Bretz Proved the Floods. Science Moved the Goalposts.

In the early development of geology as a discipline, a decision was made. A dogma was established - that the rates of change visible in the present were the only lens through which the past could be interpreted. Uniformitarianism became so entrenched that invoking catastrophic processes was considered unscientific by the turn of the century. The framework had been set, and it would defend itself.

In the 1920s and 30s, J. Harlen Bretz walked the sculpted landscapes of eastern Washington and reached a different conclusion. These features were not the product of slow, gradual erosion. They were the end result of gigantic, cataclysmic floods. His work was resisted, attacked, and eventually vindicated - because the evidence in the landscape was undeniable.

However, Randall identifies something important in what happened next. Rather than allowing Bretz's findings to challenge the uniformitarian framework, science bent the framework around the evidence instead. The question of what these landscapes truly represent has been constrained ever since by a model that was never built to accommodate the answer.