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Port Orford Meteorite Hoax - Part 3 of 6

PLOTKIN H. (1993) The Port Orford Meteorite Hoax
(Sky & Tel., September 1993, pp. 35-38):

I was no exception; the Port Orford meteorite story captivated me and
drew me to Oregon's coastal mountains for field searches with D. Borgard
during the summers of 1986 and 1987. But by the time of my second visit,
I had become convinced that Evans's story simply could not be true. How
could a scientist of his presumed caliber discover an exotic 10-ton
pallasite and not record it
in his journal? And how was it possible that it could have escaped
detection by the prospectors who worked in the area in Evans's day, and
by the thousands of people who looked for it in recent times?
Still, lacking compelling evidence, I was reluctant to conclude that
Evans's story was an outright lie. I therefore decided to research his
life further and to reevaluate his letters, journals, and catalogs to
see if they could provide supporting evidence for such an
interpretation.
This new investigation produced startling results. In the first place it
provided evidence that Evans had no professional training in geology and
that he was superficial in his scientific fieldwork.
His credibility as a geologist came from his fortuitous discovery of the
rich fossil remains of the South Dakota Badlands, which he chanced upon
in 1849 while working for D.D. Owen on one of his surveys. On Owen's
recommendation, he was appointed by the Department of the Interior in
1851 to explore the geology of the Oregon Territory.
Evans's geologic notes from his expeditions to Oregon further reveal
that while he was an accurate describer, his analyses were cursory and
certainly not insightful. Although his early exploring trips and
specimen collecting provided at least a beginning for a natural history
of the Pacific Northwest, Evans clearly was not a highly regarded
scientist.

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