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I was referring to citations of the paper (theoretically if these researchers are citing the paper, then they should be using the ideas, model or data from the

I was referring to citations of the paper (theoretically if these researchers are citing the paper, then they should be using the ideas, model or data from the paper). Have a look here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40768520_The_velocity_of_climate_change https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40768520_The_veloci... It has 2172!! citations! And in many(most?) cases these citations are pointless. It’s essentially used to pad out other ‘water is wet’ papers and/or hack researchers indexes. If it were a scientific article, the citations would reference it to use/improve/critique their hypothesis/model/data. I’m sure there’s a couple of these among the 2172 citations, but good luck finding the seed among the chaff! I think this stuff annoys me because of the huge opportunity cost. Climate change is such a big problem with so many critical questions unanswered, yet tomes of research get funded that tell us nothing about how to solve the problem. And worse: we get such volumes of drivel that serious researchers have to wade through heaps of nonsense to find quality papers.

brutusborn 3y ago
I decided to have a deeper look at this during my lunchbreak. I found a bit of a smoking gun: they claim that "probability distribution function of our temperature-based velocities are consistent with those described previously when uncertainty is accounted for (Supplementary Table 2)" If you look at Supplementary Table 2, it looks like their estimates are in line with existing studies (Malcolm 2002). If you actually look at the source of this comparison table (Table 2 Malcolm 2002), you will find that their estimates do not align well. E.g. for 0-315m/year they estimate 37.6/90/15 % for mean/lower/upper. The equivalent measure in Malcolm 2002 is 71.1 but has uncertainty of only +/-1.23%! So their model is "consistent" with existing models because 71.15 is within their range of 15-90%. Figure S23 looks even worse. So essentially they have proposed a model which doesn't really match existing literature and can't really be easily compared or used by others. They explain the differences away with assumptions but don't explain why their assumptions are better/worse. They might have produced a worse model but we don't have any data to tell! But maybe I'm completely wrong and this paper is super-useful to those in this field. I'd still have to see at least 1 paper actually use their model to be convinced.

brutusborn 3y ago

I decided to have a deeper look at this during my lunchbreak. I found a bit of a smoking gun: they claim that "probability distribution function of our temperature-based velocities are consistent with those described previously when uncertainty is accounted for (Supplementary Table 2)" If you look at Supplementary Table 2, it looks like their estimates are in line with existing studies (Malcolm 2002). If you actually look at the source of this comparison table (Table 2 Malcolm 2002), you will find that their estimates do not align well. E.g. for 0-315m/year they estimate 37.6/90/15 % for mean/lower/upper. The equivalent measure in Malcolm 2002 is 71.1 but has uncertainty of only +/-1.23%! So their model is "consistent" with existing models because 71.15 is within their range of 15-90%. Figure S23 looks even worse. So essentially they have proposed a model which doesn't really match existing literature and can't really be easily compared or used by others. They explain the differences away with assumptions but don't explain why their assumptions are better/worse. They might have produced a worse model but we don't have any data to tell! But maybe I'm completely wrong and this paper is super-useful to those in this field. I'd still have to see at least 1 paper actually use their model to be convinced.