Reflection on Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs

In Stephen Jay Gould`s essay, he discusses three scenarios that possibly caused dinosaurs to become extinct. Two proposals, Sex and Drugs, are quickly disregarded as plausible because of lack of evidence. Sperm cannot live at temperatures above 96 degrees Fahrenheit or below 92 degrees Fahrenheit, that is why they are stored outside the body. In the essay, a scientist speculates that dinosaurs became extinct because the males became sterile from not being able to regulate their body temperature. This is disproved because a dinosaur is so big that it would take a very long time for it to heat up or cool down especially because of the temperature being balanced between night and day. The idea that dinosaurs became extinct by overdosing on “drugs” or angiosperms is based on the fact that unlike mammals, dinosaurs couldn’t taste the difference between food and poison and their livers couldn’t detoxify them. This idea cannot be tested or proved because we don’t have samples of dinosaur tastebud or livers to see how they would react to the poison.
    It is extremely important to have good evidence when doing a science report or supporting a hypothesis. If there isn’t any facts supporting the data in a theory, then is simply an idea that has no merit. Advertisers get away with “faking” evidence all the time in infomercials. For example in the Shamwow commercial they claim it takes no time at all to clean up spills and they show a clip of the towel cleaning up a spill in only a second. When I saw a booth at a fair it was a completely different story, it took quite a while longer and was more labor intensive. People believe these scams due to clever marketing which includes persuasive pitchmen (such as Billy Mays), catchy jingles or sayings, constant repetition, and the correct demographic.  Pitchmen are good at selling things because they have a loud voice and a believable smile. They use those tactics to lure people into buying unreliable products. After watching some tv, most people have at least a few jingles of products stuck in their head, when they go to the store they will remember the product from the tv and be more likely to buy it. While watching C-span, an elder person might see a LifeAlert (an emergency call button) commercial and feel that they need it because of testimonials by people in their age group.