Frances, Bryan - Scepticism Comes Alive

When Jo was a teenager, she learned that a huge meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs. She learned this theory in the usual way, hearing it from her parents, teachers, and books. Now pretend that at the time she was told the meteor story as a child, say at the age of 8, the scientific community was sharply divided on the issue of what caused the demise of the dinosaurs. Although most scientists accepted the meteor hypothesis, many others subscribed to the idea that their death was caused by some enormous solar flare. A significant number of other scientists thought that it wasn't a solar flare or a meteor, but a particularly nasty series of supervolcanoes. These latter two classes of dissenters had decent evidence: evidence concerning the sun and supervolcanoes that the meteor advocates took seriously. Both the solar flare theorists and the supervolcano theorists were highly respected professors, highly respected by the meteor theorists and at the top of their profession. Whole book series, conferences, and Ph.D. dissertations were devoted to these competing hypotheses. Suppose, further, that upon going to her university, Jo found out about the rival and highly respected hypotheses. She didn't understand all the reasons why they were so well respected and endorsed, but she was well aware that they were well respected and frequently endorsed by the experts, even the best among them. Even so, she kept her meteor belief.