happen in a scientific discipline (as nearly everyone now agrees it did) is de facto proof that the experts can, indeed, all be wrong at once, despite the existence of clear facts showing their errors. That, in turn, makes it harder to sustain the argument that mainstream opinion *must* be correct in a number of other areas in which the "experts all agree" that things happened a certain way, even when it seems to non-experts that, just maybe, they didn't. BTW the biggest blunder may have been setting up the skeletons with the legs splayed out to the sides, in ways that made no sense either from the point of view of simply understanding how such a beast might walk, nor with regard to the shapes of the joints which were being put together. Check out the stance of any triceratops which was mounted more than about 20 years ago for an example of this: It's standing upright with its back legs, but sort of "squatting" on its front legs, as though it's in the act of doing a pushup. This is something even a rank amateur could spot as being a pretty weird way to walk! To make it all the more interesting, if I recall correctly, the earliest mounts, back in the 1800's, were done with an erect stance (which is considered correct today); it was sometime later that the minds of paleontologists were collectively "dimmed" and they switched to mounting dinosaurs as though they were huge (and rather strange) lizards. The attached jpg (if it comes through) is a photo of the bronze triceratops statue outside the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, which is well known for its dinosaur collection. The plaques inside the museum now discuss, among other things, the bogus stances of a number of of their mounted specimens (they have no plans to remount them all, for a number of reasons both practical and historical). William Beaty wrote: > Gerald Pollack, a sucessful maverick biochemist at the UW, is trying to > collect a list of books which describe crazy fringe research projects and > proposals not currently attracting any government funding. My own list is > below. Any more suggestions? Book suggestions, NOT research proposals. > Also, collections of taboo topics are desired over books about > individuals. >
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