> (As the mum of a 5 yr old and 3 yr old, I feel obligated to become an expert on all things dinosaur.)
As an uncle to an obsessed 3 year old I concur! My jaw dropped when he rattled off "pachycephalosaurus" and I had to look it up to confirm (he might have added a syllable or two but that's ok)
I feel like a 3 year old doesn't know yet which words they're supposed to know or which words are hard to pronounce yet, being equally baffled by words like "spaghetti".
I'm pretty sure there's already a popular hypothesis that relates to evolutionary biology, but I don't know the name of it.
Essentially, as hunter-gatherers every group of humans needed one or more experts on the local megafauna, so virtually all of us have some degree of fascination with big animals baked in, but some have more than others. I've also heard the same hypothesis used to express young boys' obsessions with trucks and trains.
My young lad went thru a brief phase where we went thru picture books of common vehicles and for page after page, he pointed at every wheel of every vehicle and had me name it. "Wheel." "Wheel." "Wheel." ...
Probably a developmental phase somehow connected to quadrupeds. Large object of interest. Four supporting thingies.
Boys yearn for power - Giant monsters, fast cars, off-highway trucks, guns, dirt bikes and skateboards and anything that jumps, fighter jets with missiles, martial arts, whistling into a telephone to get free calls...
(Girls surely do too, but I cannot attest to that)
A good writer who can put together stuff, interview different experts, etc. can put together something very good. I can think of plenty of books like that. They cite research and quote experts.
It has some advantages over a book written by a single expert: most importantly, it can cover multiple points of view and cover controversies more impartially.
One of the problems with expert views is that they often fail to distinguish between what is well proven, what is a current consensus because its a best guess, and what is a personal opinion/pet theory.
> One of the problems with expert views is that they often fail to distinguish between what is well proven, what is a current consensus because its a best guess, and what is a personal opinion/pet theory.
I was in the academia for some years and didn't find in my field any expert that was incapable of distinguishing well proven Vs opinion. That might be the defining characteristic of an "expert".
Maybe we just have different definitions of expert? To you and expert is someone who just defends his pet theory, and to me an expert is the same as the rest of the scientific world understands it.
Confusing someone whose job is to push their pet theory with an expert makes you sound like you've had very little exposure to science.
To play devil's advocate, I think there is some merit to their point. A common criticism against modern academia is that so much of the low hanging fruit has been addressed, that to be an expert working on the actual frontier means your "leaf node" of focus/progress is so so specific, that it's not at all uncommon to be somewhat blinded to the broader consensus/lower resolution version of the greater tree of knowledge.
The experts of the kind to which you're presumably referring, who are much more tapped in to the whole state of a broad branch of knowledge, often end up being more "science communicators" than people on the frontier of research. The thing is, though, that these "science communicators" often end up being (or start off being) more akin to a papers/Wikipedia jockey than a credentialed academic actively working in the field. So in that sense, someone who "knows a lot about dinosaurs and can effectively write about them as the broader field currently perceives them" need not necessarily be a credentialed expert.
Science communicators are typically the people who aren't good enough to do research.
I can tell that the ideas you're conveying don't come from your own experience, I'm guessing you heard them from a "science communicator"?
By contrast, I do have direct experience, and the best people were doing research, not talking to the media, and they were perfectly aware what kind of evidence exists for which ideas - in fact more than anything else, this is what being an expert is.
Talking to the media is a different job than being a researcher, I'm sure you'll agree. What I would like to understand is where this belief of yours come from, that the less knowledgeable people will have a better high level picture? Wouldn't the best high level people come from experts who make an effort to learn about those aspects?
As for exposure to science. I think Max Planck had rather a lot, and he said:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."
> I was in the academia for some years and didn't find in my field any expert that was incapable of distinguishing well proven Vs opinion.
They are capable of it, but they do not always bother to do it when talking to a non-academic audience.
One example that comes to mind is how advice on diet has changed over the years because advice was given (e.g. avoid dietary cholesterol) that was not well proven. Another was the introduction to a fascinating book I read a few years ago on the complexities of evolution (e.g. genetic changes with multiple effects, gene transfer, etc.). In the introduction the authors explained that colleagues had pressured them not to publish because it differed from the simple model of evolution taught in schools so would encourage creationists.
Economists are often biased towards their own political opinions.
I don't know about the specific case you're talking about. However, the scientific method is that when new evidence comes in, experts update their beliefs. What do you think they should do instead?
Ok I'm confused, I thought consensus nowadays was that dinosaurs had feathers, yet the impressions here are both leathery? What's our current best guess? Also, what animal has a leathery covering like that, rather than scales or supple skin?
Leathery makes more sense than feathers– imagine how much body heat you'd generate if you were 15K lbs (t-rex). You'd want to get rid of as much heat as possible, rather than putting on a thick sweater, or you'd overheat and die.
> Also, what animal has a leathery covering like that, rather than scales or supple skin?
Elephants! Which is apparently our closest approximation of Sauropod skin, which we actually have fossil impressions of.
I went down the same rabbit hole as you for the same reason, more Dinosaurs had more feathers than we originally thought, but not all. For example, the theropods out your window have lots of feathers, so other theropods like T-Rex and Raptors might have as well, though the bigger theropods probably had fewer than the smaller ones.
So much keeps getting discovered about dinosaurs! If you want to catch up on the last 20 years of research, particularly on the feathered front, I recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23394100-flying-dinosaur...
(As the mum of a 5 yr old and 3 yr old, I feel obligated to become an expert on all things dinosaur.)
> (As the mum of a 5 yr old and 3 yr old, I feel obligated to become an expert on all things dinosaur.)
As an uncle to an obsessed 3 year old I concur! My jaw dropped when he rattled off "pachycephalosaurus" and I had to look it up to confirm (he might have added a syllable or two but that's ok)
There's a pachycephalosaurus in this book! https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1646380428/
(I think I'm actually the obsessed one, to be honest, but I like to blame my children for my own obsessions)
Ooo I'll have to check with his mother if he has it already thanks!
Also as an uncle to a 3 year old, I could not believe a 3 year old could know the names and pronunciations! of 2x far more dinosaurs than me!
I feel like a 3 year old doesn't know yet which words they're supposed to know or which words are hard to pronounce yet, being equally baffled by words like "spaghetti".
The fascination between young boys and dinosaurs must be studied. There's something imprinted in the DNA for it to be so common lol.
Not just boys, my 5yo girl is fascinated by them.
I'm pretty sure there's already a popular hypothesis that relates to evolutionary biology, but I don't know the name of it.
Essentially, as hunter-gatherers every group of humans needed one or more experts on the local megafauna, so virtually all of us have some degree of fascination with big animals baked in, but some have more than others. I've also heard the same hypothesis used to express young boys' obsessions with trucks and trains.
My young lad went thru a brief phase where we went thru picture books of common vehicles and for page after page, he pointed at every wheel of every vehicle and had me name it. "Wheel." "Wheel." "Wheel." ...
Probably a developmental phase somehow connected to quadrupeds. Large object of interest. Four supporting thingies.
Quite easy explanation: dinosaurs are super awesome.
Boys yearn for power - Giant monsters, fast cars, off-highway trucks, guns, dirt bikes and skateboards and anything that jumps, fighter jets with missiles, martial arts, whistling into a telephone to get free calls...
(Girls surely do too, but I cannot attest to that)
In the ancient times, those who didn't pay enough attentions to dinosaurs in their childhood did not grow old enough to reproduce.
Can this book be trusted? I don't think the author is an expert...
A good writer who can put together stuff, interview different experts, etc. can put together something very good. I can think of plenty of books like that. They cite research and quote experts.
It has some advantages over a book written by a single expert: most importantly, it can cover multiple points of view and cover controversies more impartially.
One of the problems with expert views is that they often fail to distinguish between what is well proven, what is a current consensus because its a best guess, and what is a personal opinion/pet theory.
> One of the problems with expert views is that they often fail to distinguish between what is well proven, what is a current consensus because its a best guess, and what is a personal opinion/pet theory.
I was in the academia for some years and didn't find in my field any expert that was incapable of distinguishing well proven Vs opinion. That might be the defining characteristic of an "expert".
Maybe we just have different definitions of expert? To you and expert is someone who just defends his pet theory, and to me an expert is the same as the rest of the scientific world understands it.
Confusing someone whose job is to push their pet theory with an expert makes you sound like you've had very little exposure to science.
To play devil's advocate, I think there is some merit to their point. A common criticism against modern academia is that so much of the low hanging fruit has been addressed, that to be an expert working on the actual frontier means your "leaf node" of focus/progress is so so specific, that it's not at all uncommon to be somewhat blinded to the broader consensus/lower resolution version of the greater tree of knowledge.
The experts of the kind to which you're presumably referring, who are much more tapped in to the whole state of a broad branch of knowledge, often end up being more "science communicators" than people on the frontier of research. The thing is, though, that these "science communicators" often end up being (or start off being) more akin to a papers/Wikipedia jockey than a credentialed academic actively working in the field. So in that sense, someone who "knows a lot about dinosaurs and can effectively write about them as the broader field currently perceives them" need not necessarily be a credentialed expert.
Science communicators are typically the people who aren't good enough to do research.
I can tell that the ideas you're conveying don't come from your own experience, I'm guessing you heard them from a "science communicator"?
By contrast, I do have direct experience, and the best people were doing research, not talking to the media, and they were perfectly aware what kind of evidence exists for which ideas - in fact more than anything else, this is what being an expert is.
Talking to the media is a different job than being a researcher, I'm sure you'll agree. What I would like to understand is where this belief of yours come from, that the less knowledgeable people will have a better high level picture? Wouldn't the best high level people come from experts who make an effort to learn about those aspects?
As for exposure to science. I think Max Planck had rather a lot, and he said:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
The idea that experts are super-humanly free from bias is ridiculous.
> I was in the academia for some years and didn't find in my field any expert that was incapable of distinguishing well proven Vs opinion.
They are capable of it, but they do not always bother to do it when talking to a non-academic audience.
One example that comes to mind is how advice on diet has changed over the years because advice was given (e.g. avoid dietary cholesterol) that was not well proven. Another was the introduction to a fascinating book I read a few years ago on the complexities of evolution (e.g. genetic changes with multiple effects, gene transfer, etc.). In the introduction the authors explained that colleagues had pressured them not to publish because it differed from the simple model of evolution taught in schools so would encourage creationists.
Economists are often biased towards their own political opinions.
> advice was given that was not well proven
I don't know about the specific case you're talking about. However, the scientific method is that when new evidence comes in, experts update their beliefs. What do you think they should do instead?
A lot of people’s assumptions about Dinosaurs is from Jurassic Park. A BBC Science Correspondent is probably a lot better.
Ok I'm confused, I thought consensus nowadays was that dinosaurs had feathers, yet the impressions here are both leathery? What's our current best guess? Also, what animal has a leathery covering like that, rather than scales or supple skin?
It depends of the dinosaur. Large ones, like t.rex, had fewer feathers.
The same thing can be seen in some modern dinosaurs, the ostrich is a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich
That’s the theory. However they estimate that Khankhuuluu would have weighed about 750kg, a lot less than a Tyrannosaur.
Leathery makes more sense than feathers– imagine how much body heat you'd generate if you were 15K lbs (t-rex). You'd want to get rid of as much heat as possible, rather than putting on a thick sweater, or you'd overheat and die.
Yes. An Elephant would make a good example.
> Also, what animal has a leathery covering like that, rather than scales or supple skin?
Elephants! Which is apparently our closest approximation of Sauropod skin, which we actually have fossil impressions of.
I went down the same rabbit hole as you for the same reason, more Dinosaurs had more feathers than we originally thought, but not all. For example, the theropods out your window have lots of feathers, so other theropods like T-Rex and Raptors might have as well, though the bigger theropods probably had fewer than the smaller ones.
Posted on day of article without discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44255981
I have a pet theory that most "new" dinosaurs being discovered are just dinosaurs we already know about at different stages of life.
Have you seen Jack Horner's "Shape-shifting dinosaurs" talk?
https://youtu.be/kQa11RMCeSI
My theory keeps getting stronger: the trex was a crawler, and did not stand majority of the time. It ate small stuff on the ground like an iguana.
I'm having trouble picturing how it would do that with just the two big legs
Maybe this picture of a basilisk skeleton will help. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/510be2c1e4b0b9...
That second artist impression is pretty nice. I wonder what non-avian dinosaur plumage felt like.