

How One Woman's Discovery Shook the Foundations of Geology - wallflower
http://mentalfloss.com/article/60481/how-one-womans-discovery-shook-foundations-geology

======
rurounijones
The idea of drawing those maps, which now hang in every classroom I have ever
seen, by hand seems like a Herculean task. There are so many mundane things
that we take for granted now because it is easy to do on computer.

Ah, the stories where arrogant, condescending "top of the Field" scientists
get proven totally and utterly wrong. Wonderful and a good lesson in humility.
The Scientific establishment might be right most of the time, but "most" is
not "all".

The fact this happened in a pretty sexist environment by a women just makes it
better.

Interesting that having a "women on board" was taken to be bad luck, that just
sounds so backwards coming from a ship engaged in scientific research and paid
for by scientists.

~~~
ars
Bad luck could be their euphemism for what they expected would happen with one
female and many males on board.

Sailors (at least back then) were not exactly known for being exemplary
individuals.

~~~
raverbashing
That's true unfortunately

------
steffenfrost
The treatment of Wegener's theory of Continental Drift is a lesson for the
scientific community.

If one is not allowed to mention or entertain an idea without career
repercussions, it harms the scientific process. Similarity to the treatment of
climate change "deniers" comes to mind.

The merit for the cause of climate change should be based on evidence, not by
keeping opposing views off the table by threatening the careers of those who
want to explore research other ideas.

~~~
asgard1024
Come on. Nobody threatens opposing viewpoints to anthropogenic global warming.
Competing hypotheses even get tested, things like CLOUD or BEST come to mind.
They are just really weak explanations.

If you would read history, you would actually find that AGW had similar story
as Wegener theory, if anything. Until Keeling and Plass came, nobody took the
Arrhenius' and Chamberlin's idea seriously. And there was even experimental
evidence from Calendar.

And the same goes for Milankovitch cycles, which are one of the most important
pieces of evidence _for_ AGW.

~~~
dougabug
This is an incredulous claim.

Even scientists such as Freeman Dyson and Hendrik Tennekes had their
reputations smeared for daring to express skepticism over the most dire claims
of catastrophic AGW proponents. Dyson didn't even claim that the Earth wasn't
warming, he simply criticized the then strong faith in the predictions of
GCMs, and the popularization of extreme catastrophic claims such as a 20 foot
rise in global sea levels this century. Physics Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever
quit the American Physical Society, saying “In the APS it is ok to discuss
whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe
behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

The Climate Gate scandal showed irrefutably that prominent scientists in the
climate research community conspired to spike the publication of dissenting
scientists.

Expressing skepticism regarding catastrophic AGW has unquestionably been a
21st shibboleth. Even skeptics of the Big Bang aren't branded as "Deniers"
with editorials from prominent policy advisors (James Hansen) calling for
charging them with "high crimes against humanity and nature."

For the record, I am not a "Denier," so please no scarlett letter "D."

~~~
asgard1024
There is a difference, though. Wegener had an alternative theory. As far as I
can tell, those "skeptics" don't have any good alternative explanation (or
data), just a gut feeling. So they are not at all in the same position as
Wegener.

Catastrophic claims do no good, that's true. But frivolous skepticism (without
a good counter-theory) has policy implications (continuing business as usual,
which is unsustainable). The scientists opposing AGW are not being mass
criticized for their scientific opinion (because they don't have any), but for
the policies they give support to.

I also disagree with your interpretation of climate gate, but let's leave
that.

------
WalterBright
In the 1930's, my grandfather Ferdinand Bernauer, set up measuring stations in
Iceland in an attempt to prove the theory of continental drift by showing that
Iceland was spreading apart.

He was not able to take the confirming set of measurements because the war
intervened and he was killed in 1945.

See page 6 of
[http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~leo/greinar/thysk_exp.pdf](http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~leo/greinar/thysk_exp.pdf)

and his papers on the topic:

Bernauer, F. (1937) Geschichtete Lava an isländischen Vulkanen. Zeitschrift
der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 89, 88–97.

Bernauer, F. (1939a) Vulkanische und tektonische Spalten auf Island.
Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 91, 405–420.

Bernauer, F. (1939b) Island und die Frage der Kontinentalverschiebungen.
Geologische Rundschau 30, 357–358.

~~~
raverbashing
Interesting

How did he intend to do that? Radio waves? Positioning related to the
sun/starts?

~~~
WalterBright
Measuring the gap between points set up on opposite sides over time (years). I
presume using optical surveying equipment.

------
spain
Now that's what I call a clickbaity title.

~~~
CmonDev
And quite sexist as well (scientist's gender shouldn't matter).

~~~
robkix
Did you read the article? It very much mattered in this case, and has
historically mattered in the scientific community quite a lot.

------
PeterWhittaker
Reminds me of _The Map that Changed the World_ ([1]), a map of England drawn
by a professional canal digger who had noticed and documented strata
throughout England, Wales, and southern Scotland. It was essentially the first
geological map and led both to modern geology and to Darwinian evolution.

Science advances at least partially through the collection of large amounts of
data and the distillation of that data into useful forms by dedicated workers
like Tharp and Smith.

[1] [http://simonwinchester.com/books/the-map-that-changed-the-
wo...](http://simonwinchester.com/books/the-map-that-changed-the-world/)

------
Luc
What a crap article. It seems to be an amalgamation of other popular
retellings (looking for more info I found paragraphs copied nearly verbatim)
crafted into a 'just so' Hollywood script. No way the writer consulted
original sources for this.

~~~
garrettgrimsley
Mentalfloss is a rag on par with Buzzfeed, you shouldn't expect much from it.

