New paper published: Rejection of Holliday et al.'s Alleged Refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

Another paper that rejects Holliday et al.'s (2023; HEA) Gish gallop has been accepted for publication in Earth Science Reviews, the journal that published HEA.

Because of the word limit imposed by ESR on our rebuttal, we could publish only a summary paper that points out only the major errors in each section of Holliday et al. (2023). We sought other journals but the editors refused our request to publish our response in their journals, stating that ESR is the appropriate vehicle. Given this limitation, we had little option but to publish a summary in ESR with the extended details in Airbursts and Cratering Impacts (see the previous blog post). So the longer paper in ACI should be seen as an extension of the summary paper in ESR.

Note that, originally, ESR limited our response to 3000 words, which is clearly inadequate when rebutting an article of over 96,000 words! After appeal, ESR relented by allowing a word length limit of 6000 words. Ultimately, we were allowed to publish a 'summary' of 8000 words. Our detailed response in ACI is over 40000 words.

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Rejection of Holliday et al.'s Alleged Refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

Martin B. Sweatman, James L. Powell, Allen West.


Abstract

We reject the claim of Holliday et al. (2023; hereafter HEA) that they have “comprehensively refuted” the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH). Scores of peer-reviewed articles in dozens of peer-reviewed journals from hundreds of researchers, many of whom were not members of the core research team of Firestone et al. (2007), have corroborated the YDIH and replicated the key evidence dozens of times (Powell, 2022; Sweatman, 2021). Refuting a hypothesis that is so well established should require compelling new evidence and a plausible alternative process. HEA offer neither but, instead, question the peer-reviewed evidence supporting the hypothesis. Many of their arguments are faulty and were already rebutted in earlier reviews. The remaining differences in interpretation are part and parcel of science and do not lend themselves to the refutation—that is, the falsification—of an active hypothesis. Words alone cannot do that, not even the 96,000 words of HEA. Only evidence can.


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