Voices of Science

Ian worked on river sediments from Spain. Ian was an interesting case because he was a born again Christian and he had a very absolute view of the Bible. And once he’d given up trying to convert us, he then let that go a bit. But the problem was that he believed that the Earth had been formed, you know, 5,500 years ago and yet here he was producing ages for his sediments which were, you know, over 100,000 years. And I was aware of this and I thought: how does he handle this one? Didn’t want to as ‘cause it would get into a long discussion. And anyway, he wrote up his thesis and then he came and said he wanted to put a note in saying – a disclaimer in saying that he didn’t believe any ages over … [Laughs] And I thought, what? You spent three years of your life producing these ages and you’re going to say you don’t believe them. And I said, ‘You can’t do that, you know. You either believe your work or you don’t. You know, you should have opted out earlier.’ Anyway, he didn’t put that in and he defended it and got the PhD and then went off to work in New Zealand, in a lectureship there, in a geography department, as a physical geographer, but working on modern processes.