At a deeper level what this whole exchange revealed to me was something disturbing about the way science works. I hadn't quite grasped the role of fear before. But I could see it in action everywhere here: fear of being 'noticed and monitored by colleagues,' fear of unwanted negative celebrity, fear of indignity, fear of loss of reputation, fear of loss of career--and not for committing some terrible crime but simply for exploring unorthodox possibilities and undertaking 'somewhat controversial research' into what everyone agrees were extraordinary events 12,800 years ago. Worse still, this pervasive state of fear has somehow ingrained itself so deeply into the fabric of science that those who have embraced unorthodox possibilities themselves are often among the least willing to consider unorthodox possibilities embraced by others--lest by doing so they 'contaminate' their own preferred unorthodoxy. How will it ever be possible to discover the truth about the past when so much fear gets in the way?