Late in the afternoon of Friday November 8th, my paper ‘The response to and rejection of Brian Ford’s Too Big to Walk, a 21st century effort to reinstate the aquatic dinosaur hypothesis’ saw digital publication in Historical Biology (Naish 2024)…
I wasn’t aware that it was about to see print (I’ve been too occupied), and hence: no press release, no lengthy announcement of any sort. This brief article is all you’re getting.
Caption: at left, cover of Too Big To Walk (2018 edition). At right, a montage of dinosaurs (from Naish 2024) to show how form and function reveals these to be predominantly terrestrial animals: in making this claim, I do not dispute that dinosaurs of all sorts might have waded, wallowed, or swam, nor that some, like certain (g) spinosaurids, were potential amphibious specialists. Images: Darren Naish.
Regular readers will know that I’ve written several times in the past about Brian Ford’s claims about dinosaurs, and I can appreciate how some might feel that I’ve devoted too much time to the topic already. I’m hoping that this will be the last time. My new paper approaches Ford’s aquatic dinosaur rhetoric from a different angle. Non-bird dinosaurs – as a whole* – were not aquatic, as Ford has argued (Ford 2012a, b, 2018, 2019), and it’s obvious that the ‘support’ he offered for the aquatic hypothesis is unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. I would be wasting your time and mine in going through the key points again (Naish 2012, 2024).
* The caveat – as I have gone to trouble to point out – is that some species or groups may have been aquatic to some degree. Ford (2012a, 2018, 2019) has used the dishonest tactic of claiming that hypotheses pertaining to one or a few species (like Spinosaurus aegyptiacus or spinosaurids in general) can be applied to non-bird dinosaurs as a whole.
But what’s obvious in reading Too Big To Walk is how Ford built his case via techniques very much recalling the ‘post-truthism’ associated with certain political movements. And, ugh, what a bad time it is to be talking about that. Anyway, obvious from the book is the dismissal and belittling of experts, a strong and overly prevalent narrative claiming that palaeontologists are too blinkered to see the ‘truth’ of Ford’s wisdom, and abundant errors of fact and interpretation (Naish 2024). The book is also full of padding and (at 516 pages) overly long. For an author who’s devoted his career to the promotion and popularisation of science, this is pretty sorry stuff.
Captions: I own, and have extensively consulted, all three English-language editions of Too Big To Walk. The second edition (Ford 2019) is the small, paperback one with the bold typeface. It contains minor corrections and updates relative to the first (Ford 2018). Too Big To Walk is 516 pages long but doesn’t introduce the concept of aquatic dinosaurs until p. 282. Images: Darren Naish.
The reception of Too Big To Walk. The good news is that the failings of Too Big To Walk have been widely recognised, and that the book – published, in two editions(!), by famous and respected publisher William Collins – has, variously, been criticized, mocked and ignored, and scores poorly on aggregate sites (Naish 2024).
I have no doubt that I write from a provincial, Anglocentric bias, but what this means is that the substantial coverage that journalists gave to Ford and his views was thoroughly misleading in terms of the book’s wider reception. People mostly saw it as the baseless grandstanding it was. Here I’ll mention in passing that a trusted insider source has obtained sales data for the book on my behalf, and wow are they interesting. It didn’t do especially well, certainly not enough to justify a second edition.
Caption: a montage of reviews and amazon reviewer scores pertaining to Too Big To Walk. It’s not hyperbole to say that the book has not been well received, and has not received high scores overall. The Inquisitive Biologist review, screengrabbed at left, can be read here.
An interesting question is whether the poor reception of Too Big To Walk was driven by, or connected to, the pushback that came from palaeontologists, science writers and bloggers. Did our complaining help alert people to the pointlessness and time-wasting inherent to the existence of Too Big To Walk, or did they discover this themselves? As ever, my argument is that pushing back against bad science, anti-science, pseudoscience and crankery is important: not everyone is privileged enough to find out for themselves that a given view or publication belongs to those categories. Indeed, pushing back is more important than ever, given the way things are going, and I have no time for the view that scientists should keep their heads down and ignore crank and anti-scientific views when they see them expressed.
These topics and others are explored in the new paper (a few typos were introduced at a late stage in the publication process; I’m seeing if they can be corrected), and thanks to everyone who’s expressed interest or asked for a copy. The review history of this paper is interesting: it won the most positive reviews I’ve ever had for any submitted work.
As for Brian J. Ford…. My effort throughout writing this paper was to fairly recognise Brian Ford’s very active role in the popularisation of science across his career, and to give fair credit to his contributions. But why he thought it was a good idea to declare all experts wrong on the matter of what dinosaurs were like when alive, and to simply press forward with Too Big To Walk is a question that only he is able to answer.
Caption: I’ve published two whole articles on the Brian Ford ‘aquatic dinosaurs’ thing now. I think we can agree that that’s enough. Naish (2012) is here.
For previous articles on Ford’s aquatic dinosaurs and related issues, see…
Brian J. Ford's Aquatic Dinosaurs, 2014 Edition, February 2015 (I cannot find an intact version of this article)
Tetrapod Zoology Is A Teenager Now, January 2019 (reviews Naish v Ford Conway Hall event)
Refs - -
Ford, B. J. 2012a. A prehistoric revolution. Laboratory News April 2012, 24–26.
Ford, B. J. 2012b. Aquatic dinosaurs under the lens. The Microscope 60, 123–131.
Ford, B. J. 2018. Too Big To Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs. London: William Collins.
Ford, B. J. 2019. Too Big To Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs. London: William Collins.
Naish, D. 2012. Palaeontology bites back… Laboratory News May 2012, 31–32.
