Journal L-dawg's Journal: geomorph diatribe 3
Officemate just sighed and muttered "It's truly amazing what gets published in Nature," then stormed from the room. Okay maybe "stormed" is an exaggeration, but this is the thing that makes me confused. The paper had many well-known authors on it, Nature papers must be short and to the point, what is officemate's problem? Who knows. Maybe not enough field measurement, maybe not enough theory, maybe too much theory. Well, there's only so much you can say in four pages, and when academics are supposed to pump out 4-5 papers a year, how much quality can there be anyway? Every paper can be picked apart for its inconsistencies. That's why I'm afraid to publish stuff. Every time you put something out there people just want to tear it down. Guess only those with thick skins survive.
...Just had a nice little fight with him, very exasperated. I asked "Would you like to discuss what is frustrating you?" and he said "We are on the track of removing process from geomorphology. The world's impression is that this is the way it is." He is a proponent of process geomorphology, which means being all gung-ho about "explanations" of why things are the way they are. All the funding and Nature papers seem to be going the way of "observational" geomorphology, which is looking at big data sets of precipitation, sediment yield, earthquake frequency, etc. and correlating them to make conclusions about the way things ARE. Process geomorphologists view this as going back to the stone age, or at least back to the first half of the century when other scientists abhored the non-process oriented, non-quantitative nature of geomorphology.
In my experience, people who think too much about WHY end up going crazy. The people who concentrate on what IS are less crazy. I'm generalizing to other parts of life there. I am being trained as a process geomorphologist now but I was not for two years and that part is still sticking with me. Most people just don't care about the details. Why can't people tolerate other methods even if they think theirs is the best?
To me, it just seems like a religious argument between different sects. I will gladly take part in the argument, but we are arguing in circles, no one will win. I am just saying people are trained in different manners and they will do the easier analysis first instead of getting into all of the theory. It's just one of those things, there will always be tension and one group is not going to die out. It's like a political argument.
Fine that is all I have to say about that now and I'm sure everyone was so interested in that.
Bossy used the phrase "all-star lineup of characteristics" which made me to try to think of mine. I came up with (1) fast emailer (2) look of disdain (3) self-righteousness (4) silence. I like to think that I'm constantly trying to improve myself but sometimes I think I am too old and stubborn and set in my ways so the only way I'll change is if I'm beaten down to complacency.
All of this listening to Jay Chou is turning my brain into mush.
grrr (Score:1)