Episode description

Odd ideas in palaeontology

Palaeontology as a scientific field is beyond popular in the media and with the public but that also means it draws a lot of attention from those with, let’s call them, questionable ideas. And no group gets more of this stuff than the dinosaurs and the animals of the Mesozoic. This time out, Iszi and Dave discuss the world of paleo cranks, people with outlandish and non-scientific ideas who present them as fully formed research. Rarely does any of this make it into the mainstream, but on occasion it leaks in and this can only cause confusion. So sit back and enjoy, or grind your teeth in quiet and cold fury, as we go over some of the issues that come with unscientific ideas trying to make their way into the mainstream.

Links:

It’s not just palaeontology that gets these people, here’s a neat blog on a physics crank, but the central themes are identical: https://www.skepticblog.org/2012/01/09/cranks-and-physics/

A nice article by Mark Witton on how to spot crankery in palaeontology: http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-to-spot-palaeontological-crankery.html

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