[Rockhounds] Inferring meaning where there is none by geologists

[Peter Richards]

The secret of research is knowing when to stop gathering data…. Of course, it may not be good research.

Pete
___________________________
R. Peter Richards, Ph.D.
rpr at heidelberg.edu
Morphological Crystallographer

> On Jun 1, 2019, at 8:04 PM, Tim Fisher <nospam at orerockon.com> wrote:
> 
> Welcome to the wonderful world of statistics. We deal with that constantly
> and yes it's pretty tough to put 1000 hours or so into an analysis only to
> fail to support your own hypothesis. And the journals make it worse, they
> don't want to publish "our hypothesis wasn't proven by the evidence and it's
> probably random chance" papers. They don't get cited as often which isn't
> good for business. We've run into that a couple times and the paper winds up
> in the "grey literature" realm which in turn no one wants to cite because it
> wasn't published in a refereed journal. We'll be starting an analysis next
> month that I have a feeling will nullify a prior paper we published 10 years
> ago, or at least significantly change or weaken our inferences. Many times a
> little extra data pushes the models past their breaking point.
> 
> Tim Fisher
> Http://OreRockOn.com 
> Email nospam at orerockon.com
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rockhounds [mailto:rockhounds-bounces at rockhounds.drizzle.com] On
> Behalf Of Paul
> Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2019 2:09 PM
> To: Rockhound List
> Subject: [Rockhounds] Inferring meaning where there is none by geologists
> 
> Perceived connections: Inferring meaning where there is none
> https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/Dec-2018/Feature-3
> 
> Meaningless data are tough words to swallow. John Armitage and Tom Coulthard
> argue that Earth scientists must face up to the fact that some observations
> might be an aggregation of seemingly random events, where there is no cause
> and effect.
> 
> Papers
> 
> Armitage, J. & Coulthard, T., Perceived connections: Inferring meaning where
> there is none. Geoscientist 28 (11), 18-21, 2018
> https://doi.org/10.1144/geosci2018-030
> https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/~/media/shared/documents/Geoscientist/2018/Decemb
> er%202018/F3_Dec%202018.pdf?la=en
> 
> Falk, R. and Konold, C., 1997. Making sense of randomness: Implicit encoding
> as a basis for judgment. Psychological Review, 104(2), p.301-318
> https://www.srri.umass.edu/publications/falk-1997msr/
> https://www.srri.umass.edu/sites/srri/files/FalkKonold1997/index.pdf
> 
> A related editorial well worth finding and reading is:
> 
> Wright, V.P., 2019. Memes, False News, and the Death of Empiricism.
> Journal of Sedimentary Research, 89(4), pp.310-311.
> https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/sepm/jsedres/article-abstract/89/4/310/5700
> 50
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Paul H.
> 
> 
> 
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