dinosaurs and color

[Mickey Rowe <rowe@psych.ucsb.edu>]

Earlier this week I wrote:

> I wrote to the editor of _Discover_ in response to their article by
> William Speed Weed on how dinosaurs might have looked.  [ ... ] I
> was reasonably satisfied with [the letter that] got published
> [ ... ]  I am not as satisfied with Mr. Weed's response.

After sending that message to the list I sent a copy to the editors of
Discover and asked that they direct a copy to William Speed Weed.  I
was just pleasantly surprised by his response to that message.  He and
I are now in much more substantial agreement on the issues at hand.
Some of the difficulties I had with his text and response were
probably due to the telephone tag games authors and editors play,
though he did honorably accept all responsibility for the final copies
of his article and repsonse to my letter.

It might interest all of you to know that his major concern when
writing the article was to help people who don't normally think about
dinosaurs to see some of the liberties taken in the production of
things such as "Walking with Dinosaurs".  In particular, what he
wanted to say in the section I originally complained about was that it
is unscientific to assert that any particular dinosaur had any
particular coloration.  So far as I know, he is correct about that
since I also know of no data that could be used to answer such
questions.  People on this list were not really his target audience,
because the main things he wanted to get across were things we already
know (you need only look at the archives for commentary on WWD to see
that many of us had similar overall concerns with its presentation).

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@psych.ucsb.edu)