4 ms·

How One Woman's Discovery Shook the Foundations of Geology

55 points by wallflower 12y ago

rurounijones 12y ago
The idea of drawing those maps, which now hang in every classroom I have ever seen, by hand seems like a Herculean task. There are so many mundane things that we take for granted now because it is easy to do on computer. Ah, the stories where arrogant, condescending "top of the Field" scientists get proven totally and utterly wrong. Wonderful and a good lesson in humility. The Scientific establishment might be right most of the time, but "most" is not "all". The fact this happened in a pretty sexist environment by a women just makes it better. Interesting that having a "women on board" was taken to be bad luck, that just sounds so backwards coming from a ship engaged in scientific research and paid for by scientists.
- ars 12y ago
  Bad luck could be their euphemism for what they expected would happen with one female and many males on board. Sailors (at least back then) were not exactly known for being exemplary individuals.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    That's true unfortunately
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  > Ah, the stories where arrogant, condescending "top of the Field" scientists get proven totally and utterly wrong. Wonderful and a good lesson in humility. Max Planck is reported to have said: Science advances one funeral at a time.
spain 12y ago
Now that's what I call a clickbaity title.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  You won't believe what happens next!
- CmonDev 12y ago
  And quite sexist as well (scientist's gender shouldn't matter).
  - robkix 12y ago
    Did you read the article? It very much mattered in this case, and has historically mattered in the scientific community quite a lot.
steffenfrost 12y ago
The treatment of Wegener's theory of Continental Drift is a lesson for the scientific community. If one is not allowed to mention or entertain an idea without career repercussions, it harms the scientific process. Similarity to the treatment of climate change "deniers" comes to mind. The merit for the cause of climate change should be based on evidence, not by keeping opposing views off the table by threatening the careers of those who want to explore research other ideas.
- acqq 12y ago
  Yes, Wegener died during his last Greenland expedition in 1930 trying to find additional proofs for continenal drift. The theory was very unpopular in the scientific community until decades later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener Just a small number of scientist were very sure, namely Wegener's father in law and mentor Köppen and also Milutin Milankovitch, whose own climate work was also mostly recognized and rightly understood only after his death. Milankovitch wrote about the continental drift in his books that popularised science in the thirties.
- asgard1024 12y ago
  Come on. Nobody threatens opposing viewpoints to anthropogenic global warming. Competing hypotheses even get tested, things like CLOUD or BEST come to mind. They are just really weak explanations. If you would read history, you would actually find that AGW had similar story as Wegener theory, if anything. Until Keeling and Plass came, nobody took the Arrhenius' and Chamberlin's idea seriously. And there was even experimental evidence from Calendar. And the same goes for Milankovitch cycles, which are one of the most important pieces of evidence for AGW.
  - dougabug 12y ago
    This is an incredulous claim. Even scientists such as Freeman Dyson and Hendrik Tennekes had their reputations smeared for daring to express skepticism over the most dire claims of catastrophic AGW proponents. Dyson didn't even claim that the Earth wasn't warming, he simply criticized the then strong faith in the predictions of GCMs, and the popularization of extreme catastrophic claims such as a 20 foot rise in global sea levels this century. Physics Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever quit the American Physical Society, saying “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?” The Climate Gate scandal showed irrefutably that prominent scientists in the climate research community conspired to spike the publication of dissenting scientists. Expressing skepticism regarding catastrophic AGW has unquestionably been a 21st shibboleth. Even skeptics of the Big Bang aren't branded as "Deniers" with editorials from prominent policy advisors (James Hansen) calling for charging them with "high crimes against humanity and nature." For the record, I am not a "Denier," so please no scarlett letter "D."
WalterBright 12y ago
In the 1930's, my grandfather Ferdinand Bernauer, set up measuring stations in Iceland in an attempt to prove the theory of continental drift by showing that Iceland was spreading apart. He was not able to take the confirming set of measurements because the war intervened and he was killed in 1945. See page 6 of http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~leo/greinar/thysk_exp.pdf http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~leo/greinar/thysk_exp.pdf and his papers on the topic: Bernauer, F. (1937) Geschichtete Lava an isländischen Vulkanen. Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 89, 88–97. Bernauer, F. (1939a) Vulkanische und tektonische Spalten auf Island. Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 91, 405–420. Bernauer, F. (1939b) Island und die Frage der Kontinentalverschiebungen. Geologische Rundschau 30, 357–358.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  Interesting How did he intend to do that? Radio waves? Positioning related to the sun/starts?
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    Measuring the gap between points set up on opposite sides over time (years). I presume using optical surveying equipment.
Luc 12y ago
What a crap article. It seems to be an amalgamation of other popular retellings (looking for more info I found paragraphs copied nearly verbatim) crafted into a 'just so' Hollywood script. No way the writer consulted original sources for this.
- garrettgrimsley 12y ago
  Mentalfloss is a rag on par with Buzzfeed, you shouldn't expect much from it.
PeterWhittaker 12y ago
Reminds me of The Map that Changed the World ([1]), a map of England drawn by a professional canal digger who had noticed and documented strata throughout England, Wales, and southern Scotland. It was essentially the first geological map and led both to modern geology and to Darwinian evolution. Science advances at least partially through the collection of large amounts of data and the distillation of that data into useful forms by dedicated workers like Tharp and Smith. [1] http://simonwinchester.com/books/the-map-that-changed-the-world/ http://simonwinchester.com/books/the-map-that-changed-the-wo...

55 points by wallflower 12y ago

The idea of drawing those maps, which now hang in every classroom I have ever seen, by hand seems like a Herculean task. There are so many mundane things that we take for granted now because it is easy to do on computer. Ah, the stories where arrogant, condescending "top of the Field" scientists get proven totally and utterly wrong. Wonderful and a good lesson in humility. The Scientific establishment might be right most of the time, but "most" is not "all". The fact this happened in a pretty sexist environment by a women just makes it better. Interesting that having a "women on board" was taken to be bad luck, that just sounds so backwards coming from a ship engaged in scientific research and paid for by scientists.

ars 12y ago
Bad luck could be their euphemism for what they expected would happen with one female and many males on board. Sailors (at least back then) were not exactly known for being exemplary individuals.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  That's true unfortunately
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
> Ah, the stories where arrogant, condescending "top of the Field" scientists get proven totally and utterly wrong. Wonderful and a good lesson in humility. Max Planck is reported to have said: Science advances one funeral at a time.

spain 12y ago

Now that's what I call a clickbaity title.

spacemanmatt 12y ago
You won't believe what happens next!
CmonDev 12y ago
And quite sexist as well (scientist's gender shouldn't matter).
- robkix 12y ago
  Did you read the article? It very much mattered in this case, and has historically mattered in the scientific community quite a lot.

steffenfrost 12y ago

The treatment of Wegener's theory of Continental Drift is a lesson for the scientific community. If one is not allowed to mention or entertain an idea without career repercussions, it harms the scientific process. Similarity to the treatment of climate change "deniers" comes to mind. The merit for the cause of climate change should be based on evidence, not by keeping opposing views off the table by threatening the careers of those who want to explore research other ideas.

acqq 12y ago
Yes, Wegener died during his last Greenland expedition in 1930 trying to find additional proofs for continenal drift. The theory was very unpopular in the scientific community until decades later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener Just a small number of scientist were very sure, namely Wegener's father in law and mentor Köppen and also Milutin Milankovitch, whose own climate work was also mostly recognized and rightly understood only after his death. Milankovitch wrote about the continental drift in his books that popularised science in the thirties.
asgard1024 12y ago
Come on. Nobody threatens opposing viewpoints to anthropogenic global warming. Competing hypotheses even get tested, things like CLOUD or BEST come to mind. They are just really weak explanations. If you would read history, you would actually find that AGW had similar story as Wegener theory, if anything. Until Keeling and Plass came, nobody took the Arrhenius' and Chamberlin's idea seriously. And there was even experimental evidence from Calendar. And the same goes for Milankovitch cycles, which are one of the most important pieces of evidence for AGW.
- dougabug 12y ago
  This is an incredulous claim. Even scientists such as Freeman Dyson and Hendrik Tennekes had their reputations smeared for daring to express skepticism over the most dire claims of catastrophic AGW proponents. Dyson didn't even claim that the Earth wasn't warming, he simply criticized the then strong faith in the predictions of GCMs, and the popularization of extreme catastrophic claims such as a 20 foot rise in global sea levels this century. Physics Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever quit the American Physical Society, saying “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?” The Climate Gate scandal showed irrefutably that prominent scientists in the climate research community conspired to spike the publication of dissenting scientists. Expressing skepticism regarding catastrophic AGW has unquestionably been a 21st shibboleth. Even skeptics of the Big Bang aren't branded as "Deniers" with editorials from prominent policy advisors (James Hansen) calling for charging them with "high crimes against humanity and nature." For the record, I am not a "Denier," so please no scarlett letter "D."

WalterBright 12y ago

In the 1930's, my grandfather Ferdinand Bernauer, set up measuring stations in Iceland in an attempt to prove the theory of continental drift by showing that Iceland was spreading apart. He was not able to take the confirming set of measurements because the war intervened and he was killed in 1945. See page 6 of http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~leo/greinar/thysk_exp.pdf http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~leo/greinar/thysk_exp.pdf and his papers on the topic: Bernauer, F. (1937) Geschichtete Lava an isländischen Vulkanen. Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 89, 88–97. Bernauer, F. (1939a) Vulkanische und tektonische Spalten auf Island. Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 91, 405–420. Bernauer, F. (1939b) Island und die Frage der Kontinentalverschiebungen. Geologische Rundschau 30, 357–358.

raverbashing 12y ago
Interesting How did he intend to do that? Radio waves? Positioning related to the sun/starts?
- WalterBright 12y ago
  Measuring the gap between points set up on opposite sides over time (years). I presume using optical surveying equipment.

Luc 12y ago

What a crap article. It seems to be an amalgamation of other popular retellings (looking for more info I found paragraphs copied nearly verbatim) crafted into a 'just so' Hollywood script. No way the writer consulted original sources for this.

garrettgrimsley 12y ago
Mentalfloss is a rag on par with Buzzfeed, you shouldn't expect much from it.

PeterWhittaker 12y ago

Reminds me of The Map that Changed the World ([1]), a map of England drawn by a professional canal digger who had noticed and documented strata throughout England, Wales, and southern Scotland. It was essentially the first geological map and led both to modern geology and to Darwinian evolution. Science advances at least partially through the collection of large amounts of data and the distillation of that data into useful forms by dedicated workers like Tharp and Smith. [1] http://simonwinchester.com/books/the-map-that-changed-the-world/ http://simonwinchester.com/books/the-map-that-changed-the-wo...