Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 52

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Popular Culture Review

ers’ choice of depiction any scientific “weight.” It is not as though he is unaware of
the controversial nature of his scavenger theory; a considerable portion of The
Complete T. rex is devoted to interpreting scientific data and making the scavenger
“case.” Competing views—those of other paleontologists—are accorded the sta
tus of differing paradigms, not, as in the case of Jurassic Park, relegated to the
dustbin of the discredited: “Was T. rex a vicious killer? Ask anyone, including
most paleontologists, and they’ll say yes. Ask me, I’d say no” (Complete rex 203).
Whatever the “truth” may be, the “scavenger versus predator” debate is presented
as just that, a debate between competing scientific views—each with its claims to
“value” as a scientific concept—and not a conflict between scientific “accuracy”
or “reality” and popular fiction. In this sense, models and descriptions discursively
produced “within” paleontology have scientific value. Those produced “within”
popular or nonscientific institutions or formations do not have scientific value.
The fact that the models or descriptions in question may indeed be identical, as in
the case of T. rex the predator, complicates this assignment of value to a certain
degree.
Horner’s texts take the construction of scientific م