I was channel-surfing the other night, and stumbled across a History Channel program on paleoanthropology, talking about new-ish theories of how humans first populated the Americas. Coming off my recent read of 1491, this seemed like a good way to pass a little time.
After a little bit, it started to talk about some guy’s theory that the Younger Dryas cooling and the mass extinctions at around that time were caused by an asteroid impact on one of the ice sheets. Which, you know, is a theory, I guess. The problem with this was, part of the evidence they were citing for the impact hypothesis was the presence of fullerene molecules at various Clovis sites. The narration explained these as (paraphrased):
Large organic molecules named “fullerenes” after Buckminster Fuller, the scientist who first discovered them.
And, yeah, not so much. And, really, that doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence in the subsequent explanation of how these molecules are only found in space.
(I think the show in question was this one, which apparently didn’t raise major anthropological red flags, but I’m not inclined to trust anyone who thinks Fuller was a chemist.)
A lot of people think that Fuller created Fullerenes.
That’s what happens when the show’s writers rely on “common” wisdom instead of doung their research properly.
Most scientific truth is not common wisdom, not to mention that wisdom itself is not very common.
They had to throw in that supermodel-gets-eaten-by-saber-tooth cat sequence too. The Gods of Schlock had to be placated with a vixen sacrifice, I guess. Bon apetit.
In any event I think the comet stuff is not in too much favor right now. See for example
http://westinstenv.org/news/2010/04/14/younger-dryas-megafauna-extinction-comet-theory-discounted/
or look for the overview PNAS article that didn’t disprove a comet hit but showed that all the evidence supports terrestrial causes just fine.
I was under the impression that the Youngr Dryas was thought to have been the result of huge amounts of cold fresh water pouring into the Atlantic from the glacial lake Agassiz?
I don’t honestly get why people dabbling in explanations of events in human prehistory are so obsessed with asteroid, meteorite impacts. I seem to remember several other major events having been explained by such impacts by dubious studies. Neanderthal and mega fauna extinction included.
I think this carping is a little unfair. We all have errors in our knowledge, things we think we know but we are wrong about. So the author of the voice-over thought he knew the story behind the name fullerenes (or perhaps he did and a script editor “improved” the script?). It’s a trivial important point nor relevant to the main thesis of the piece, so why would anybody necessarily notice the error, when they are concentrating on the more difficult task of assembling a documentary?
It would be more worrying if one of their talking heads (experts if you will) used this incorrect explanation, but I find it difficult to care that a few television people got an unimportant factoid wrong.
I remember Mark Chu-Carroll posting some similar grumble about someone else’s error in a post that itself contained an even worse error! Remember the old biblical proverb about motes and beams?
One of the kindest things that can be said of the History channel is that both their video effects and their science fiction are better than that on the SyFy channel. Sometimes. Mostly?
And, really, that doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence in the subsequent explanation of how these molecules are only found in space.
Good call on your part, because the Wikipedia page on fullerenes notes that they are found in soot here on Earth. So that was a major credulity FAIL on the part of the show’s writers and editors.
I followed the Wikipedia links to confirm my recollection that R. Buckminster Fuller was in fact already dead when C60 was discovered and named buckminsterfullerene in his honor (the dates were 1983 and 1985, respectively). The generic term “fullerenes” was coined after other such molecules were discovered.
Strange. Nobody pointed out why C60 was named “Buckminster-Fullerene”. It is because he was the most prominent explorer of those interlocking geometries, from which explorations we get geodesic domes etc. The shapes in the C60H60 regular structures were strongly reminiscent of those in the domes BF created.
I’m glad Bucky is permanently remembered at least for this. He did a lot of good stuff that is not so well known, but should be.