Paleontologists Cast Doubt On Footprint Discovery..

[Guest Nicholas]

To be honest I thought it was too good to be true, they seems to have come out with this information far too early, even before casts were made. Perhaps it was the media hype or just certain divisions of science wanting to stake their clam first... it was iffy.

Here are 3 articles on it... Nothing is set in stone yet...

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

[Guest Nicholas]

Another take, and a fairly reputable source.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2008) — A group of paleontologists visited the northern Arizona wilderness site nicknamed a "dinosaur dance floor" and concluded there were no dinosaur tracks there, only a dense collection of unusual potholes eroded in the sandstone.

Article HERE!

[Auspex]

Oh well, the mental image was fun while it lasted...

Peer review and the scientific method prove their worth again!

[Guest Nicholas]

Peer review and the scientific method prove their worth again!

Should have been conducted much earlier.

[Boesse]

Oh man, that sucks for Seiler. I guess this was the subject of his Master's Thesis - that really blows, to have your entire master's thesis get shot down like that.

Oh well, he should have conducted better science.

I thought I would mention - Brent Breithaupt works a lot on dino tracks (and was a classmate of my advisor's). He is also fairly well-known within SVP, as he is the head auctioneer for the SVP benefit auction every year - his lightning blonde pony tail is also pretty recognizable.

Bobby

[jbstedman]

Oh well, the mental image was fun while it lasted...

Peer review and the scientific method prove their worth again!

Not sure if you're being sarcastic about peer review, Auspex, but I am struck by the fact that the piece that started all of this was apparently peer reviewed before being published in Palaios. I've always considered peer review to be the gold standard. If this research is as off base as the critics state, then I guess there's peer review and then there's PEER REVIEW. Depends on who does the peer reviewing.

Of course, as one of the authors of the original piece notes, the critics' conclusions have not themselves been peer reviewed, suggesting the critics are conducting science through press conferences.

Will be interesting to see if we ever hear of this again.

[Auspex]

Sounded to me like the critics went to the site and refuted the findings based on the physical evidence.

[Guest Nicholas]

Not sure if you're being sarcastic about peer review, Auspex, but I am struck by the fact that the piece that started all of this was apparently peer reviewed before being published in Palaios. I've always considered peer review to be the gold standard. If this research is as off base as the critics state, then I guess there's peer review and then there's PEER REVIEW. Depends on who does the peer reviewing.

Of course, as one of the authors of the original piece notes, the critics' conclusions have not themselves been peer reviewed, suggesting the critics are conducting science through press conferences.

Will be interesting to see if we ever hear of this again.

What tends to happen, at least this is what some professionals tell me... while something is being peer reviewed or even before hand the media grabs it trying to be "first" to publicly document a find. The problem is when reputable media sources begin to do this... *cough* Nat Geo *cough* <--- They are the most extreme example of this in science.. in my opinion.

[Guest Nicholas]

Party-Crashing Paleontologists Say Dino “Tracks” Are Just Potholes

Find the link HERE!

[Guest Nicholas]

Skeptics try to shoot holes in dinosaur-track theory

Find the Link HERE!

[mommabetts]

So much for the dino dance floor, that is a bummer!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Boesse]

In the case of the popular articles, they were printed long after the article was published in Palaios.

It is usually OK to break news of your article in a popular source while the article is in press, but it is really annoying for other researchers if it is more than a couple weeks before being published.

Part of me is fine with this getting published - and part is not. For one, I'm dissappointed that such a colossal screw-up with dino track identification was able to be published in Palaios, one of my favorite journals (which i will be publishing in in the future).

However, on the other hand, had it been less of a screw up, then let it get published - not enough scientific discourse happens in the first place. Not enough scientists write response articles/letters - these often only happen in higher impact journals; it is rather amazing in paleontology, after reading some archaeology papers last year for a class - anthropologists/archaeologists are often just plain nasty. Paleo on the whole currently happens to be very peachy, and some parts are somewhat competitive, but there is often reluctance/hesitation to criticize a researcher's work, which is just plain wrong.

The situation is most unlike that in other areas of study; sure, science is supposed to be collaborative and a warm atmosphere in general, but it becomes a problem when the majority of scientific discourse occurs in the rejection letter to the authors of a study, rather than afterwards, among the discipline as a whole.

Bobby