Monday 17 November 2014

From Piltdown Chicken to Tarby: How Dodgy Fossils Pervert Paleontology


Like that in illicit antiquities, the illicit market in fossils smuggled from countries like China and Mongolia has significant cognitive implications. John Pickrell, 'How Fake Fossils Pervert Paleontology [Excerpt]' Scientific American November 15, 2014 [A text adapted from 'Flying Dinosaurs: How Fearsome Reptiles Became Birds', by John Pickrell. Columbia University Press, September 16, 2014]. The story of this trade, according to investigative journalist Lewis M Simons in the October 2000 edition of National Geographic, is one of "misguided secrecy and misplaced confidence, of rampant egos clashing, self-aggrandizement, wishful thinking, naive assumptions, human error, stubbornness, manipulation, backbiting, lying, corruption, and, most of all, abysmal communication".

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