Man, I wish there were some way to say, "What's the book, and who's the scholar?" without it coming out all confrontational and jerkass. I really am mildly interested, because I want to see what his peers have to say.
I try not to make statements based on a book. Making it into print doesn't automatically bestow credibility; fringe theories aside (and I've got boxes of Real Wood Pulp chock full of those), even respected experts can come up with perfectly good hypotheses that don't pan out.
A terrific example is Greg S. Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, an otherwise-excellent reference, marred only by Paul's decision that Deinonychus antirrhopus actually belonged in genus Velociraptor. Paul later changed his mind on that -- but not before his book was used as Michael Crichton's main reference for Jurassic Park, immortalizing his lapse.
Crichton, in turn, has gotten twenty years of flak for Not Doing The Research. He did do the research, and tried to tap the most up-to-date information he could lay his hands on -- but he Should Have Gotten A Second Opinion.
Re: I never met a 4 I didn't like
I try not to make statements based on a book. Making it into print doesn't automatically bestow credibility; fringe theories aside (and I've got boxes of Real Wood Pulp chock full of those), even respected experts can come up with perfectly good hypotheses that don't pan out.
A terrific example is Greg S. Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, an otherwise-excellent reference, marred only by Paul's decision that Deinonychus antirrhopus actually belonged in genus Velociraptor. Paul later changed his mind on that -- but not before his book was used as Michael Crichton's main reference for Jurassic Park, immortalizing his lapse.
Crichton, in turn, has gotten twenty years of flak for Not Doing The Research. He did do the research, and tried to tap the most up-to-date information he could lay his hands on -- but he Should Have Gotten A Second Opinion.