Tectonic Audit^[1]
By Steffi McImtyresome and Rose McKritik^[2]

(This is the first in a series of articles in which two biologists bring their expertise to bear on the Earth Sciences, exposing sloppy errors and groupthink.)

This week, we address the paper that purported to enlighten us all on the real nature of those “tree rings of the sea”, the ocean crust magnetic anomalies, in the paper "Magnetic Anomalies Over Oceanic Ridges". Nature 199: 947–949 by FJ Vine and DH Matthews (1963), henceforth “VM63”. This paper, deemed “seminal” by the geo-mobilist “team”, is riddled with elementary errors that would not have passed the more rigorous standards employed by us biologists.

a)     The upside-down Carlsberg Ridge series. Astute readers of Tectonic Audit (is there any other kind?) will immediately notice that the Carlsberg series are upside-down. This inconvenient truth was glossed over in the text of VM63 with a hand-waving, unsubstantiated and ad hoc hypothesis about the Carlsberg Ridge being located in “low magnetic latitudes”. It’s like sticking needles in your eyes.

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