Talk:Mary Higby Schweitzer

Creationist claims

At present this article seems to be giving rather much credence to creationist claims about her work, and missing their obvious misinterpretation of the state in which she found the traces of soft tissue within the fossilised matrix, and the point that the bones themselves could be dated, as could the formation in which they were found. For more detail, some links worth reading are [1], [2] (also available here[3]) and [4]. Note that care has to be taken with WP:BLP standards, and that Creation Magazine is not a reliable source for anything Schweitzer might find derogatory. ... dave souza, talk 16:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you think it should be removed? It doesn't seem to me like it's giving much credence to creationist claims, it only mentions what they are and then refutes them.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the refutation's a bit inadequate, and the article should be focussed on Mary S's biography rather than expounding on this side issue. A better approach might be to go into more detail about her work, including the ways of dating the specimens, then state at the end of the paragraph that Mary S rejected YEC claims that the soft tissues could only be a few thousand years old. It might be worth taking the main points from the paragraph from the Smithsonian article This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.” . . dave souza, talk 17:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Any stub can do with expansion. That looks like some good material to use.--Cúchullain ^t/c 23:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I tried to add a bit.--Nowa (talk) 01:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I cleaned up your additions. Mostly I converted lists to prose and took out some of the sections headers were the information was pretty thin. There doesn't need to be a dedicated section on Schweitzer's religious beliefs, let alone the idiosyncratic Creationist interpretation of her work. Good work expanding it, though.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice job. Thanks.--Nowa (talk) 23:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Funny how anything with 'creationist' in it isn't a reliable source... Just a thought. Extra point. I notice that at the time of my writing there is no mention of creationism, religion or anything Schweitzer believes. This article is far too short for such an excellent woman, and shouldn't, as you said, there be additions wherever it is possible? I notice that quite a few articles I have long since gained information from for multiple reasons have non-mainstream views, theories etc taken out completely. Shouldn't they remain in the article but be stated that they are not indeed mainstream? Iheartthestrals (talk) 06:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

That's because the scientific community does not regard Young earth creationism as credible. Theistic evolution is a readily understandable and acceptable position for most Christians around the world, especially those who are legitimate scientists.

Wikipedia does not give WP:UNDUE prominence to WP:FRINGE ideas, which includes young earth creationism.

Wikipedia only summarizes professionally published mainstream academic or journalistic sources, it does not serve as a means to praise anyone, only note that how they are discussed in multiple sources. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:15, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

a small point of fact

The reference article makes this following statement:

The claim of discovering soft tissues in a 68 million year old fossil was disputed by molecular biologists for 15 years after Schweitzer's announcement

Although the following is not stated here, 3rd-party sources say that the B.rex fossil was discovered in 2000, and Mary Schweitzer's sample of it was given to her in 2001. So how does 15 years of disputes get calculated? Also, I can't find a date anywhere for Schweitzer's announcement, but surely it can't be BEFORE she even received the sample. Perhaps it FELT like 15 years to her? (humorous aside there, folks).

Jimp69 (talk) 06:07, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

This sentence perhaps was the original source?

UC Berkeley dinosaur evolution expert Kevin Padian, who was not involved in this new research, noted that for 15 years molecular biologists had been insisting that Schweitzer could not possibly get molecules out of a 68 million-year-old fossil, and that her methods were flawed despite all the many tests she used that confirmed her work.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/13/MNGVGP7VCQ1.DTL&type=science#ixzz0UQpI6dTk

The original sentence is poorly written but does appear to say biologists thought it was impossible in the 15 years leading up to the discovery, not since.

--86.137.43.125 (talk) 00:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like to contact both Mary Schweitzer and Kevin Padian for clarification. Do you know if it would be ok for me to say to them that I am trying to clarify a point of fact for Wikipedia? Jimp69 (talk) 08:32, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Dr. Schweitzer was kind enough to email me and suggest this sentence is referring to her first professional lecture she gave in 1994. Neither the Wiki column nor the the SFGate column mention this lecture or this date. This would justify the given time, but off course, her lecture didn't have anything to do with the B. Rex sample given to her in 2001. Dr. Schweitzer makes no claim to predicting the future (yet another humorous aside). Jimp69 (talk) 04:30, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

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Can she 'confirm' her own work?

We currently give 3 sources in support of a statement that a part of her work has been confirmed. Two of the sources are fine, but the first one confused me, because she is one of several co-authors of the cited work. I'm no expert, but I thought confirmation meant your work had been replicated by somebody other than you. Maybe somebody who knows more about such matters than I do might say whether the relevant sentence is fine, or needs some re-wording. Tlhslobus (talk) 09:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

How about a picture?

It would be nice if a more experienced editor obtained an appropriate picture for the article.  :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.196.139.25 (talk) 20:53, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Soft tissue

User:Primal Groudon with regards to these edits [5] [6] there are several obvious problems.

Firstly if we put aside that neither of these https://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/iron.htm and https://www.thebalance.com/metal-profile-iron-2340139 seem to be clear cut WP:RS especially not the latter, can you explain where either of them comment on the role iron particles may or may not play in preserving soft tissue? Both seem to be very general information pages. The first one has a bit more info including some small detail on the role iron plays in living cells. However it still doesn't talk about the role iron may or may not play in preserving soft tissue anywhere that I can see.

Second you claim the first one is a detailed study but this does not appear to be the case. It's not a study at least as that term applies in science. I'd note that it's literally impossible to do a study on iron that would cover all such things. If you're doing a study, you're only going to focus on one specific aspect especially given all we already know. Instead this looks like a general information page on iron, just like our iron article. It only cites 4 sources with no inline sources. It doesn't seem to be have been published in a peer reviewed journal. It has a reasonable degree of detail but I don't think it's accurate to call it 'detailed' since it's still relatively short. I mean you could reasonably write a whole book on iron and I'm sure many people have. Maybe more to the point, while I'm not sure what journal would accept such a thing, it looks short for a review article on iron.

Third you claim that age doesn't matter which suggests a basic misunderstanding of science. Science is not static. New studies may disprove long held beliefs or even earlier studies which were in some way flawed or didn't properly demonstrate what they were believed to demonstrate. Therefore something from well before the study is often not a good source in contesting the study.

Fourth this specific issue seems to be a fairly minor thing when it comes to iron the element, I'm not convinced even if well supported it belongs on Iron although it would likely belong in other articles. In any case per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS the absence of the info from other articles doesn't demonstrate it should be excluded from this article. If you believe it belongs in some other article then per WP:SOFIXIT please add it yourself.

Fifth, I do hope you understand that the study appears to be related to complicated chemical models which may resulted in the preservation of soft tissues in the right circumstances. I don't think anyone is suggest if you dump soft tissue in iron it's going to magically preserve all the time.

Nil Einne (talk) 03:17, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

In retrospect, "dump soft tissue in iron" is maybe not the best way of phrasing my point, but hopefully I still got it across. Nil Einne (talk) 16:10, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Agreed with Nil, these sources and the argument made against Schweitzer appear to be highly generalized comments on iron, and not specific iron compounds or chemical systems. Having done some work with iron coordination compounds myself recently, this is not a simple issue that can be answered on a general article about iron. I've only been working, for example, on iron hemes and similar iron porphyrin compounds and derivatives. What oxidation state are we talking about with the iron? What spin state? Does the compound it is in modify the oxidation or spin state (spoiler, they absolutely do)? How does that impact interaction with other compounds? What other axial coordinations are taking place? If this isn't a porphyrin derivative, we get even bigger issues and variations. You aren't going to find this on a very generalized article on iron. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 18:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

This article should be removed or corrected as currently it's a young earth creationist shill

I've tagged this article as having multiple issues, including a non-neutral POV, dubious statements and unreliable references which appear to have been cherry picked by a young earth creationist and which contradict the modern consensus of the scientific community and other scientific publications. Also, the "Discoveries" section includes dubious material that has been invalidated. Furthermore, the "Awards and honors" section references "molecular paleontology", which as of now, seems to be a fringe scientific field, and is not even an article or section on Wikipedia. Since the widespread publication of Schweitzer's statements and journal articles, the "Answers in Genesis" and "Creation Science" people have used it as fuel for their argument that the earth is 6000 years old, even though Mary Schweitzer herself says that she's being misinterpreted -- Wikipedia is not a stage for propaganda.

See the following, by no means exhaustive list, of references

"I don't care about what they say about me". www.sciencemag.org. September 2017. Retrieved April 3, 2020.

""Soft Tissue" in Dinosaur Bones: What Does the Evidence Really Say?". biologos.org. October 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2020.

"Dinosaur Soft Tissue". letterstocreationists.wordpress.com. Retrieved April 3, 2020.

Jdbtwo (talk) 18:58, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

While the article may have some problems, that is an excessive amount of tags. I've thus reverted. We can work on cleaning up some of the problems, but just marking practically the entire article wit "disputed" tags is ... just an eyesore. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

The article has many problems, as I've described. I think that the "multiple issues" template should remain intact and that the "Discoveries" section's "disputed" template should stay, at least. I'm sorry if I made the article ugly, but I didn't know of any other way to go about pointing out the POV violations, dubious, cherry picked, references and other problems. Could you at least add back the article and section templates? Jdbtwo (talk) 21:55, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Nobody is doubting that Schweitaer's work is controversial, (the article even says so) but you tried to tag every single source (regardless of whether it was about her controversial work or not) as a "creationist shill" with no explanation at all. You need to understand that that makes you seem like a kook. The fact that her research has been deliberately misinterpreted by creationist nutbags is not damning at all, she shares that honor with many indisputably legitimate researchers. ApLundell (talk) 04:33, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Nobody is doubting that Schweitaer's work is controversial, (the article even says so)
— User:ApLundell

I think you are mistaken. I've read the article and no where does it state that the material is controversial.

but you tried to tag every single source (regardless of whether it was about her controversial work or not) as a "creationist shill" with no explanation at all.
— User:ApLundell

First, I meant to only tag the dubious, un-sourced statements in the article and the sources which were controversial. I did not intend to "tag every single source" as controversial ( and I did *not* call such sources a "creationist shill" -- that was only in this talk section where I said that such sources were *added* to the article by a creationist, or so I thought ), and I actually didn't tag every single source as controversial. Also, her Bio section is a stub and the "Discoveries" section takes up most of the article.

with no explanation at all
— User:ApLundell

I had provided a link to a list of many sources by experts who had debunked most of her claims in the talk section of this article and I also *did* provide reasons why I had tagged certain references ( such as their being contradicted by other scientific studies, not being able to be reproduced and having no consensus in the scientific community ) and I *did* intend to fill in the references I tagged with opposing references from other paleontologists, but my edits got reverted before I could do that.

You need to understand that that makes you seem like a kook.
— User:ApLundell

I didn't intend my edits to come out that way, so I apologize.

The fact that her research has been deliberately misinterpreted by creationist nutbags is not damning at all, she shares that honor with many indisputably legitimate researchers.
— User:ApLundell

That's something I think we can both agree on :)

Anyways, as this article stands, is still a biographical stub with a large amount of misinformation taking up the body of the article. As I've said, Wikipedia isn't a stage for propaganda and I have no doubt that many people reading the article will think that it's legitimate and take away misinformation from it to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, which is the diametrical opposite of what Wikipedia is supposed to do -- The article needs to be quickly fixed or deleted.

Jdbtwo (talk) 16:06, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

"I *did* intend to fill in the references I tagged with opposing references"

Actually, I misspoke. What I meant to say is that I intended on adding a "Criticism" section containing opposing views and studies by other scientists.

Jdbtwo (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I think you are mistaken. I've read the article and no where does it state that the material is controversial.

It explicitly says

Since then, the claim of discovering soft tissues in an ancient fossil has been disputed by some molecular biologists.

Since then, the claim of discovering soft tissues in an ancient fossil has been disputed by some molecular biologists.
— User:HandThatFeeds

Ok, but we have the weasel word "some" here followed by, if I'm not mistaken, *one* reference. We also have the weasel word "confirmed" sprinkled throughout the article. Almost all of the sourced statements are statements which support Schweitzer's position and which do not mention the vast majority of positions of other scientists, or at least that's how I read it.

... which is then followed by several examples of scientists who disagree with her research.

And you're still claiming the article is "propaganda," and filled with "misinformation." Which is a very extreme take. This article is frankly bland when it comes to controversy. I think your opinion is colored by how badly some creationists are willfully misinterpreting her findings, and applying that to her findings themselves.

And you're still claiming the article is "propaganda," and filled with "misinformation." Which is a very extreme take. This article is frankly bland when it comes to controversy.
— User:HandThatFeeds

No offense, but that is because *very little about the wider scientific controversy is mentioned and most of the references, as I mentioned previously, are references that support Schweitzer's claims with no counter-arguments* . For me at least, it reads like creationist propaganda and misinformation.

What I meant to say is that I intended on adding a "Criticism" section containing opposing views and studies by other scientists.

And that's a bad idea. "Criticism" sections are frowned upon, because anything they say should be handled in the main article prose. Criticism sections often become a coatrack upon which to hang any disagreement with the article's subject.

Wouldn't that make the article ugly though? There are many Wikipedia articles with criticisms sections. If you want a counter-reference / argument inline with every one of Schweitzer's arguments / references, wouldn't that make the article convoluted?

Maybe the best thing would be to propose a new draft version of the article, and we can work from there. Alternately, we could consider reworking the article to be about the discovery & its misinterpretation, rather than framing it as a biography. (That would involve a page move, after we discuss it.) — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:56, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you here. This Bio article is a stub as the Bio section is a stub, which is followed by two sections -- "Discoveries" and "Awards" -- that take up most of the article. From my point of view, the article violates Wikipedia's guidelines on how to write biographies about living persons. I think that the "Discoveries" section, at least, should be moved to a different article, as you suggest, and that the Bio section should be greatly expanded.

Note that I'm an Aspie and if you read any type of disrespect into what I say, take it with a grain of salt as I have major problems with emotional affect :)

Jdbtwo (talk) 17:21, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm coming to this article after hearing a computer engineer mention the discovery of dinosaur soft tissue, implying that conventional scientific theory about these extinct organisms is wrong. (A bit of Googling with the words "dinosaur soft tissue" led me to several articles which explained the matter to my satisfaction.) I am disappointed in this article for a number of reasons, starting with insufficient biographical information. The article "'I don’t care what they say about me': Paleontologist stares down critics in her hunt for dinosaur proteins" from sciencemag.org linked above provides a number of details about her life that should be in this article, such as her fundamentalist Christian beliefs before she became a paleontologist; how her growing interest in dinosaurs "cost me a lot: my friends, my church, my husband"; & how some of the push-back about her discovery was due to her being a woman in a male-dominated field.

Another is the problem of how soft tissue -- which normally decays in a matter of months -- could survive millions of years, & is a serious issue to overcome if her discovery is an actual find, is explained in "Dinosaur soft tissues preserved as polymers", which links to recent research showing that in specific conditions the soft tissue chemically transforms into polymer compounds that preserve much of the genetic information in the soft tissue.

In short, more work still needs to be done on this article. -- llywrch (talk) 19:57, 30 October 2020 (UTC)