The substitution method

The soaked reputation of the institution of scientific degrees in Russia, many of which turned out to be awarded on the basis of false or insolvent dissertations, largely reflects the sad situation in world science: in pursuit of the number of publications and loud conclusions, scientists are often not too selective in research methods. This concerns the natural sciences: biology, medicine, climatology.

We have already written about the analysis of the use of statistical analysis methods in neuronas: as it turned out, this key tool that allows you to generalize experimental data and draw uniform conclusions based on them, often (possibly in most cases!) It is used to be unlawful, and the use of “poor statistics” has become so much in the authoritative scientific journals.

A number of scandals in climatology led to the fact that the danger of global warming has not yet been not completely established in the public consciousness.

The reflection of scientists over the viability of research methods is necessary to maintain the authority of science, and recently it is increasingly widely. An example is published last week in the journal ProChedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article .

American researchers (representatives of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and others) drew attention to another key method used to predict mutual behavior of unknown parameters, such as climatic changes and biodiversity. In the English tradition, this method is called Space-For-Time Substition, which can be translated as a replacement of time to space. The method is simple, it combines common sense and convenience: the climate changes over time and depending on the geographical position. In order to imagine how the local flora and fauna will change, if the climate becomes dry and dry, you can simply move to another geographical region (that is, not in time, but in space) and see what is happening right now in the desert. In any case, this basic principle - to replace the trip in the time in an inaccessible journey with a very real journey along the surface of the globe - are used by many researchers, not only ecologists, but, for example, economists.

This approach, although it looks rational, has obvious disadvantages: it is worth at least thinking that the environmental situation in neighboring regions naturally affects the local bio -melting, which, when replacing time to space, is taken out of brackets. Forecasts based on this method have limited reliability, but attempts to evaluate their real accuracy are rarely made.

This is exactly what the authors of the articles published in PNAS did, who specifically examined the situation in which information about the dependence of biodiversity is simultaneously available on both time and geographical location. The fossils of plant pollen were studied in deposits at the bottom of the North American lakes - they can be judged by the composition of ecosystems over the past 21 thousand years in the vast territory of the eastern part of the continent. The analysis showed that forecasts based on the replacement of time for space in 72 percent of cases are confirmed by reality - a rather convincing result, from which it follows that in at least one specific case, in conditions of certain temporary and spatial gaps, the use of the method is justified.

This private conclusion cannot be the basis that the use of Space-For-Time Substition will necessarily lead to reliable forecasts in other situations in the study of the effect of climate on the environment, and even more so in other scientific fields. The authors emphasize: their goal was to check the method, albeit on one example, and not make a scientific discovery. Such a formulation of the issue is very important: scientists are ready to critically consider their own basic tools, which often have sharpening, more contributing to an increase in the number of publications than scientific viability.