Dear PaleoNet Colleagues:
My 10/4/96 PaleoNet posting titled "The K-T Letters/Blocking of Publications" included my letter to Ed Anders, author of the K-T wildfires/soot idea. In that posting, I referred to Richard Kerr, staff writer at
Science magazine, stating my belief that he has wrongly biased public and scientific perception of the K-T debate more than any other journalist. This current posting includes my 10/4/91 letter to Kerr.
In the 1980s, I began writing letters to the editor of
Science, Daniel Koshland, over Science's biased coverage of the K-T. Its publication record is one of flagrant promotion of the Alvarez asteroid, and demotion of K-T volcanism. Future postings of The K-T Letters will include my letters to Koshland, presidents of the AAAS, Nobelists, and to Congress.
Science magazine wields great power to influence the scientific and public communities. Many scientists, wishing to keep abreast of exciting and controversial topics, rely on
Science, as do journalists, high school and college teachers, and lawmakers. Few realize the extent to which they have been politicized on the K-T.
For a quarter of a century, I taught large sections of Historical Geology to college freshmen. For over a decade, I polled my students on what killed the dinosaurs. The vast majority cited the Alvarez asteroid. Most did not know that the Deccan Traps major eruptions began 65 million years ago, and that they were the likely source of the K-T iridium (the Reunion hot spot volcano that produced the Deccan Traps is still releasing iridium today). Many told me that they had been taught the asteroid theory almost exclusively by their high school teachers. The science magazine available to them, more than any other, was
Science.
The American secondary educational system is, today, one of the world's worst. Propagandizing a generation of our youth to "believe" in one theory--at the expense of another--is little short of a national tragedy.
Cordially,
Dewey McLean
P.S. If anyone has trouble reading the LTR/Kerr attachment, please let me know and I will repost it as a standard e-mail file.
LTR=Kerr.doc
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Dewey M. McLean Telephone: 540-552-8559
Department of Geological Sciences E-mail address: dmclean@vt.edu
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Home Page: http://www.vt.edu:10021/artsci/geology/mclean/
Dinosaur_Volcano_Extinction/index.html
Home Page: http://www.vt.edu:10021/artsci/geology/mclean/
Creationism_vs_Evolution/index.html
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