This article asks the reader to view science through an appreciative as well as rational eye. It states that the most basic account of science is that it is a productive form of systematic investigation.
Stephen Jay Gould, a professor of biology, geology and the history of science at Harvard University, expresses his disappointment with the way science is presented. He states that science is presented in such a manner as to excite the media and public with just the outcomes when the most important part of science lies in the methods used to reach those outcomes. According to Gould, good science involves testing, proving or disproving ideas as opposed to merely accepting useless speculation as fact. He imparts to his audience the necessity of finding concrete evidence to support theories. .
In order to illustrate his point, Gould uses scientific reasoning to compare three theories that attempt to explain the extinction of the dinosaur.
Cleverly following the title of the article, Gould presents the theories of Colbert, Cowles and Bogert, which is based on testicular failure of male dinosaurs due to global warming (sex), Ronald K. Siegel, who presumed that massive overdosing due to poisonous flowering plants (drugs) may have caused the extinction of the dinosaur and finally, the theory of Luis and Walter Alvarez which is focused on the possibility of a huge asteroid striking earth and causing the dinosaurs, as well as other species, to become extinct.
Gould states that the theory of testicular failure has little merit because scientists would need information from the remains of dinosaurs that fossils simply cannot provide. Also, as Gould points out, this theory does not take into account the extinction of several species of marine life in the same time period.
He then proceeds to point out that the theory of the dinosaurs overdosing on angiosperms was mainly speculation because these plants were around for at least 10 million years before the mass extinction of dinosaurs occurred and there is simply no way to prove that these plants caused an overdose that killed even one dinosaur not to mention all of them.