Re:Norman MacLeod's opinion of Alavarez' dispassion.

[Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>]

> The recent Alvarez book presents a very one-sided view of the ongoing
> controversy and was described by one recent reviewer in the Times Literary
> Supplement (UK) as advocacy masquerading as science. A more balanced and
> well documented treatment can be found in...
> 

      That was not my impression of the book.  I though Alvarez presented
a fairly objective account of the the devlopment of the K-T impact
theory, and was remarkably candid about discussing his own serious errors
over the last 18 years.  He largely confined his detailed
discussions to the evidence that an impact had occurred, and where it had
occured, instead of detailing the biotic effects (although he does deal
with these as well).  So, the book's MAIN points (that an impact
occurred, and that it likely occured at Chixulub) aren't neccessarily a 
threat to any other ideas on dinosaur extinction that might be floating
around, in case that is what you were worried about.  
      I don't think describing T-Rex and the Crater of Doom as "advocacy
masquerading as science_" is any more fair then using such a label on any
other scientific paper or publication offering evidence to support a
theory.  Alvarez draws considerably on the huge body of literature on the
K-T boundary and Chixulub (not just his own work), and gives fair
treatment to other therories behind the Ir anomaly (like the Deccan Traps
and Russell's supernova hypothesis) while explaining reasonably why he
doesn't think they work as well.   

LN Jeff