It's a long post, so I'm highliting some parts:
>Michael Benton, professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol in England, says a new dinosaur species is named about once a week, on average. Another paleontologist, Thomas R. Holtz Jr. of the University of Maryland, keeps a running tally of new dinos each year for an encyclopedia he is in the process of updating. He’s up to 14 this year. In 2015, he hit 45.
>But while that rate of discovery might delight 8-year-olds, it’s not necessarily an accurate reflection of the ancient world. Eight years ago, Benton published two papers on the error rate in dinosaur species identification and found that 48.2 percent of “new dinosaurs” are eventually cast aside, deemed invalid for a variety of reasons. That’s far above the rate for living species, which is only 20 percent.
>Facts like this make paleontology seem hopelessly flawed. But there are good reasons to think that we’re getting better at naming dinosaurs, not worse, Benton said. Compared with 50 years ago, dinosaur names are now based on larger quantities of fossil evidence, and that evidence is evaluated in far more detailed, scientific ways. The theropod-herbivore imbalance suggests there is still something deeply wrong, but it’s not unfixable.
>What’s that mean for amateur dino fans? It’s crucial context. New dinosaurs aren’t a rarity, and when they happen they may not last. It’s easy to hype a new dinosaur. It’s harder to prove that dinosaur actually existed.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/all-those-new-dinosaurs-may-not-be-new-or-dinosaurs/
Everyone wants to name a dinosaur after themselves.
i work with dudes that coauthor with the motherfucker at the top of that chart.
the chinese government pays him huge bonuses for naming new species. so every specimen that comes out of the ground is a new species.
Nature and Science won't publish vertebrate paleontology articles that don't include a new species identification.
nothing will change until political instability reduces the rate at which the chinese government can dig in Shishigou. even then there will be a lag where they publish for decades out of the warehouse.
I actually did my bachelor thesis on this. A professor in Germany dug up loads of specimens of seemingly different species of giant amphibians.Museums were therefore forced to buy them(preserve history bla bla) while the only real differences were minimal.
>>34138
So, over reporting is not just a matter of fame. Pretty interesting, I wouldn't have thought that.
>>34138
I found it's like this when I was taking Atmospheric Science. My prof bitched that so many people were putting out absolute bullshit, and the more outrageous the claim, the more subsidies and grants came your way.
Then somebody wrote the Princetonian that he was a denier. He wasn't, but he never mentioned grant grubbing again.
>>34164
Pardon my ignorance but a denier of what?
>>34165me fuckin you're mum
>>34124
>English intellectuals
So it's another case of crappily designed incentives?
I remember reading some article that Chinese peasants used to get paid a lump sum every time they bough a fossil fragment. What happened was that whenever they found something that was larger than a coin they smacked it to smaller pieces to get more dosh.
>But while that rate of discovery might delight 8-year-olds, it’s not necessarily an accurate reflection of the ancient world.
Gross go back and get a MFA
>>34166
m8
>>34124
dude who gives a fuck about dinosaurs
>>34165
Probably called him a Climate Denier. You know, if you point out that Mann had to fudge the numbers to make his "hockey stick" graph, you're a science denier.