Here I am, minding my own business, looking at my local newspaper, and just reading what is happening locally. Then, out pops this profound quote of the week that is just gobsmacking.
The first line of the story starts out like this:
CHICO — A graduate student researching local rattlesnakes has something to prove, but he isn’t yet sure of what.
Sounds like some climate science RFC’s I’ve read. But wait, there’s more. Get a load of the punchline:
Like I said, gobsmacking. I have no desire to quash any study of rattlesnakes, but the sheer arrogance of the statement about publishing a scientific paper “even if it’s garbage” was just mind blowing. I hope Mr. Woodruff uses better judgement in the future. For now, I’ll just assign it to the youthful indiscretion file that I’m sure every one of us has.
Full story here.
I am reminded though, of the Seinfeld episode.
I’m pretty sure that the “21 2 months” in the original article is a typo, and is meant to be “2 1/2 months”
Isolated snakes? There is plenty of ’em in reptile parks regularly fed the same old same old diet of white mice.
Check out their venom, much easier task.
badmonkey2001 says:
I’m pretty sure that the “21 2 months” in the original article is a typo, and is meant to be “2 1/2 months”
I thought the 21 was his age and the 2 months was how long he has been at this research.
He might choose his words more carefully in future, but his analysis is actually perfectly sound.
Science starts by gathering data. Only when a lot of data has been gathered can theories be built. Some data proves exciting, much is mundane. All scientists want to uncover something exciting, but unfortunately it’s in the nature of true research that you can’t know what the results will be in advance.
Glenn Woodruff is examining the venom of rattlesnakes in the area around Chico, and comparing it to the venom of rattlesnakes elsewhere. No one has done this before. It may be that the venom will prove different in some unexpected way, and that this will lead to interesting discoveries. More likely, it will prove to be no different. This is what he injudiciously refers to as ‘garbage’ -an uninteresting result. But such a result is not garbage. It adds a small piece to the sum of scientific knowledge, and should certainly be published in the scientific literature, if only to stop anyone else pointlessly repeating the experiment. In future, anyone who wants to know how rattlesnake venom varies by region would not need to repeat Mr. Woodruff’s experiment, just refer to his published paper. That’s how science works.
My reading is that he will be guided by the data he collects not by a preset idea of whats expected. As long as his final conclusions fit what the data tells him thats fine, and if the data says nothing here he will say that but the report will be ‘garbage’ . Sounds like other than the outburst of Garbage we need more of Scientists like him, unlike the Caplin lot who go to reinforce a preconceived outcome.
“Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes” huh? I had absolutely no idea that they could swim so far! 🙂
As to the graduate himself, he has about him the shades of the old record producer gag after listening to a demo tape of a newband…………………..”You can’t sing, you can’t play, you look dreadful, you sound terrible…………………………..I think you’ll go far!”
Greg Cavanagh says:
July 19, 2011 at 10:32 pm
quote: “So no matter what I do, even if it’s (garbage), it’s publishable”.
I see some here believe a non-conclusive result as meaning a “garbage” document.
I think he’s implying that he could “write” a garbage document.
===========================
If he is then hopefully he will be proved wrong. I have reviewed a number of post graduate theses and my lack of detailed expertise in the specific subject did not prevent me assessing the quality of the research. Research is a process. It is normally pretty obvious if the process has been carried out properly.
My own view is that this was a rather poor joke on his part and we should not take it too seriously. I think we need to support students who carry out research in areas where there is little chance of fame. It is still educational. Yes, most will never be seen again but every so often a gem is discovered. I am a physicist not a biologist but I would have thought this could be a rather good research topic.
Was the story from The Onion?
The quote says “even if it’s (garbage)” so Glenn did not say “garbage” himself; looks like the journalist filled it in for him; maybe what Glenn wanted to say was something like some commenters above expressed – even if he finds no difference between this population and another, it’s publishable. And he would be right with that and his paper would not be garbage at all.
The inexperienced one is the journalist in this case.
At least he hasn’t started out with the intention of producing garbage!
A purely qualitative or phenomenological approach to research can be very useful. With no preconceived ideas or hypothesis the researcher just observes the subject, makes extensive notes then draws an hypothesis from the observed data. The curse of climate science is that most approved researchers work the opposite way. They make a hypothesis, then which generates a model into which they try and shoehorn observed data. And we know how useful that is. Personally I take my hat off to the young man, I hope we have such sharp students in Wales.
He’s in the wrong branch of science. Climatology calls.
I took a few disgusted-at-skeptics-fueled days break from my recent hyper energized anti-AGW-activism that involved context-laden “tagging” each and every day’s news story that I could find with simple data plots which falsify alarmist claims and to then follow up with serious Bruce Lee efficient fight backs when my message was willfully simplified by cultist spin doctors. It was *so* easy, after my references were organized in my mind and I *knew* that delving into Team references would come up dry, predictably. It took me three years to become actually confident in my skepticism due to the huge smokescreen involved that was pointed in my direction from such a hot hemorrhoids spigot.
I want stories.
Now I’m taking a big break, due to the way South American girls’ pelvises connect via thick and strong electric snake to a shoulder cage in one divinely sublime act of pure prayer.
You don’t remember it?
Oh, dear gentlemen…we won! Clean-up operations are not my forte. I spent ten hours a day doing this, often twenty…using what’s left of the free comment sections of what’s left of branded media organizations.
I want more stories.
But as I listened to Billy Bragg and The Pogues on Event Opal studio monitors and a “tight spec” SVS subwoofer, shaking the whole empty girls’ dorm building, doing “this”…something hit me: I am not one of you. I was not birthed to Earth to chat about, let alone argue about the weather! You two sides of what has become a mere cliched cultural war kill each other and too drag in your brothers as I tickle your wives. Good women see right through steaming piles of cheap “caviar” and this has become that. The real thing of human interaction still exists, despite our living in a very temporary era of ultra-low-bandwidth “online community” interaction.
You demand nothing more?
“Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A pour soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.” – James Joyce (Finnegans Wake 1939)
He spent 18 years writing that book about you, before birth opened your eyes.
This year, the suddenly looming light bulb ban hit me like a real declaration of war or a freight train heading for a passenger train in a valley in Peru below me where my cell phone hasn’t got a signal. Then two plus one four nine one six seven things happened.
(1) The right side of politics, in the room, word wide, of this divide, suddenly has allowed brass balls to replace manginas, based on perception of real threat to their minority religion, of their footnote-worthy flights of fancy. Darwin does not smile upon these boy love gorillas, these Greeks.
(2) Whatever.
(3.14…) Steven Goddard is narcissistically toying with variations on a theme, musically, so far successfully, yet not yet of merit. He has no good feedback, so he is flying blind and he knows it. Doltish cheerleading takes no one to town. Popularity, flying high, round and a bout, but nowhere to land, wings singed. Variations on a theme is the stuff of music. He contains something. But I don’t know what it is. He wont let God flow through him.
Skeptics utterly fail to understand their immediately perceived enemy, deep down.
Key phrase: “active depression.”
Translation: zombies.
Job one and two:
(1) Land on your feet.
(2) Inspire.
Unstated business:
(3) Ignore Player Haters.
What refreshing honesty!
Considering the word ‘garbage’ in that paragraph is written inside brackets, it suggests that he did not use that word. Perhaps he used an expletive and they wanted to print a milder word, I do not know, but the point is, we do not know what he actually said, let alone what actual meaning he meant to convey. As others have stated, IF he meant that the results show nothing new, then they confirm what is already known and are still publishable. However if he means that the study actually shows something which is false, (for whatever reason beit a failure in methodology, protocol, data gathering or whatever), and still believes that the results are publishable, then there is real reason to worry.
What is for sure is that he has not communicated his intentions clearly through this article.
Seems like the very kind of scientist that governments around the world are so keen to give lots of funding to………………….
I didn’t read it that way at all. I read it as a statement of fact from the lad. He is right isn’t he? If there are no studies in his chosen field of research and, therefore, no experts, he can’t be peer reviewed and thus, if the work is sub standard or his conclusions wrong, who is to know? I think he has been treated a tad harshly by some on this thread.
You can’t draw a conclusion one way or the other on a single sentence taken out of context – might have been merely bad grammar. If the ‘it’ was his theory, then he’s correct – it might well be garbage, and good scientific, publishable, work would show it to be so.
For anyone to profess to study (or for that matter teach) science in any higher level format, and yet fail to understand how to frame a scientific study so that its data that will lead to better understanding of nature or process (regardless of success or failure) means they aren’t even trying to be truly scientific in their undertaking.
One of the most important aspects of science is “Asking the right question”.
Obviously I cannot call myself a “scientist” because I do not produce “papers” yet I have 4 analytical studies currently in project and all will produce usable data regardless of whether the data strengthens my hypotheses or not. The results of all 4 of these studies will help me toward producing money for myself. That’s how being self employed works. It’s not just basic good science it’s basic good business sense. They will get much more money (inc. funding) if they produce practical + “interesting” data.
Oh to be a funded scientific genius haha!. (shrug) I just hope he misspoke and his attitude isn’t as daft as it appears.
Re: journals. If I were god of publishing, I would require every journal to split its articles 50:50 between research which confirmed and rejected a hypothesis, either a new one or a previously reported/asserted one. Since information experts say more is learned from negative results than positive, I predict this would more than double the slope of science’s learning curve. And save a sh**-load of money!
Well, it’s a Masters, not a PhD, They have quite different standards. I’ve seen studies that were little more than bibliographies pass as a Masters thesis. Valuable, none the less. Anthony’s plan to document all the predictions of global warming catastrophes would make a reasonable Masters thesis – except the faculty would never approve it.
When did 25-year-olds become “kids”? Does that mean that just past 60 is now “middle-aged”? Or is it maybe that you’re still a kid until you leave education and do adult work? As in, “Mike and Jimmy are just a coupla kids having fun! Give ’em a break!”
Maybe he meant that even if he gets nothing interesting in his study he could still publish?
However if he wants the paper to be famous and broadly published, all he has to do is link the results, no matter what they are, to climate change.
When I see a snake, the first thought that goes through my mind is “SHOTGUN!!!”.
I’m still puzzling about the brackets around that key word ‘garbled’. Why are they there ?
An idea occurs to me. The reporter may well not have interviewed Glen Woodruff face to face. There’s nothing in the article to indicate that he did, and Mr. Woodruff clearly does his research out of town.
I suspect that the article was written from a transcript of a phone call, and that ‘(garbage)’ is simply a typo for ‘(garbled)’.
I think Glen Woodruff simply used a word signifying results that reveal nothing new, a word that the reported was unfamiliar with, and hence failed to catch.
Assuming my theory could be true, has anyone any suggestions as to what the missing word could have been ?