May | 2012 | Green tea and Velociraptors

Dinosaurs and farting. Two of mankind’s favourite things. Put them together, and apparently that warrants a scientific publication. A new study has attempted to forge a correlation between sauropod dinosaurs, their gassy output, and global warming during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Naturally, being a bit obscure, it’s received great attention in the media. The less-than-two-page report, however, is pretty devoid of actual science, and is the kind of analysis that I’d expect from an undergraduate. A bad undergraduate.

The amount of times statements are preceded by ‘could have’ ‘suggests’, ‘estimates’, ‘likely’, etc. is an immediate trigger for concern. There’s nothing actually concrete in the paper. There is a hypothetical link between, er, biomethane production and global warming (it’s happening right now, actually – see cows), but there’s a way to approach this hypothesis: with scientific rigour.

The initial research concept is flawed. As most people know, dinosaurs consist of three major lineages: the herbivorous sauropodomorphs, the mostly-hypercarnivorous theropods, and the herbivorous ornithischians. So when looking at the methane output of herbivores, and you exclude a major group, just because they weren’t as big, you’re making a pretty big mistake. Especially when you consider the biological assumptions that were made regarding sauropods (they had digestive systems similar to modern ruminant herbivores) are actually more likely to have been applicable to ornithischians.

The methods applied were pretty naff too. The calculations are ridden with assumptions, and grossly oversimplify what intrinsically requires a more detailed study. Sauropod biomass is based on raw specimen estimates, based purely on the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. Well known as a dinosaur ‘graveyard’, containing near-unparalleled quantities of dinosaur bones, this is pretty much the worst proxy that could have been used. Considering that sauropod diversity patterns are quite well established, this would have been a far more accurate proxy to use.

The next bit made me cringe. Sauropods were pretty frickin’ huge. So when estimating methane outputs based on modern organisms, you use at least something that’s vaguely comparable, right? Nope. You use guinea pigs, rabbits, and tortoises. I shit you not, these are the ecological analogues used in terms of fart-volume, or whatever you want to call it. The assumption is made that because the outputs are similar between these three, it holds true for every organism in the animal kingdom, ever. Methane emissions are assumed therefore to be insensitive to body mass, and also every other digestive parameter out there. As well as this theory of “evolution” (heard of it?).

There are a couple more terrible assumptions too. Vegetation area is assumed not just to be equivalent to land area, but also equivalent to sauropod number, globally, during the entire Jurassic and Cretaceous. No. I had expletives annotated all over the paper by this point; it was a bit too much.

I couldn’t resist making one of these..

So yeah, it wasn’t science. Sorry guys. It was a neat story, backed up by some pretty poor empirical analysis and speculative theory. Ten references just doesn’t cut it for a story of this magnitude, even if the mighty Marcus Clauss is reviewing it (I’m surprised such an awesome ecologist let his name be put anywhere near this). The lack of understanding of space and time is worrying, as well as a disregard for ornithischians (which are everyone’s favourite dinosaurs, right?), which are the more-likely culprits of mass-methanic expulsion, is somewhat worrying. How about getting a temperature curve for the Mesozoic, and attempting to correlate it with species diversity through time? Pretty sure a paper came out doing just that recently, without making such wild speculation.

If I haven’t gassed enough, here’s more slightly-less-critical analysis of the study:

New Scientist, PZ Myers, Science Daily, National Geographic [check out the URL for this one..]

There is something of a revolution occurring. Hailed as the ‘Academic Spring’, it refers to the movement of academics and publishers alike to ‘open access’ models of scholarly publication. The actual history and details of it are complex, and summarised greatly elsewhere (see below), but the gist of it revolves around the fact that academic publishers have effectively employed an immoral and financially unfeasible business model for too long, by erecting barriers (or ‘paywalls’) around taxpayer-funded research. It’s not my wish here to discuss the past, present or future of academic publishing here, but to provide an analogy that highlights just how fucked broke most current publication schemes are.

The idea for this post stemmed from a recent discussion with a couple of mates currently in the British armed forces. One works for the Intelligence Corps as a language specialist, and he told us their motto:

“Knowledge gives strength to the arm”

Manui Dat Cognitio Vires

This is a pretty cool motto, and sparked the idea of a possible analogy between the models of intelligence distribution within the armed forces, and knowledge distribution within academia, and the public domain. Here’s an attempt at (simply) describing that analogy:

In academia, information is gathered by researchers, whose salaries and grants are, for the most part, funded by the public. This information is peer-reviewed by scientists (for no expense) and formatted, typically taking an average of 12 months per article (at least in the field of Palaeontology). Information is then published online and/or as paper copies, where publishers typically charge for access, unless a standard of ‘open access’ is employed (e.g., the author pays a previously arranged fee to make the work publicly available for free). The system is slow, reliable, and inefficient.

In the army, troops and machines gather intelligence either through direct or indirect means. Information is promptly relayed through appropriate command hierarchy. Speed is critical. Command redirects filtered information to appropriate units, and the information is beneficial. The system works. It’s fast, reliable, and efficient.

But..

If somewhere in the hierarchy of army command, someone decides to put up a barrier where subordinate ranks are required to pay for information. The system breaks down, becoming inefficient, immoral, ineffective, illogical and discordant with an ideal and faultless working system.

The system works through fast, efficient and open communication of data/information, with open ‘peer review’ provided by intelligence analysts. Almost every stage of the army intelligence system has an analogous representative in academia. The intelligence corps are the academic researchers; the command line represents institutions, libraries, and also scientists as peers and editors. ‘Publishers’ exist, as those who operate the communication machinery, but the associated paywalls are not present.

In the intelligence corps ‘model’, everyone benefits, as the system works. In the academic model, the only beneficiaries are selectively, and unnecessarily, those who can afford to obtain information, and of course the [regressive] commercial publishers.

This is by no means a detailed analysis of how two intrinsically complex systems work. The simplification serves the analogy, in that it exhibits how the paywall component of the current model forces it to be inefficient. As a scientist*, I find the idea of paywalls immoral as knowledge should be freely available to all, and also ironic that those who openly declare their target to be the distribution and access of scientific material are the ones causing the system to break down. I don’t object to a company trying to make a profit (I believe this is called ‘Business’), but there are better ways that a) don’t piss off pretty much your entire ‘work force’, and b) are logical in terms of taking a stance on increasing the global pot of knowledge. That’s a pretty noble stance to have.

“Knowledge gives strength to all”

Scientia dat vires ad omnes

*I’m starting my PhD in September this year