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....The Trouble with Plate Tectonics is..
            (...the crux of the whole thing...)


 
... that it is basically a construct of geophysicists, ..who firstly (by-and-large) don't have a geological clue, and secondly do not obey the falsification rules of science.
And that's not me saying it.  Read what Shauna Vogel has to say.  Her considered words make for a much more effective sledge than mine. She met a lot of the people in the process of researching her book and got the inside story from a number of people directly involved:-
"   Even with advances in the field, however, crucial pieces of information are missing, especially in these studies of the <Earth's> surface.  One of the main reasons is that geophysicists have been strangers to the field of geology for such a long time.  In many researcher's minds, and for obvious reasons, deep Earth science leaves off where surface science begins - in other words, where geology begins.  For decades there has been a lack of communication, some even say a disdain for each other, between the two fields.
    As geologist Christopher Scotese at the University of Texas explains it, geophysicists have always had the upper hand in terms of making models and amassing numbers.  Theirs was the dominant field so there has been resentment as a result of that.  The main reason however is that each group has defined itself and its work in a certain way and each has continued along that path.  Geologists and geophysicists rarely go to the same meetings or collaborate on the same problems.
    Geologists have all grown up believing that the rocks tell a story.  The layers upon layers of stone are all laid down in a specific sequence, and those who know how to read that sequence can read the story of a region - when uplift took place, when volcanoes loosed their contents.  Geophysicists on the other hand have become so specialised in the subfield that few of them know how to read geologists' maps or understand the subtleties of strata.  This parochialism leads many geologists to believe that without the hard evidence geophysicists are missing a big piece of the Earth's story." (Shawna Vogel, 'Naked Earth, the new Geophysics, p.139, Dutton, Penguin Books, 217pps.)

Shawna Vogel holds a B.S. from MIT, where she was awarded the prestigtious Knight Science Journalism Fellowship.  A former editor at Discover magazine, she writes for various popular science magazines, including Scientific American, Earth, and Discover. 
What she's saying here in a more polite way than me, is that whilst geologists stick as best they can to the geological reality written in the rock, geophysicists being essentially restricted to interpretation of what happens at the end of a scribbling, shaky pen, .. a seismograph, .. consider themselves having a licence to invent constructions with an unfettered disregard for geological reality.
 "Poor Buggers they", you could say, "..restricted by such limitation", except that in their extravance they show absolutely no respect for the essence of science - falsification.  The whole of Plate Tectonics is a litany of contradictions, which after half a century they still show no inclination to rationalise.  Why? Because the more furfies they can successfully strew around the place and  bamboozle everybody, the more they can justify their existence.  And physics being what it is (the key to understanding the ghostly quantum world with its wherewithall to destroy the natural material one) (... and recalcitrant neighbours), attracts the major part of funding.  Get on the back of that one and you're on a winner, professionally speaking.

And so we have dubious suppositions assumptions and speculations tricked out in rubbery arithmetic as their support, and promoted by a media cheer squad with its own separate agenda - the more 'ideas' out there, no matter how nutty, the more there is to write about and the more secure is their financial base.  Provided people buy it, that is.

The whole schemmozzle is essentially supported by disinformation.  There is huge capital in being wrong, provided it is coloured with the kudos of learned institutions .  Being wrong underwrites the chance to try again ("more research is needed", and gets rid of the problem that being right presents - which is what to do for an encore.  To the career research scientist "more research needed" is virtually a catch phrase for 'money in the bank'.   There is no reward in being right, ..not in the short term anyway, when it has the potential to put everybody offside and upset the applecart.

But models sourced in falsehood and speculative imagination at the expense of hard geological reality are valueless, no matter how inventive the arithmetic used to support it.

And that is why there is no inclination from geophysicists to include geological reality.  The 'geology' that they do attempt to include is a half-formed, flung-about, dissonant caccophany, a Heath-Robinson contraption whose purpose seems solely to bamboozle the onlooker in a morasse of gratuitous construction, to pull wool over eyes whilst trying to attract funding for their misbegotten enterprise -  Plate Tectonics.

So that's where it begins, .. and where it stops.  Were they to include geological reality, they would have no story other than Earth Expansion with all its acknowledged problems of mechanism for Earth enlargement, ..and that would incur the wrath of their fellow physicists.   Physics - the big money spinner -  would become controversial, introduce schism, divide funding and put people out of a job.  As things are, its easy.  Why make things hard for yourself, a cross for your own back?

It's all about jobs and careers.  The science itself (with its falsification that no-one is interested in other than whitleblowers like here) - is of secondary importance to the career scientist.  "We are a community of scientists" is their creed.

So why do geologists put up with it if they recognise the problem with geophysics?  They put up with it because they recognise realities, and the imperative to publish for the sake of career.  A consensus allows this to happen.  And according to Shawna Vogel above, Scotese in adopting Plate Tectonics' assumption of a Panthalassa is leading the way.  Even geologists need to face the realities of a job and a career, ..and in the academic world if you don't publish then you don't have one.  And as noted above, rubbish can be argued to have more validity and attract more prestige than veracity. It underwrites the chance for more research, and more publications, and more standing.

Wherever there is power, corruption poisons even the cleanest of cleanskin newbie slates.  Eventually.
 


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