The Nastiest Feud in Science
BIANCA BOSKER notes:
“While the majority
of her peers embraced the Chicxulub asteroid as the cause of the extinction,
Keller remained a maligned and, until recently, lonely voice contesting it. She
argues that the mass extinction was caused not by a wrong-place-wrong-time
asteroid collision but by a series of colossal volcanic eruptions in a part of
western India known as the Deccan Traps—a theory that was first proposed in
1978 and then abandoned by all but a small number of scientists. Her research, undertaken
with specialists around the world and featured in leading scientific journals,
has forced other scientists to take a second look at their data….
This dispute
illuminates the messy way that science progresses, and how this idealized
process, ostensibly guided by objective reason and the search for truth, is
shaped by ego, power, and politics.”