When Science Revises — And Why Revision Is Not Failure

The Arlington Springs story contains three major revisions: the date (from approximately 10,000 radiocarbon years to approximately 13,000 calendar years), the sex determination (from male to female to male again), and the understanding of the depositional context (from Orr’s initial description to the more detailed later chronostratigraphy).

Each of these revisions has sometimes been portrayed — in popular accounts, in certain framings of the scientific controversy — as evidence that the earlier conclusions were wrong and should have been identified as wrong sooner.

This framing misunderstands how science works.