What is the definition of science? According to Stephen Jay Gould it is “a
fruitful mode of inquiry, not a list of enticing conclusions. ” In his article titled Sex,
Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs, originally published in Discover
Magazine, in 1984. In the article he covers three different explanations as to why the
dinosaurs went extinct.
One theory, a major disaster, is what we currently think of when we think of
the dinosaur’s extinction. It also covers two other theories, one where he dinosaurs
ate psychoactive active plants, and overdosed on the plants, and the other being that
a rise in temperatures caused the testes of dinosaurs to stop functioning and led to
extinction by sterilization. He then explains his argument as to why these theories
are not scientific. Essentially these arguments take information and apply it to the
extinction of the dinosaurs with out considering mass extinction, or even looking at
if it is testable.
The sterilization argument is based of some good studies on alligators. Which
showed that they cooled very slowly, the idea is that dinosaurs got warmer and
could not cool off before they started warming again because of their size, killing the
sperm. Gould says that the hypothesis is “intriguing speculation leading nowhere.”
The writes of the paper admitted: “It is difficult to advance any definite arguments
against this hypothesis.” This is because the study doesn’t really show anything, and
there is no evidence against it in the fossil record, but that’s partly because there is none
