Taxacom: Marie Tharp

[John Grehan]

If you've never heard of Marie Tharp, then you are not alone. Never heard
of her myself before now. In the 'official' histories of plate tectonics
the discovery of the mid ocean ridges goes to Heezen, and Ewing, the head
of the Lamont lab, who in 1956 published on the discovery of a ridge
covering about 40,000 miles of the ocean's floor. Only it was never their
discovery, but that of Tharp, who was, of course, not credited for this
(and does this not remind you of the double helix scam?). Tharp was given
the tedious and detailed task of mapping the ocean seafloor from echo
soundings (I guess the men were too important to get their hands on a
pencil). "After weeks of looking at the data and plotting the lines, Tharp
had noticed a pattern. She had about half a dozen lines running across the
ocean, and many had a v-shaped dip in a similar spot, right on top of an
underwater mountain chain, the Mid-Atlantic Rift. It looked like a rift.
But it couldn't be, Heezen told her, because that would be too much
like continental
drift
<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fvideo-earth-tectonic-plates-billion-years-2021-2&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cdef14b2830744f32a17008dbc03103a1%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638315088981254588%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wkvUeJzMcddQEYBaGBMH0bP1QrfSlvBBDIK6WQJ1fAs%3D&reserved=0>.
He and "almost everyone else at Lamont, and in the United States, thought
continental drift was impossible," according to Tharp. It would take Heezen
months to accept what he'd dismissed as Tharp's "girl talk."

So once again, the  history of science here is so much bs (and ironically b
= bull in both noun and adjective). Science is supposed to be about the
discovery of knowledge, but all too often it is also about power and
suppression. As noted by Derrida, for all knowledge gained, something
escapes and is lost. Only in such cases as this the loss is deliberate. At
least history can sometimes be revisited. The worry is what continues to go
on in the present.

Cheers, John

-- 
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhepialidsoftheworld.com.au%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cdef14b2830744f32a17008dbc03103a1%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638315088981254588%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=sS2RLnybqGnitBSWCgib9aYuUV%2Fd3wDYgNXvRCRba1A%3D&reserved=0 (use the 'visit archived web site'
link, then the 'Ghost Moth Research page' link.