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The idea that we can know with any degree of certainty that an event tens of millions of years ago was the single cause of dinosaur extinction is absurd. It’s b

The idea that we can know with any degree of certainty that an event tens of millions of years ago was the single cause of dinosaur extinction is absurd. It’s bad science. Case in point, a pandemic could have wiped out all the dinosaurs 1 million years before the asteroid hit and we would have no fossil evidence of that. The asteroid theory is still just a theory and for anyone to be arrogant enough to say that it is fact doesn’t deserve to teach science in any capacity.

Jabbles 6y ago
Adding in additional events that we have no evidence for would also be bad science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Other_hypotheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Other_hypothe...
- plank_time 6y ago
  I’m not saying that they were killed by a pandemic. It’s an example of something that could happen that would never be detected by fossil evidence. There are potentially dozens of conceivable events that could have caused extinction level events and taking a single theory and selling it as fact is wrong. We should be teaching it as a theory with pretty decent evidence but not much more than that because it’s impossible to say what really happened. Anything more than “this is a plausible idea with some pretty good evidence behind it” is science fiction, not science.
  - Jabbles 6y ago
    This seems to be a much more reasonable stance, though just because you can conceive of something doesn't mean it should be taken seriously. Your previous comment included questionable phrases such as "any degree of certainty", "absurd", "just a theory".
    - plank_time 6y ago
      My point is that we are talking about an event that happened 70 million years ago. Think about how long ago that was. The amount of evidence that is leftover after 70 million years of time passing is infinitesimally minute. To think we can come to any conclusion with the tiny amounts of evidence that remains or to clue together all the remaining bits and pieces of residual evidence is extremely arrogant. It makes for a decent story and hypothesis, and it sounds plausible. But to teach people that this is basically fact is absurd, which is my point. It should be taught as a theory.
      - Jabbles 6y ago
        You cannot dismiss entire branches of geology like that. The evidence is not "tiny" or "infinitesimal". Sure, it takes care, effort, and specialised techniques to find it, but it is there, and we need a theory that explains it. Much of the research into geology has been funded by the oil industry, who are enormously interested in knowing these kinds of processes, in the hopes it will help them locate it.
        plank_time 6y ago
        Geology != figuring out how dinosaurs became extinct. The evidences that remains after 70 million years is orders of magnitude less than the evidence that has been destroyed over the last 70 million years. To take the morsels of evidence we have and think that paints a definitive answer is the height of human arrogance.
  - oivey 6y ago
    Referring to scientific theory as science fiction is a bit strong. The extinction of the dinosaurs isn’t Star Wars. Can we ever know exactly what caused that extinction event? No. Did a massive meteor hit the earth that likely could have done it? Yes. Could some other coincident event also contributed? Sure. There is, however, pretty strong modeling-based evidence that the meteor strike alone could have caused the mass extinction.
Symmetry 6y ago
There's a big difference between "with perfect certainty" and "with any degree of certainty". We can't be pefectly sure that the scenario you outline didn't happen but the timing and the idea of a virus acting like that are so improbable that we can be almost entirely certain it didn't play out like that. We're not perfectly certain it was the impact, but we are very certain with all the evidence that has built up.
quesera 6y ago
OK, but most of what we consider fact about any era (including the present) is a consensus understanding/belief based on the best available evidence -- if we're lucky. Everything we are told or taught is a simplification, or a model. The distinction between "fact" and "theory" is not always as clear as you imply.
- totalZero 6y ago
  An empirical epistemology (ie, science) would suggest that events we did not observe are proven by finding undeniable evidence that they occurred. "Consensus" and "best available" are not part of it. We cannot say for sure that a theory is fact simply because we form a consensus around a hypothesis supported by the best available evidence. That evidence may be insufficient to incontrovertibly support the hypothesis and consensus has often been wrong in the history of science. I would go so far to say that there has always been a consensus view that later turned out to be totally wrong. The ability to doubt a proposition while simultaneously believing that it may indeed be true is a core psychological skill for any scientist. We ought not treat every theory that we believe to be true as "fact."
- plank_time 6y ago
  Consensus by humans doesn’t mean that it’s fact. By presenting the asteroid theory as fact is doing a disservice to science. It should be taught as a theory with pretty good evidence. I personally think this is the most plausible explanation but it’s when people call it fact or near-fact it makes me bristle. It creates massive groupthink and stifles discussion on the topic which is worse, because it becomes politicized especially in this day and age.
  - quesera 6y ago
    I understand your point, and I agree. But there's nuance here. Some theories, ranked by the strength of their supporting evidence, e.g. and IMO: 0 Baby-eating lizard aliens run the US government 1 .. 2 String theory 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 Asteroid extinction event 8 Relativity 9 Evolution Scientists and specialists should draw a critical line between theory and fact. But there are always unknowables, and if "fact" requires the elimination of uncertainty ("10" in the above), then it is a useless word. So we'd need a new word, that means "very well-supported theory, based on all available evidence, with no strong competing explanations". Open to suggestions here! But for non-specialists, at what score is it reasonable to treat a theory as "fact"? I'll vote for 7.5. :) Obligatory: Colloquially, "fact" as "true idea" -- not "quantum of isolated information which can be knowable". The latter definition is lovely, but has little application in the world of people.
yongjik 6y ago
Paleontologists have a much more detailed view of the past than you think. There are fossils of fish and trees killed by the asteroid impact itself, buried by the tsunami.[1] > In the deposit, the team discovered an ancient freshwater pond whose occupants had been quickly cemented together by waves of sediment and debris. The fossils include sturgeon and six-foot-long paddlefish, their scales intact but their bodies ripped and smashed; marine mollusks; leaves and tree fronds, and the burned trunks of trees. The fish carcasses were not bloated, decayed, or scavenged, suggesting that they were buried quickly — and that few animals were left alive after the cataclysm to come digging. > The fossil deposit also teems with tektites, tiny glass beads that are the telltale fallout of planetary-scale impacts. Fifty percent of the fossilized fish were found with tektites in their gills, as if the fish had inhaled the material. Also recovered were tektites trapped in amber. Their chemical composition was unchanged in 66 million years, and it closely matched the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinct... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanis_(fossil_site) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanis_(fossil_site)

Jabbles 6y ago

Adding in additional events that we have no evidence for would also be bad science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Other_hypotheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Other_hypothe...

plank_time 6y ago
I’m not saying that they were killed by a pandemic. It’s an example of something that could happen that would never be detected by fossil evidence. There are potentially dozens of conceivable events that could have caused extinction level events and taking a single theory and selling it as fact is wrong. We should be teaching it as a theory with pretty decent evidence but not much more than that because it’s impossible to say what really happened. Anything more than “this is a plausible idea with some pretty good evidence behind it” is science fiction, not science.
- Jabbles 6y ago
  This seems to be a much more reasonable stance, though just because you can conceive of something doesn't mean it should be taken seriously. Your previous comment included questionable phrases such as "any degree of certainty", "absurd", "just a theory".
  - plank_time 6y ago
    My point is that we are talking about an event that happened 70 million years ago. Think about how long ago that was. The amount of evidence that is leftover after 70 million years of time passing is infinitesimally minute. To think we can come to any conclusion with the tiny amounts of evidence that remains or to clue together all the remaining bits and pieces of residual evidence is extremely arrogant. It makes for a decent story and hypothesis, and it sounds plausible. But to teach people that this is basically fact is absurd, which is my point. It should be taught as a theory.
    - Jabbles 6y ago
      You cannot dismiss entire branches of geology like that. The evidence is not "tiny" or "infinitesimal". Sure, it takes care, effort, and specialised techniques to find it, but it is there, and we need a theory that explains it. Much of the research into geology has been funded by the oil industry, who are enormously interested in knowing these kinds of processes, in the hopes it will help them locate it.
      - plank_time 6y ago
        Geology != figuring out how dinosaurs became extinct. The evidences that remains after 70 million years is orders of magnitude less than the evidence that has been destroyed over the last 70 million years. To take the morsels of evidence we have and think that paints a definitive answer is the height of human arrogance.
- oivey 6y ago
  Referring to scientific theory as science fiction is a bit strong. The extinction of the dinosaurs isn’t Star Wars. Can we ever know exactly what caused that extinction event? No. Did a massive meteor hit the earth that likely could have done it? Yes. Could some other coincident event also contributed? Sure. There is, however, pretty strong modeling-based evidence that the meteor strike alone could have caused the mass extinction.

Symmetry 6y ago

There's a big difference between "with perfect certainty" and "with any degree of certainty". We can't be pefectly sure that the scenario you outline didn't happen but the timing and the idea of a virus acting like that are so improbable that we can be almost entirely certain it didn't play out like that. We're not perfectly certain it was the impact, but we are very certain with all the evidence that has built up.

quesera 6y ago

OK, but most of what we consider fact about any era (including the present) is a consensus understanding/belief based on the best available evidence -- if we're lucky. Everything we are told or taught is a simplification, or a model. The distinction between "fact" and "theory" is not always as clear as you imply.

totalZero 6y ago
An empirical epistemology (ie, science) would suggest that events we did not observe are proven by finding undeniable evidence that they occurred. "Consensus" and "best available" are not part of it. We cannot say for sure that a theory is fact simply because we form a consensus around a hypothesis supported by the best available evidence. That evidence may be insufficient to incontrovertibly support the hypothesis and consensus has often been wrong in the history of science. I would go so far to say that there has always been a consensus view that later turned out to be totally wrong. The ability to doubt a proposition while simultaneously believing that it may indeed be true is a core psychological skill for any scientist. We ought not treat every theory that we believe to be true as "fact."
plank_time 6y ago
Consensus by humans doesn’t mean that it’s fact. By presenting the asteroid theory as fact is doing a disservice to science. It should be taught as a theory with pretty good evidence. I personally think this is the most plausible explanation but it’s when people call it fact or near-fact it makes me bristle. It creates massive groupthink and stifles discussion on the topic which is worse, because it becomes politicized especially in this day and age.
- quesera 6y ago
  I understand your point, and I agree. But there's nuance here. Some theories, ranked by the strength of their supporting evidence, e.g. and IMO: 0 Baby-eating lizard aliens run the US government 1 .. 2 String theory 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 Asteroid extinction event 8 Relativity 9 Evolution Scientists and specialists should draw a critical line between theory and fact. But there are always unknowables, and if "fact" requires the elimination of uncertainty ("10" in the above), then it is a useless word. So we'd need a new word, that means "very well-supported theory, based on all available evidence, with no strong competing explanations". Open to suggestions here! But for non-specialists, at what score is it reasonable to treat a theory as "fact"? I'll vote for 7.5. :) Obligatory: Colloquially, "fact" as "true idea" -- not "quantum of isolated information which can be knowable". The latter definition is lovely, but has little application in the world of people.

yongjik 6y ago

Paleontologists have a much more detailed view of the past than you think. There are fossils of fish and trees killed by the asteroid impact itself, buried by the tsunami.[1] > In the deposit, the team discovered an ancient freshwater pond whose occupants had been quickly cemented together by waves of sediment and debris. The fossils include sturgeon and six-foot-long paddlefish, their scales intact but their bodies ripped and smashed; marine mollusks; leaves and tree fronds, and the burned trunks of trees. The fish carcasses were not bloated, decayed, or scavenged, suggesting that they were buried quickly — and that few animals were left alive after the cataclysm to come digging. > The fossil deposit also teems with tektites, tiny glass beads that are the telltale fallout of planetary-scale impacts. Fifty percent of the fossilized fish were found with tektites in their gills, as if the fish had inhaled the material. Also recovered were tektites trapped in amber. Their chemical composition was unchanged in 66 million years, and it closely matched the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinct... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanis_(fossil_site) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanis_(fossil_site)