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Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

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Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#11

Post by oldandtired »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #6
aaron695 wrote: post #2

You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) So I'd bet against it. The article itself links to another article that seems to have evidence contradicting it - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/aboriginal-austra... It'd be interesting to hear an expert opinion on it.

> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) Reproducing studies and publishing the results is a hallmark of science so I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to.

What he is saying is that there are no kudo's for publishing work that just confirms something. Research grants are given for new work not for doing confirming followup work.

This has become a problem in recent decades and has led to certain systemic problems that have been discussed in various places in recent months.

If you say something like "I am submitting this grant request to replicate the experiments of X who have published results Y so that we can confirm X's results" then your grant application will most likely be refused.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#13

Post by ak39 »

aaron695 wrote: post #5
ketralnis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) > So I'd bet against it. That argument would seem to imply that all published research is wrong

Most research(I'd guess) doesn't contradict other research/theory, it tells of discovery. No one has proven there's no 9th planet for instance. No one's proven drug X doesn't help with disease Y. Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link) Of course conformity with theory is also a problem, we think it's 50,000 years so we make our study on X (aka DNA) conform with this. But both articles…

You wrote:

"Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link)"

But that's obvious. The field of paleontology/archeology works with any evidence that suggests older. One confirmed finding of "older" is enough to redate and trump multiple newer findings.

That makes perfect sense.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#14

Post by ak39 »

aaron695 wrote: post #5
ketralnis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) > So I'd bet against it. That argument would seem to imply that all published research is wrong

Most research(I'd guess) doesn't contradict other research/theory, it tells of discovery. No one has proven there's no 9th planet for instance. No one's proven drug X doesn't help with disease Y. Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link) Of course conformity with theory is also a problem, we think it's 50,000 years so we make our study on X (aka DNA) conform with this. But both articles…

You wrote:

"Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link)"

But that's obvious. Paleontology and archeology works with any evidence that suggests older. One confirmed finding of "older" is enough to redate and trump multiple newer findings.

That makes perfect sense.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#15

Post by Sharlin »

ak39 wrote: post #13
aaron695 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most research(I'd guess) doesn't contradict other research/theory, it tells of discovery. No one has proven there's no 9th planet for instance. No one's proven drug X doesn't help with disease Y. Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link) Of course conformity with theory is also a problem, we think it's 50,000 years so we make our study on X (aka DNA) conform with this. But both articles…

You wrote: "Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link)" But that's obvious. The field of paleontology/archeology works with any evidence that suggests older. One confirmed finding of "older" is enough to redate and trump multiple newer findings. That makes perfect sense.

In other words, dating an archaeological finding gives you a lower bound of how long there has been human activity on the site. Finding something older does not contradict previous results - and there are good reasons why older things are more difficult to find so absence of evidence is not (strong) evidence of absence.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#16

Post by threatofrain »

aaron695 wrote: post #2

You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) So I'd bet against it. The article itself links to another article that seems to have evidence contradicting it - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/aboriginal-austra... It'd be interesting to hear an expert opinion on it.

I'd hesitate to generalize across fields which attack problems of different scopes of difficulties, but when I see authors follow a scientific dialogue, I see them publish twists of experiments which efficiently answer a few critical potential avenues of an argument, rather than simply replication vs. refutation.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#17

Post by flukus »

sohkamyung wrote: post #9

I prefer the version published in The Conversation [1] by the researches themselves. It contains more details including one part left out of the NYTimes version: that the work was done with the approval of the Aboriginal people who control the site: "To make new research possible, a landmark agreement was reached between the University of Queensland (and associated researchers) and the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporati…

I really don't think they should have that level of control over something 65,000 which they may have no connection too.

More worrying is that I read previously that they had veto rights over any published findings as well, which creates all sorts of integrity problems.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#18

Post by harry8 »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #6
aaron695 wrote: post #2

You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) So I'd bet against it. The article itself links to another article that seems to have evidence contradicting it - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/aboriginal-austra... It'd be interesting to hear an expert opinion on it.

> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) Reproducing studies and publishing the results is a hallmark of science so I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to.

Why is it so hard to get published when you attempt to reproduce a study and fail to do so? Papers rejected by the journals the published the original research is apparently the norm.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#19

Post by ekianjo »

flukus wrote: post #17
sohkamyung wrote: post #9

I prefer the version published in The Conversation [1] by the researches themselves. It contains more details including one part left out of the NYTimes version: that the work was done with the approval of the Aboriginal people who control the site: "To make new research possible, a landmark agreement was reached between the University of Queensland (and associated researchers) and the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporati…

I really don't think they should have that level of control over something 65,000 which they may have no connection too. More worrying is that I read previously that they had veto rights over any published findings as well, which creates all sorts of integrity problems.

> More worrying is that I read previously that they had veto rights over any published findings as well, which creates all sorts of integrity problems.

Then it should definitely be captured in the story. As a potential conflict of interest.

Re: Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

#20

Post by grecy »

This is one of my favorite things about Australia, because science has absolutely no explanation for how humans arrived in Australia that long ago.

It massively predates any boats, and there are no boats in the history of the Aboriginals.

In fact nobody has even really bothered to try an explain it, because it's way, way, way outside the story that everyone came out of Africa.

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