And which is more likely:
– that a scientist looks at available information and decides that it’s worth looking to a certain extent into abiogenics, because we’ve got nothing to lose either way
or
– that he just one day up and loses his marbles?
You used the out of “lost his scientific rigor” so I was going with that.
But even so, the notion that scientists are human beings seems to surprise a lot of people. As human beings, scientists do get hobbyhorses, crotchets, idiosyncrasies, fads, foibles, and kinks[sup]1[/sup]. They invest far too much of their selves into arguments that they can’t let go of[sup]2[/sup]. They fall out of touch with the times[sup]3[/sup]. They go nuts[sup]4[/sup].
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Linus Pauling and Vitamin C as a panacea.
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Fred Hoyle and the steady-state theory.
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Einstein and quantum mechanics.
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Economist/mathematician John Nash.
Similarly, we can look at the Discovery Institute’s A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. (I have to assume that the date of that press release (April 1, 2004) is an example of their humorlessness with no other meaning.) More than 400 scientists have signed the statement by today. Recent articles have exposed the fact that many of the signers did it solely for religious reasons or because the Darwinists needed a poke in the eye or for any number of other reasons that were not purely scientific. And a majority of the signers are not biologists at all, and few if any are doing biological research today. Yet they all can be called scientists.
Have they all lost their marbles or just their scientific rigor? I can’t say, but I feel confident in attacking their position as “tinfoil hatting” at its most pernicious.
Gold after his retirement decided to pour his time and energy into this abiogenic argument. I don’t know why. I do know that no working petroleum geologists base their time and energy on it, that no plausible mechanism for the process has been developed, and that no good evidence for it has been found in the real world.
It isn’t that Gold backed the wrong horse: he did that with the steady-state hypothesis as well, but that was developed because it seemed to explain matters that no other current theory could handle. It’s that he went from precision mathematics to sweeping a-scientific pronouncements.
The abiogenic theory was developed for, what? Wishful thinking? It wasn’t as if we didn’t have a pretty fair idea of where oil came from, where it could be found today, and what happened in between, all buttressed with thousands of mundane measurements. Abiogenic oil reminds me forcefully of all the people
who want to throw out the Big Bang theory because of a few Big Things they claim are wrong, while ignoring the, again, thousands of mundane measurements that agree with it.
There’s wrong and then there’s wrong. I think abiogenic oil is the latter.
The “force” was strong with me this morning. I floated to work.
I was thinking the Clampetts.
Again, not trying to defend abiogenics one way or the other, but more of the reasoning that someone would follow to decide to look into it.
Darwinian spite aside, dogged pursuit of an idea can also be a good thing. For each case you mentioned, it’s certain that useful debate was generated as a result.
I’d be interested to see exactly what pronouncements Gold purportedly made on the topic. It may well be baseless rambling, but I’m more inclined to believe he had a solid reason to look into it.
Something along the lines of “can oil be made from inorganic material? Yes/No? Why? Ok then.”
As long as we can all agree to give new or controversial ideas at least more than a cursory glance, rather than dismissing them out of hand simply because their proponent isn’t of a particular field, then that is enough.
As in the balloon example, oil would not be forced from the ground due to centrifugal force because the more dense rock in which it is immured would move more readily with the acceleration. The oil would sink further beneath the uplifting rocks as earth spun itself apart. If you want a better example, tie a string to a bottle of Italian salad dressing and spin it like a centrifuge; you’ll note that the less dense oil settles closer to the center of rotation. Also, centrifugal force is based on speed of rotation or angular velocity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centripetal_force), which is a very small amount of acceleration since earth rotates once a day.
I am under the impression that abiogenic theory claims that oil rises due to its low density comparative to its surroundings (due to gravity). The wikipedia article claims as much.
The rate at which humanity consumes oil is alarming. If that much is produced by abiogenic and biogenic means, I’m surprised that there aren’t more creatures able to digest the stuff.
Nuclear power will replace oil soon enough, and if we ever manage to burn all of earth’s fissionable materials, there is plenty more drifting around in meteors.