Thin Ice

Jesus, apparently, was walking on ice rather than water when he took his famous stroll across the Sea of Galilee. Or so says Professor Doron Nof at least. The Middle East was seemingly plagued by cold spells during Biblical times. And the Sea has salty springs which can stop water circulating at low temperatures and create a localised patch of ice. "A person... walking on it may appear to an observor... some distance away to be 'walking on water'" says Prof Nof, which "might have provided an origin to the story."

Note the heavy use of 'may' and 'might' in Nof's language. He doesn't have a clue really, just as he didn't when he said the Red Sea was parted by strong winds rather than Moses. I thought of this when reading another aquatic story in the Guardian today. The remains of a creature called the Tiktaalik has been found in Canada. A rather unpleasant looking predator, fortunately extinct for quite some time, it had gills and fins but also bones similiar to early creatures with limbs. Excited scientists are saying the Tiktaalik is a missing link and proves all land life evolved from sea-dwelling animals.

Now, OK. But I thought this was already, as the Americans say, a done deal. Text book after text books state categorically that life started in the ocean and eventually struggled onto the beach. And we accepted this assuming that the people saying it actually knew. But they didn't, apparently, until now. They were winging it. Or were, to use a phrase from what is supposed to be a fundementally opposed profession to theirs, making a leap of faith.

My point is that maybe scientists should test the validity of their own dogmas a little more carefully before attacking other people's. Search for incontrovertable facts, build empirical ideas on them... It's a little dull sometimes and won't get them in the papers so often but is supposed to be what they do. If they just want to go on flights of fancy or wind people up then I suppose that's fine. But they shouldn't call themselves scientists or complain about receiving nasty emails (Prof Nof's getting about one a minute) if they do.