Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park

by

Michael Crichton

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Dr. Richard Stone Character Analysis

Dr. Richard Stone, the director of the Tropical Diseases Laboratory at Columbia University in New York City, receives the remains of the mysterious lizard that bit Tina Bowman. The reptile expert whom Dr. Marty Guitierrez wanted to identify is abroad, and his lab wants Stone to make sure the sample doesn’t have any dangerous pathogens. Stone, like many others in the book, looks for evidence that supports his previously held beliefs, rather than critically assessing the evidence in front of him; thus he discounts the dinosaur-like features in the sample and belittles Alice Levin for pointing out the obvious (if improbable) truth that the lizard is, in fact, a dinosaur.

Dr. Richard Stone Quotes in Jurassic Park

The Jurassic Park quotes below are all either spoken by Dr. Richard Stone or refer to Dr. Richard Stone. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Chaos, Change, and Control  Theme Icon
).
Second Iteration: Skeleton Quotes

Ellie’s first thought was that she was looking at a hoax—an ingenious, skillful hoax, but a hoax nonetheless. Every biologist knew that the threat of a hoax was omnipresent. The most famous hoax, the Piltdown man, had gone undetected for forty years, and its perpetrator was still unknown. More recently, the distinguished astronomer Fred Hoyle had claimed that a fossil winged dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, on display at the British Museum, was a fraud. (It was later shown to be genuine.)

The essence of a successful hoax was that it presented scientists with what they expected to see. And, to Ellie’s eye, the X ray image of the lizard was exactly correct […] It was a young Procompsognathus.

Related Characters: Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, Dr. Marty Guitierrez, Dr. Richard Stone, Alice Levin
Related Symbols: Vestiges
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
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Dr. Richard Stone Quotes in Jurassic Park

The Jurassic Park quotes below are all either spoken by Dr. Richard Stone or refer to Dr. Richard Stone. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Chaos, Change, and Control  Theme Icon
).
Second Iteration: Skeleton Quotes

Ellie’s first thought was that she was looking at a hoax—an ingenious, skillful hoax, but a hoax nonetheless. Every biologist knew that the threat of a hoax was omnipresent. The most famous hoax, the Piltdown man, had gone undetected for forty years, and its perpetrator was still unknown. More recently, the distinguished astronomer Fred Hoyle had claimed that a fossil winged dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, on display at the British Museum, was a fraud. (It was later shown to be genuine.)

The essence of a successful hoax was that it presented scientists with what they expected to see. And, to Ellie’s eye, the X ray image of the lizard was exactly correct […] It was a young Procompsognathus.

Related Characters: Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, Dr. Marty Guitierrez, Dr. Richard Stone, Alice Levin
Related Symbols: Vestiges
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis: