T. rex, the Crater of Doom, and Scientific Method

Anton E. Lawson
Department of Biology
Arizona State University

Abstract

Working from the 1970s through early 1990s, Walter Alvarez and his research team discovered the cause of the mass extinction that claimed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a massive meteor that slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula. The present paper discusses that research in terms of eight major arguments that were crucial to the ultimate discovery. The Alvarez case history reveals that science is at its core an enterprise in which causal questions are raised and answered through the creative use of analogical reasoning followed by an equally creative process of hypothesis testing in which predicted and observed results are compared. According to this hypothetico-predictive theory of scientific method, causal hypotheses drive investigations and enumerative induction plays no role. The central educational implication is that science classrooms should more frequently engage students in open inquiries that raise causal questions and encourage them to brainstorm alternative hypotheses, which are then rigorously and explicitly tested in a hypothetico-predictive fashion.

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