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Historical records, especially pre-record keeping are revised when new techniques and sciences discover better, more reliable ways of interpreting the physical

Historical records, especially pre-record keeping are revised when new techniques and sciences discover better, more reliable ways of interpreting the physical geological evidence left in the world behind us. What is the basis of these revisions?

raphaelj 1y ago
> What is the basis of these revisions? Ideology
- cluckindan 1y ago
  Money.
  - mlhamel 1y ago
    Stupidity
WillAdams 1y ago
A good example of this is revisions EDIT: of the interpretations :ENDEDIT of historical data: https://www.science.org/content/article/world-1-3%C2%B0c-or-1-5%C2%B0c-warmer-historical-ship-logs-hold-answers https://www.science.org/content/article/world-1-3%C2%B0c-or-... Apparently the Japanese continued using wooden buckets longer than other navies, resulting in Pacific data being skewed.
- defrost 1y ago
  Closer reading should tell you that no one, no data scientist at least, is rewriting raw historical data - the temperatures recorded in ships logs by various ships are preserved unaltered. What is discussed there is part of all data interpretation, the transfer functions between raw measures of <something> and the inferred values of <interest>.
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    Thank you for that, I have edited my (hasty/poorly-worded) comment.
    - defrost 1y ago
      No drama, as first worded it irked my experience in multichannel geophysical processing; every data source has potential biases, tweaks, scaling, shifts and normalizing applied to get them to best fit and reveal a larger picture. eg: https://www.ga.gov.au/bigobj/GA13928.pdf https://www.ga.gov.au/bigobj/GA13928.pdf as an example of stitching 40 years of survey data collected with a range of different instruments and procedures. In the climate domain the same care is taken to preserve raw data from historic methods, the challenge is syncing data streams that have covariant features (such as matching years against tree patterns from differing logs from a variety of species), in this case logs from a variety of ways of sampling sea water temperature. Glad you took my comment well, no offense was intended :)
      - jasonjayr 1y ago
        This is an excellent example too -- all too often science reporting will just put in the headline "Updated historical temperatures make threat of global warming (less|more) serious!" -- and folks latch on to "how can history change?!?!" and immediatly go to conspiracy theories, rather than trying to understand the subtlty of what's actually going on
sligor 1y ago
revision based on new findings is how science works revision based on ideology is how fascism works
- account42 1y ago
  And the best part is that you can tell which is which by whether you agree or not.
wccrawford 1y ago
Records should never be edited. They can be reinterpreted, but we must never edit or delete the original records.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  Right, and we're not: > Historical records, especially pre-record keeping are revised Here "historical records" means "the best-known interpretation of historical evidence": it's not talking about modifying records made pre-record keeping. Of course we still have access to previous interpretations: people have gone to pains to ensure they're preserved (despite certain former stewards trying to erase them), and those people are building more resilient systems to avoid this happening again.

raphaelj 1y ago

> What is the basis of these revisions? Ideology

cluckindan 1y ago
Money.
- mlhamel 1y ago
  Stupidity

WillAdams 1y ago

A good example of this is revisions EDIT: of the interpretations :ENDEDIT of historical data: https://www.science.org/content/article/world-1-3%C2%B0c-or-1-5%C2%B0c-warmer-historical-ship-logs-hold-answers https://www.science.org/content/article/world-1-3%C2%B0c-or-... Apparently the Japanese continued using wooden buckets longer than other navies, resulting in Pacific data being skewed.

defrost 1y ago
Closer reading should tell you that no one, no data scientist at least, is rewriting raw historical data - the temperatures recorded in ships logs by various ships are preserved unaltered. What is discussed there is part of all data interpretation, the transfer functions between raw measures of <something> and the inferred values of <interest>.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  Thank you for that, I have edited my (hasty/poorly-worded) comment.
  - defrost 1y ago
    No drama, as first worded it irked my experience in multichannel geophysical processing; every data source has potential biases, tweaks, scaling, shifts and normalizing applied to get them to best fit and reveal a larger picture. eg: https://www.ga.gov.au/bigobj/GA13928.pdf https://www.ga.gov.au/bigobj/GA13928.pdf as an example of stitching 40 years of survey data collected with a range of different instruments and procedures. In the climate domain the same care is taken to preserve raw data from historic methods, the challenge is syncing data streams that have covariant features (such as matching years against tree patterns from differing logs from a variety of species), in this case logs from a variety of ways of sampling sea water temperature. Glad you took my comment well, no offense was intended :)
    - jasonjayr 1y ago
      This is an excellent example too -- all too often science reporting will just put in the headline "Updated historical temperatures make threat of global warming (less|more) serious!" -- and folks latch on to "how can history change?!?!" and immediatly go to conspiracy theories, rather than trying to understand the subtlty of what's actually going on

sligor 1y ago

revision based on new findings is how science works revision based on ideology is how fascism works

account42 1y ago
And the best part is that you can tell which is which by whether you agree or not.

wccrawford 1y ago

Records should never be edited. They can be reinterpreted, but we must never edit or delete the original records.

wizzwizz4 1y ago
Right, and we're not: > Historical records, especially pre-record keeping are revised Here "historical records" means "the best-known interpretation of historical evidence": it's not talking about modifying records made pre-record keeping. Of course we still have access to previous interpretations: people have gone to pains to ensure they're preserved (despite certain former stewards trying to erase them), and those people are building more resilient systems to avoid this happening again.