The Deep-Earth Gas Theory

Abstract

New ideas in science are not right just because they are new. Nor are old ideas wrong just because they are old. A critical attitude is clearly required of every seeker of truth.’ But one must be equally critical of both the old ideas as of the new. Whenever the established ideas are accepted uncritically and conflicting new evidence is brushed aside or not even reported because it does not fit, that particular science is in deep trouble. This has happened quite often in several fields. In geology, for example, a person who thought that continents or parts of continents might have moved in the past was ridiculed before 1960, despite the existence of good evidence from magnetic rock measurements. After 1965 anyone who did not believe in such movement was again a subject of ridicule. In petroleum geology, the massive and persuasive evidence for a deep origin of the fluids is still treated with disdain and cannot be published in certain journals.