Friday, December 09, 2016

Bingo

Duncan Black can be both pithy and right.  He hit it out of the park today.  So with just a teensy bit of the [Pielke] brackets
 It's been a long time since I've been in academia, but one thing I know is that good research (or even bad research, really), in social science and [climate science], is a long, grueling process. One reason it takes people a long time to get through grad school is that it takes a long time to process and understand the relevant "literature" for whatever issue they're looking at. It isn't just enough to know The Math or The Statistics, it's necessary to know the evolution of thought and rough consensus to understand where the current thinking is both about a particular problem and the best ways to approach looking at the problem. It takes a hell of a long time to essentially create the "lit review" for your dissertation, however much of it actually makes it into your dissertation. 
Gotta know what came before to understand where we are now. In the great and glorious age of the internet it's easy for everybody to do a quick search, punch up an abstract of some study or review of studies that somebody has done, maybe go as far as reading the conclusion, and declare the problem solved and your point proved fucking right. But it really isn't that easy.
FWIW he is an economist

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was for me and the cosmic QCD axion, and it sure as hell was easier than years of pounding the pavement back and forth to my local world class university research libraries, to sort through the emerging field of the spectroscopy=ies of high temperature superconductors to identify bismuth (iodide) as a unique and promising molecule. Give it a try, Eli.

You may find something interesting, or at least something that interests you. It might even be valuable is solving some of the American retard problems. You are such a precious little 'snowflake'.

I'll take the internet and instant access to those new PhD theses over the streets of New York any day.

Howard said...

This explains the current flailing state of [Climate Science]. Not one word about getting down and dirty with the subject, it's all a paper chase. Without direct field work and experimentation, all that is possible is colouring in boxes and waiting for your turn.

Anonymous said...

And more field work and experimentation is going to solve a roughly 0.7 Watts per square meter top of the atmosphere energy imbalance how again? Howard?

How you do it, Howard, is crank on the industrial scale solar, wind, battery and electric automobile solutions you have now, and then hit the desert with some really large scale solutions. Then you hit the synchrotron radiation laboratories with some big government and corporate funding bucks for the real solutions. And you start insulating those millions of freaking legacy logs cabins you are stuck with, and start passing some laws to prevent the hillbillies from building ever more of them, ever large to pack in the cattle and sheep with tiny little crosses hanging around their fat stupid red necks.

EliRabett said...

Eli has a few up his sleeve 8

Howard said...

8c sounds about right. I don't see Elon Musk wasting time in an academic cloister reading up on obscure peer reviewed literature.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

America's retards have long looked to Tom 8c7793 to solve their energy problems with superconducting axionic photovoltaic perovskites based on Peptobismol and tincture of iodine.

When is he going to publish?

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Why pay social science dissertation writers when the online PoMo Discourse Generator is free ?

Anonymous said...

I already have Russell. Essays are the next big 21st century thing.

http://lifeform.net/archimedes/Quantum_Initiative.pdf

Of course, that was in the pre-axion world.

It's too bad you're so MACHO.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

The world must be peopled.

Anonymous said...

And you did them all, single handedly.

You're a real man, Russell.