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Now, why WOULD you hear a lot about dismissed forgeries? There are probably millions of forged paintings, but the only ones you hear about are the few that have been accepted as genuine by major experts and have sat in museums for a long time.

OK. Feduccia's a semi-crackpot himself, but let's grant the premise and say there is a forgery mill selling fakes to amateurs. Maybe some of the fossils you can buy on the web aren't real. (Given the price on the particular thing I linked, though, it had better be real.) What is the nature of the forgery? Like those art forgeries, they would be copies, not originals. There is no motivation to do much of anything else. You don't want to fake something that never lived; it just makes your fake less valuable and more easily detectable.

And all this is happening outside of science and irrelevant to it.

What is the nature of the forgery? Like those art forgeries, they would be copies, not originals. There is no motivation to do much of anything else. You don't want to fake something that never lived; it just makes your fake less valuable and more easily detectable.

Most fake fossils I have heard of are variant franken-fossils. As for faking things that never lived, that's what makes it so much easier in China: We have not had access to China since before WWII, so a lot of REAL stuff is stuff that has never been seen before, like the two parts to Archeoraptor - both unique PARTIAL specimens, put together to form something dramatic.

Keep in mind that until the late 1990s, there were only six T-Rex skeletons found, and none of them complete. Only one was really a lot more than a few jumbled bones, and as I recall, some parts had never been found until the group of (four?) nearly intact skeletons recently discovered.

And all this is happening outside of science and irrelevant to it.

Actually, it makes paleontologists skeptical of anything they didn't dig up themselves, or wasn't dug by someone they know well - which causes them to ignore new specimens if they don't fit their conceptions perfectly; which after some are finally noticed and proven, in turn causes them to occassionally go chasing fakes. Fortunately few make it to the front pages of newspapers (which makes it difficult to Google).

You don't want to fake something that never lived; it just makes your fake less valuable and more easily detectable.

It doesn't matter if the something lived or not, for the forger it only matters if the forgery resembles something his mark very much wants to acquire, or to believe he has.
As P.T. Barnum said, "There's one born every minute."

And all this is happening outside of science and irrelevant to it.

It can muddy the water so to speak, as far as the lay person is concerned, who generally has to rely on popularizers of science (having neither the time nor training to read peer-review journals); and they are used to hearing statements such as "Dr. XX of University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople" (apologies to Prof. Peter Schickele, there) has "proved that blah blah blah...".

To the lay person, most pronouncements of science are statements of authority; and frauds such as the one that started this thread, politicization of global warming, Tobacco Institute scientists, and debacles such as Thalidomide and Vioxx don't help the reputation of science much.

Cheers!