Today’s little story involves a lady named Virginia Steen-McIntyre who worked as a geologist for the United States Geological Survey in the 1970s. She was sent to Mexico to date some ancient tools found at a site named Hueyatlaco which is near Pueblo. These tools were very sophisticated and therefore were indicitive of “modern man”. The anthopologist in charge of the site, Cynthia Irwin-Williams told Virginia that the tools must be no older that 25,000 years according to the scientific theory of man’s migration to the western hemisphere. Many believed that a conservative date of 12,000 years would be the date assigned to these tools and that it would fit current theory well.
The trouble began when the tools turned out to 200,000 years old according to four different types of tests and repeated trials and cross checking. The anthologist, Irwin-Williams, told the geologist that she had to claim 25,000 years or less; there was no other options.
Unfortunately for Virginia, she stuck with the dates that all the various tests told her. She refused to fudge the data to match current scientific theories. That, of course, destroyed her career. She could not publish and lost her teaching job at an American University; and was ridiculed by her colleagues.
The findings were finally published in the 1980s. To this day, no one can find an error in her work, only that she should have changed the data to match the current theory.
That, my friends, is what is wrong with American Science.
On the Mark 