Have you ever heard of the Bone Wars? Back when the science of paleontology was new, the world was taken by a dinosaur craze. This period is exemplified by the rivalry between two men: Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.
The rivalry is legendary. The two men openly sabotaged each other's work both in the field and in scientific papers. One such early example saw Marsh humiliate Cope by pointing out errors in a fossil reconstruction. Cope grew up a wealthy Quaker, Marsh grew up poor. Oil and water
It was a race to claim some sort of immortality. Both men wanted to be the man to discover the highest number of new dinosaur species. Between the two of them, they documented hundreds and almost as many errors...
You see, treading uncharted lands through the unknown is a messy business. It led to duplicates. Two bone fragments from different animals of the same species recorded as wholly different types, etc. The damage to the knowledge was vast and took decades to rectify...
I see this as a cautionary tale. We truthers are in uncharted waters ourselves. It's easy to let zeal and rivalry make us careless, to lead us to the same kind of Bone War errors. We must not be afraid to run down theories, but we must retain the diligent care of skepticism.
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