[SGVLUG] OT [was: New Linux Lug]

[Dustin Laurence]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 08:57:35AM -0800, Emerson, Tom wrote:
> 
>    "... They conducted a nearly comprehensive survey of Greenland
>    glacial ice discharge rates ..."
> 
>    ... They conducted an almost comprehensive study ...
> 
> Hmmm... sounds like they "almost" have enough data to base a
> hypothesis upon...

This is the journal _Science_, so (as with _Nature_) you can be pretty
well assured that it isn't as trivial a study as you suggest it could be
from the wording.  In this case, it means they're writing in academic
language, which is required to be more weasely-worded than most things.
They are warning other researchers that there are minor points where the
study could be improved and they know it, however, they are confident
that the essential results will stand and that the results are important
enough to publish now (I and more importantly _Science_ agree on that).

Reading the blurb, it isn't clear what the problem is--you'd have to go
to the actual journal for that, and I don't have it sitting by my desk.
However, I can guess at a couple of likely problem areas.  One is
incomplete satellite data; given that this was apparently the least
documented component up to the study, it's possible that they still
didn't have every data point they needed.  However, I didn't get a sense
of that from the rest of the blurb.

Another possible area is that they only worked directly with the ice
flow data, to add the missing piece of the puzzle as it were, and used
another study for the precipitation and melt data.  That's a very
sensible division of labor, but that study may not have been as complete
as they'd have liked.

So why publish?  Because _Science_ is for scientists doing ongoing
research, and it's always a bit worrisome when reporters start reporting
on journal articles because they seem constitutionally incapable of
understanding the scientific enterprise.  This is *not* just about
having enough data to base a hypothesis on, it is actually about a
severe critique of existing studies and hypotheses.  What the paper is
saying is "previous studies assumed constant ice flow for lack of better
data.  We just took a serious look at the weakest point of those
studies, and our results show that they made a simplifying assumption
that is not true.  There is very good reason to believe that previous
results vastly underestimate the rate of ice loss."

That would be very publishable if it were nowhere near comprehensive,
because it is a red flag to the field that the studies need to be
improved.  Loss of confidence in old data is always important even if
you have no idea how or even whether the existing results might change.
However, depending on circumstances that alone might not be _Science_
material, it depends on the editor's and reviewer's judgement about the
importance.  However, this study appears to go quite a bit further and
be pretty confident that they have a good revised estimate, even though
there is a point or two on which they'd like to see more work in the
future.  It's easy to see why that was judged _Science_-worthy.

Remember, scientific publications are all about ongoing research, and if
you read them and get confused about that then it's your, or the
reporter's, fault for reading someone else's mail. :-)

Dustin