The Dinosaur Feather

by S. J. Gazan

  “We basically try to ignore him. For dinosaur specialists it’s a done deal. Birds are living dinosaurs.” She lowered the sheet.

  “Your opponents say they’re ignoring you, but that’s not entirely true, is it? The debate is still ongoing. Why?”

  “Well, why do you think?” Freeman said, giving Anna a neutral look. “Because we can’t agree, and why is that? Because they’re wrong. Clark and Laam and Chang; Helland and Tybjerg. They’re wrong.”

  Anna ignored him.

  “No one can catch you out in terms of anatomical and fossil arguments. I’ve been through all the material, and the order of battle is the same: you interpret the bones differently, so you draw different conclusions. It’s a vicious circle. You’ll never agree.

  “I was about to give up.” She gave Professor Freeman a dark look. “I was desperate. You have maintained your position for so many years, so how could I—”

  Freeman glanced at his watch. Anna took a step forward and looked straight at him.

  “So instead, I reviewed your premise. And it stinks!”

  “Allegations,” Professor Freeman yawned. “Unscientific allegations. From a postgraduate.” Again he reached for his jacket. Anna handed him a piece of paper, which he automatically accepted.

  “Please would you read it and tell me if you agree?”

  He looked baffled for a moment, then he scanned the page.

  “Basic rules that should be adhered to if work is to be deemed scientific,” he read out loud. “What’s this?”

  “Just read it and tell me if you agree.”

  Professor Freeman read it. He shrugged.

  “It’s elementary,” he said. “It’s the requirements for internal consistency and convincing argumentation for selection and refutation of scientific positions. Is this what they teach postgraduates here at the University of Copenhagen?”

  Anna was aware she was starting to sweat.

  He was walking right into her trap.

  “Do you agree with them?”

  “Completely.” Professor Freeman let the paper rest against his thigh and looked at Anna.

  “Then please could you tell me why you, in your argumentation on feathers, to name one example, are guilty of a severe case of inconsistency, which you’ve just agreed mustn’t happen if a position is to be deemed scientific?”

  Silence.

  Then Freeman said, “What sort of nonsense is this?”

  “Your nonsense, Professor Freeman.” Anna flicked through her papers. “In 2000, Chang and Laam described Sinosauropteryx as having well-preserved, feather-like skin structures. Since then dinosaurs with more or less distinct, feather-like structure have literally poured out of the ground, such as Tyrannosaurus Rex found in 2005. Your opponents argue convincingly for the structure being homologous with feathers, and that consequently a feather isn’t a diagnostic feature reserved for birds but characteristic of a wider group of predatory dinosaurs, including birds. One of the most important conclusions drawn from this is that feathers evolved before flight.” Anna looked briefly at Freeman.

  “You obviously disagree profoundly with this statement and in 1985, in 1992, in 1995, three times in 1997, again in 1999, and six times between 2001 and 2004, you write, in a range of scientific journals, that the evolution of feathers is inextricably linked with the evolution of flight and it wasn’t until later that it served to insulate the animal. Is that correct?”

  Freeman nodded in an off-hand manner.

  “You also write several times that, in terms of evolution, it would be wasteful to develop complex contour feathers, which would only be used for insulation. Ergo, the structures might look like feathers, but they aren’t real feathers. Rather than Archaeopteryx, you and your supporters point to the archosaur, Longisquama, as the likely candidate for the ancestor of birds, is that correct?”

  “That’s right.” Professor Freeman had regained his footing, but Anna could tell that he wasn’t enjoying it.

  “So now we turn to theoretical science issues, still on the premise that you agree with the rules for scientific integrity, as stated on the sheet of paper. Do we still agree with those rules?”

  “Yes,” Freeman croaked.

  “Then how do you explain that you, in two papers, one from 1995 and the other from 2002, are critical of the feather-like structures found on Longisquama, and argue these structures bear a striking resemblance to plant material, when you, in a paper from 2000 claim, in great detail, these very structures seal a homologous relationship between modern birds and Longisquama? Plant material, Professor Freeman?”

  Freeman made to say something, but Anna continued regardless.

  “It’s unbelievable that you dare to assume Longisquama is an archosaur which, according to many experts is by no means certain, and simultaneously you reveal a naive understanding of falsification. It’s not enough to claim Longisquama is bird-like, that’s quite simply not a convincing reason to let Longisquama push Archaeopteryx off the throne.” Anna glanced at Freeman before she went on, knowing full well Freeman was on the verge of exploding.

  “I have two further theoretical science disparities associated with your argumentation concerning feathers, then I’ll let you go. In an article in Nature in 2001, you state it’s impossible to establish whether predatory dinosaur feathers are homologous with those of modern birds, because the claim cannot be tested biochemically. But elsewhere…” Anna leafed through her notes. “More specifically in your 2001 book The Birds, on page 114, you claim that it ‘is not scientifically correct to use biochemical analyses to determine if Longisquama’s appendage was animal or vegetable,’ which, for me, is a striking example of the inconsistency which characterizes most of your general argumentation. You let the validity of an argument depend on the actual situation, and that isn’t in accordance with prevailing rules for good science.”

  Professor Freeman was white as a sheet.

  “Last, but not least, you write in 2000 and in 2002, in Science and Scientific Today respectively, it’s impossible to imagine that a structure as complex as a feather might have evolved independently in different situations, which is likely to be correct. However, the inconsistency arises the moment you, on several occasions in 1996, 1999, and 2000, argue brazenly that other, equally complex structures found in both birds and dinosaurs, such as the half-moon-shaped carpal, might well be the result of convergent evolution. Isn’t it absurd that the feather, according to you, could not have evolved independently, while the half-moon-shaped carpal could?” Anna raised her eyebrows and looked at Professor Freeman.

  “Have you finished?” he groaned.

  “Yes,” Anna said. “I’ve proven the same kind of sweeping inconsistency and absence of methodology with respect to your arguments about stratigraphic disjunction, the carpus, the furcula, the ascending process of the talus bone, the fingers of the bird hand, and the orientation of the pubic bone. However, I think my time’s up.”

  Nothing happened for several seconds. The air stood still and Anna’s heart raced. Then Professor Freeman pushed back his chair and walked out.

  Anna let herself fall into Freeman’s empty chair. She heard his footsteps fade away; she heard the doors close, and she sensed how his defeat was absorbed by the stillness of the room. Her heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

  “You can come out now, Dr. Tybjerg,” she said.

  She didn’t say it very loud; she knew he was close by.

  Anna and Dr. Tybjerg put Karen and Lily on the number 18 bus. Tybjerg was less than thrilled, but Anna had insisted and helped him into his jacket as though he was a child.

  “I’ll be there in an hour,” Anna promised. Karen looked dubious.

  “Karen, I’ll be there in an hour,” she repeated, gravely. “If you make the batter, I’ll make pancakes when I get home.”

  Lily shouted with glee and Karen relented.

  When the bus had departed, Tybjerg said, “I’ve never met your daughter before.”

  An
d Anna replied, “No.”

  Then they caught a bus to Bellahøj police station. Tybjerg seemed drained and kept squinting in the light.

  They introduced themselves at the reception but didn’t even have time to sit down before Søren Marhauge came racing out and looked from Anna to Dr. Tybjerg, dumbfounded.

  “Er, hi,” he said. “Glad you’re here.”

  They were put in separate interview rooms. Dr. Tybjerg gave her an anxious look before his interview began, but Anna shook her head gently. You’ll be fine, she signaled.

  The interview lasted thirty minutes. Søren’s questions were precise and thorough, and she tried to reply likewise. When Søren told her that Asger Moritzen was dead, the tears started falling down her cheeks. Søren got up. He’s about to hand me a tissue, she thought, to wipe away my tears, tell me to pull myself together, be strong. But he didn’t. He squeezed her shoulders gently and told her she was free to go once she signed her statement.

  Back at Anna’s they ate pancakes and, later, lasagna, salad, and ice cream.

  “We’re having a party,” Lily said, again and again, and Karen and Anna laughed every time.

  When Lily had been put to bed, they sat in separate chairs in front of the fire and shared a bottle of wine, while Anna told Karen the story from beginning to end, even though some of it was probably confidential. She didn’t care. When she had finished, Karen looked at her for a long time.

  “You need to open the door to Thomas’s office.”

  Anna closed her eyes and didn’t respond.

  “Anna—”

  “I’ll open it,” she cut in. “I’m not scared of opening it. There’s nothing behind it. The room’s empty.” She straightened up.

  “But first I have to do something I really am scared of.” She glanced at Karen.

  “Stay where you are,” she went on. “Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, please. Just be here, all right?”

  Karen nodded.

  Anna stood by the dark window, her hand on the telephone, looking down into the street, now slushy with melted snow. She could see Karen’s reflection in the glass; she was sitting in the chair to the left of the stove with her legs curled up, her chin resting on her knee. Anna breathed right down into her diaphragm, then she picked up the telephone and pressed Thomas’s number. It was past eleven, and it rang six times before he answered, drowsy with sleep.

  “It’s Anna,” she said.

  Thomas sighed.

  “What do you want?” he said, as though she rang him constantly. “I was asleep. I’m working shifts.”

  “I’m calling to tell you I forgive you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m saying,” Anna cut the letters out of a large, heavy sheet of metal, “that I f-o-r-g-i-v-e you. I forgive you for messing up my and Lily’s life.” Her voice gained strength. “I forgive you for being a fraud. I forgive you for never really loving me, and I forgive you for being cold. I forgive you for being a coward, I forgive you for all the stuff you haven’t got the guts to face, I forgive you for all your lies and your habit of blaming everyone but yourself. I forgive you for only seeing what you want to see, I forgive you for—”

  “Do you know something, I don’t need to listen to your crap,” he said and slammed the telephone down.

  Anna looked out across the street.

  “No, I don’t suppose you have to. But I forgive you anyway, damn you,” she said and added into the telephone: “Except one thing. I’ll never forgive you for depriving Lily of her father.” Then she hung up.

  She turned around and faced Karen, who was still sitting in front of the stove and said, “Why don’t we take a look at your new room?”

  Karen smiled.

  Johannes was cremated on Thursday October 18. The day before Anna called Mrs. Kampe to ask when and where, and she replied it was a small and private service but Anna was welcome. When Anna arrived at the chapel of Charlottenlund Church at 12:50 p.m. she encountered ninety-five goths in full costume. It was a glorious sight. Mrs. Kampe stood away from the crowd, looking lost.

  Inside the church, she sat alone in the front pew, but just before the service was about to begin, she rose and asked in a meek voice, “Why don’t you all move closer to the coffin?”

  People got up and filled the front pews, and when Mrs. Kampe began to sob, a woman with heavy black makeup and green hair gently took her hand. Anna sat in the fourth row letting her tears fall freely. The coffin was pure white. It should have been wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

  Chapter 21

  Anna looked out across the almost fifty people gathered in Lecture Hall A at the Institute of Biology. She didn’t know most of them, postgraduates from other departments and institute staff who must have seen her disseration defense listed on the internal notice board. Hanne Moritzen sat in the back row. In her grief, she glowed faintly, like a distant moon. Asger had been buried last Saturday, and Anna had attended the service. At first, they had been the only two mourners, but Dr. Tybjerg arrived at the last minute, dressed in a nice but crumpled suit and with a fresh haircut. The organ started playing and none of them heard the door open and shut again, but when the service was over and they rose to leave, Mrs. Helland was sitting at the back of the church. She said nothing, and she didn’t look up.

  Anna’s eyes swept across the seat rows. There was Jens and Cecilie, and Karen next to them. They all watched her with excitement, and Jens’s eyes were moist. Anna had asked him not to take photographs, that it would distract her and make her nervous, but she couldn’t stop herself from grinning when, for the fourth time in less than ten minutes, he sneaked out his camera and snapped a picture of her.

  They all had dinner together the other day, Anna, Karen, Lily, Jens, and Cecilie, and it had gone very amicably. They had talked about Troels, and Karen and Cecilie had cried. That was all right. Anna understood they were shocked. After the meal, Karen had gone to the corner store and Jens, Anna, and Cecilie had cleared up while Lily put her dolls in a drawer in the living room. Cecilie started to speak, “Er, Anna,” she said, in a certain way. Anna stopped her.

  “But we have to talk about it,” Cecilie protested, her voice thick and Jens standing behind her, nodding.

  “We do, Anna, my love,” he said.

  “And I want to,” Anna replied. “I promise you. But not now. I’m exhausted.”

  Cecilie and Jens had accepted that.

  At that moment, Karen returned with marshmallows, and they all played a game of Monopoly.

  Her lecture would begin in five minutes. Anna was sweating. They had agreed that Karen would pick Lily up from nursery school between Anna’s lecture and examination. Afterward there would be cake and champagne for everyone in the department, and Lily was, of course, invited.

  Dr. Tybjerg sat in the front row, tilting his pencil. He was dressed in the crumpled suit he had worn at Asger’s funeral, and he looked gravely at her. He pointed to his watch with his pencil and Anna nodded.

  She lowered the lights and took a deep breath.

  She opened with a short historical review and proceeded to the in-depth presentation of scientific ideals where she succinctly accounted for Popper, then Kuhn and Daston after which she extracted the basic rules for scientific integrity, the same that had been listed on the paper she had given to Professor Freeman. It took her about fifteen minutes. The next thirty minutes she spent reviewing the morphological evidence linked to the controversy. At fairly high speed, she went through the stratigraphic disjunction, the half-moon-shaped carpus, the furcula, the ascending process of the talus bone, the fingers of the bird hand, and the base of the pubic bone, whereupon she considered in detail first the disputes and then the theoretical science problems linked to the evolution of the feather. She held a small remote control in her hand, and while she explained, illustrations and keywords flashed up on the screen behind via a computer.

  Anna briefly looked out into the darkness.

  “After this review it should be clea
r that Clive Freeman, professor of paleoornithology at the Department of Bird Evolution, Paleobiology, and Systematics at the University of British Columbia, didn’t adhere to the most basic rules for sober science, and his archosaur theory is riddled with major internal contradictions and a striking absence of consistent methodology. The central question is…” Anna paused and tried to find Dr. Tybjerg’s eyes in the half-light, “why? Why is the opposition reluctant to accept that birds are descended from dinosaurs? I propose three possible reasons.”

  Anna took a step toward her audience.

  “Firstly, it’s human to see what you want to see.” Anna dearly wished she could look into her mother’s eyes, but Cecilie was lost in the darkness. “And in people’s minds, dinosaurs don’t have feathers as per previous definitions. The same conservatism applies to birds. Birds are unique and advanced, and every child can tell you they look nothing like dinosaurs. After all, they’re not big scary creatures with teeth!”

  A short burst of laughter from the hall.

  “The truth often lies elsewhere,” she went on, “in the ground, from where it must be excavated, dusted down, and interpreted as objectively as possible.” She let the conclusion linger for a moment, and then she went on:

  “Secondly, there’s human obstinacy, here camouflaged as scientific prestige. The opposition and Professor Freeman, in particular, have obviously invested considerable resources in supporting a position, which at some stage has turned out to be scientifically untenable. Acknowledging you were mistaken is no defeat. Acknowledging you were wrong is to accept that you participate in a discipline called science, where the overall dynamic depends on scientists constantly proposing possible hypotheses and trying to support them with evidence and, more important, reject them when they can’t. Not to acknowledge this is, however, unscientific. Clive Freeman can maintain his position as much as he wants to, also for reasons we cannot fathom, but he doesn’t have the right to call it science.

  “Thirdly, it’s about the communication of science, and this is closely related to status in science, as mentioned earlier. It’s one thing to understand Clive Freeman’s agenda, but if you really want to appreciate why a controversy like this one endures, you need to turn your eyes to the world in which research and science exist. It’s a world characterized by tough competition for scarce research grants, a world wherein the media play a shockingly big role for scientists and consequently the quality of science.