[Rockhounds] Inferring meaning where there is none by geologists

[Tim Fisher]

I am dealing with that right now. Many millions being spent on creating innumerable datasets of salmon & steelhead populations in the Pacific NW, almost no one doing meaningful analysis. Collecting data for the sake of collecting data is not collecting data anymore, it's just an employment program. Crap I might have just talked myself out of a job.

Tim Fisher
Http://OreRockOn.com 
Email nospam at orerockon.com
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Rockhounds [mailto:rockhounds-bounces at rockhounds.drizzle.com] On Behalf Of Peter Richards
Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2019 6:20 PM
To: Rockhounds at drizzle.com: A mailing list for rock and gem collectors
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] Inferring meaning where there is none by geologists

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/89/4/31
> 0/5700
> 50
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Paul H.
> 
> 
> 
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