Re: Out of date dino books

[Philidor11@aol.com]

In a message dated 11/27/98 7:54:35 PM Eastern Standard Time,
jjackson@interalpha.co.uk writes:

<< I don't think it's a good idea to throw away any out of date dino books
 since nothing is lost if their info is wrong.  >>

Hyperbole, I assume.
If I read a book which I believe to be factual and the 'facts' have been
superceded then  I have been misled, unintentionally.
When I read another book with more accurate information I may have cause to
think about the contradictions, but on what basis can I decide between them?
Another response to your comment mentioned reading Newton and Faraday.  Many
of their ideas have not been superceded, and the reader already knew the more
recent information.  
So, without some guidance I will be misled by inaccurate information and will
have no information by which to distinguish a better hypothesis.

When I first came to this list I was looking at some statements in a book By
David Norman which seemed to indicate some major significance for Connecticut
herbivores.  This turned out not to be true, disappointingly.  As Mr. Holtz
commented:

Although Norman's book was great in its time, there
has been a LOT of advances in dinosaur research since then (as he'd be the
first to admit).

Left to my own judgement, parochialism might have won out.

Old books sometimes have better interpretations than newer ones (as Bakker
enjoys pointing out in his books), but knowledge, training, and expertise are
necessary to discerning better from worse.  I don't believe you can argue
'Confusion is good'  and leave it at that.