[MontanaBeth]

What's the big deal? Why would these scientists/geologists care?

[gobucks]

Howdy. As one who has chatted a few times with these folks, they care ALOT. Such a book in a *gasp* government run bookstore.

The SHAME of it all - next thing you know, the gov't will start making Bibles available, and then, blamo, the state has endorsed a religion, and then, well of course, the pitchfork and torch crowd is going to go after the heretics, and then, they won't get to be famous publishing there very popular geosci articles.....


Hmmm, maybe I'm guilty of ranting....

[thulldud]

What's the big deal? Why would these scientists/geologists care?

It's a religious thing for them, too.

[Axenolith]

If a group of scientists (and I'm one) spend a lot of time determining, through some accident of fate or experimental flaw, that something is "true" and are later looking to be "disproved" by by a more novel approach or new information they will fight to the death to maintain their theory. Alfred Wegner and plate tectonics is the supreme case in point. He put forth a great theory and had a bunch of young turks following and then was brutally crushed by the entrenched view. Magnetic sea floor mapping in wartime (WWII) finally vindicated him, but he died on a Greenland expedition before knowing it himself...