Insisting you're right, despite multiple experts stating otherwise.

[LabRatKing]

Good science results in more questions and forces researchers, both professionals and avocational, to seek more and better data.

 

Bad science by definition, is results that provide “proof”.

 

 

[Top Trilo]

7 hours ago, jpc said:

Some folks here may remember the guy about 6 years ago who had found turtle eggs in TX.  He had the x-rayed and was convinced.  They were the size of a big grapefruit.  We all told him no... these were concretions.  He drove all the way from Minnesota to Wyoming to show them to me, and left convinced that he was right after I showed him  what to expect in a turtle egg and how his was more of a rock than a fossil. 

 

Just found and read all 6 pages of this thread and it is a perfect example of what has happened and will happen. The thread ended almost a year after it started. Agree with the others and won't repeat everything everyone said. I think the best thing to do anytime a heart or dragon appears is to just let them know its a rock in a kind way which this forum does then if they claim otherwise or that you are wrong either don't post or state your evidence and after that if they don't agree its time to move on we won't benefit from getting them to agree, other members that will read that thread will hopefully believe the experts and still learn from it. 

[siteseer]

7 hours ago, jpc said:

You win. 

I have been trying to avoid many of those posts, certainly after they come back insisting they were right. 

 

Some folks here may remember the guy about 6 years ago who had found turtle eggs in TX.  He had the x-rayed and was convinced.  They were the size of a big grapefruit.  We all told him no... these were concretions.  He drove all the way from Minnesota to Wyoming to show them to me, and left convinced that he was right after I showed him  what to expect in a turtle egg and how his was more of a rock than a fossil. 

 

A lot of these folks will interpret "take it a museum" as meaning "show the experts why they are wrong...in person".  

 

Yeah, that one sticks out because he said at the beginning that he was not a scientist and had no experience with fossils but he insisted it was a turtle egg.  As I recall, he took it to get imaged more than once.  He admitted the results were inconclusive which had to sting a little.  I think he was counting on "turtle egg for sure."

 

I bought a weird thing at a local mineral/fossil show once.  It was cheap and part of a small lot of Mazon Creek fossils (ferns, a worm, and that) - stuff the dealer hadn't sold and had marked down.  I thought it had a chance to be some weird arthropod so I showed it to a friend with a lot of experience with Mazon Creek stuff.  He said it was a poorly-preserved shrimp.  It must've rotted a bit and been picked at by scavengers so it was falling apart.  I accepted the ID.  I knew that was the most likely conclusion even though it would have been cool to have something unusual from the deposit.  I still have it to keep me humble.

 

Jess

[Fossil_Adult]

A few years ago a couple had come down the beach in west Moreland  and showed me some “shark teeth” that they had found. (This is my beginning years) and they said that they looked for hours before they found these “sharks teeth” I didn’t have the heart to tell them that their hard work had all been in vain so I told them that they were sharks teeth and that moment has haunted me for a long time. I sometimes wish I could go back and give them the real info, because who knows, they could still to this day be picking up rocks thinking they’re teeth. Anyways, I just thought it was funny because I had a moment of stupidity where I wrongly ID’d something on purpose to not make them feel bad :/ oops!

[Fossil_Adult]

This is really blowing up! I can’t believe this many people have responded. Thanks to everyone for giving your input, I’ve never had a post this popular before. I love all the stories as well!

[cngodles]

I'm terrified to name or identify anything without getting confirmation from research papers or professional sources. Early on I thought a crinoid calyx plate might be a fossil shark tooth. It had the general shape, but was worlds away from what eventually would be the real thing I found later. As soon as I was told no, I accepted it and moved on.

 

I'm also hesitant to name species. I've found dozens and dozens of specimens from the genus Metacoceras, but I've only ever named one species. I'm not yet sure what I have, and I sure won't share incorrect information online if I can help it.

 

I've also heard about professional paleontologists who are splitters and groupers. Some will see two specimens that are identified the same, see a slight difference, and declare a new species. Others will take a collection of perhaps two or three different species and assign them all to the same species. So much of the work is deciding taxonomy and several opinions on it are given every day.

 

Good example of splitters were early Petalodus workers. One tooth, Petalodus jewetti was named because it was the first ever found in that area of Kansas. It is most certainly Petalodus ohioensis.

[digit]

12 hours ago, cngodles said:

I'm terrified to name or identify anything without getting confirmation from research papers or professional sources.

Save your terror for more worthy activities like horror movies (or the evening news).

 

The best approach I've found is to put forth your best guess on something and include your line of reasoning (even if you prove to be wrong). Here's me getting schooled several years ago when I was not as familiar as I am these days on the crab claw fragments that mimic (to the uninformed) a piece of fish jaw with sockets (alveolae) for teeth. At least I hedged a little on my initial guess and was able to take the new information provided by the forum to research more about fossil crab claws in all their variety.

 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/55298-more-micros-from-the-peace-river-and-cookiecutter-creek/&do=findComment&comment=599422

 

Learning involves making mistakes and refining one's understanding of a subject. When someone insists on their preconceived (and quite often illogical) conclusions and attacks any informed opinion as being "institutional dogma" with an inability of the "establishment" to think "outside the box", then the game is over before it's begun.

 

Fossil knowledge (and science in general) are way too broad and expansive for any single brain to be able to contain. Either you have a more diverse but shallower comprehension of fossils or you dig into a favorite group (trilobites, cetceans, brachiopods, shark teeth, dinosaurs, etc.) and become a subject "expert" with a deep but narrow expertise. We have many of these subject experts here on the forum where we can solicit informed opinions. The experts are not infallible but their opinions are usually a much better starting point for fossil ID and most will know their subject well enough that they can mention the features they are seeing (ID requests necessarily being limited to using images of sometimes questionable quality) in order to come to their conclusion.

 

They say that law is the only self-propagating occupation and that a small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two. I've jokingly said much the same about taxonomists (paleontological or otherwise)--the "lumpers" and the "splitters" keep each other employed. Truth is, "species" is a human concept that really does not exist in nature. In order to study something we need to assign names to identify and discern. The very definition of "species" has evolved over time (yes, I see the humor in that statement). Nature is much more variable and squishy than the orderly boxes we'd like to fit it into. Quite often two species are initially described from the few specimens collected that may show quite distinctive differences. Over time intermediate forms may come to light and a continuum from species A to species B may show that they all need to be lumped into a single "species" bin with a wider variation in the population (or over time). Some taxonomists see benefit from trying to dice things up finer and some see the merits in allowing more variation within a single species "box". Neither is more "correct" as they are just steps along the way to better understanding the fluid nature of Nature.

 

Taxonomy in living organisms is complicated and confusing (DNA analysis can actually make things simpler in some cases and more complex in others). Taxonomy for fossil organisms has the disadvantage of only having partial remains (quite often only bones--or even just teeth for most sharks/rays). Given the incredible odds necessary for an individual to be preserved as a fossil, we're never seeing close to the full picture anyway. Short of inventing a time machine, paleontology will always be an inexact science that works over time (through much effort and passion) to become increasingly less "inexact" over time.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken