[Coral-List] Transplanting coral fragments (Shinn)

[Dennis Hubbard]

Hi Peter:

Welcome to the club (the old guys). More than a decade ago, I went back
through all the early literature on "the coral reef problem" that discussed
the underlying factors that control reef building (including subsidence).
Authors included folks like Agasiz, WM Davis, Dana, Darwin and many others.
At the time, I noted that most of the papers were published in the same
year by *Nature*. My initial thought was that this was a special volume.
However, when I went back into the *Nature* archives, I found that these
were sequential issues in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the
journal. It struck me that  this was the 19th century version of the
*coral-list* - and reminded me how perilous it is to ignore the old
literature in the belief that our "new" ideas couldn't have been derived
without sophisticated field equipment, geospatial software and super-fast
computers. In our zeal to be the most "up-to-date", we use electronic
journal lists and are, therefore, immune to realizing that the "latest hot
study", on many occasions, discovered what was known a century earlir and
forgotten about because nobody takes the time to read the older literature.
I vividly remember sitting in the back of a Caribbean Coral-Reef meeting
with Conrad Neumann (*for those who haven't spent much time in the older
literature, the reference is listed below - and it discusses many of the
things we argue about today).

I brought this up in a listserve post about a decade ago and someone
"explained" that "prestige" Journals like *Science* and *Nature*  are also
news outlets that limit the number of references and heavily encourage the
most "up-to-date" papers. This correctly assumes that more-recent papers
can be used to trace an idea back through the literature. However, the
pressure to publish early and often (and, the curmudgeon in me suspects
that a bit of laziness may have crept in) leaves little time for such
"luxuries' like wading through the really older literature. The end result
is that we run the risk of "reinventing the wheel" and forgetting the
original inventor in the process.

Best,

Denny







*Neumann, A.C. and I. Macintyre, 1985Reef response to sea level rise:
keep-up, catch-up or give-up. p. 105-110 in Gabrie, C., J. L Toffart and B.
Salvat (Eds.) Proceedings Of The Fifth International Coral Reef Congress.
Tahiti, 27 May -1 June 1985. Vol. 3 : Symposia and Seminars (A)


On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 8:15 PM Peter Sale via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Hi all,
> I cannot resist commenting on the last paragraph in Gene Shinn's
> interesting post on work he did back in the early 1960s.  He states, "I
> would be the first to admit that these unsophisticated self-funded
> studies would be unacceptable in today's technical world. However, no one
> was attempting this kind of work at the time and no funding agency would
> fund such work. This was a time when diving related work barely existed and
> computers were far in the future. However, as simple as it was these
> studies answered the questions we were asking."
>
> Two interesting points - no one was attempting and no funding agency would
> fund - and - these studies answered the questions.  To the point about
> funding I'd also bring in his comment about such studies being
> 'unacceptable' in today's technical world.  Too often we are blinded by
> technology, and believe wrongly that simple experiments done without
> sophisticated technology cannot be illuminating.  Certainly the funding
> agencies are guilty of a technology bias, but they get that from we
> reviewers.  Scientists reviewing grants need to focus on the questions
> being asked rather than on the number of thousands of dollars-worth of
> equipment or software being employed to answer them.
>
> As for his second point... does it not suggest that there may be other
> little gems of knowledge hidden in papers published decades ago?  Gems that
> most of us never bother to look for because we are taught that it's only
> the recent stuff that needs to be read and cited.
> Guess I am just getting too old.
> Peter
>
> Peter F Sale
> University of Windsor
> sale at uwindsor.ca<mailto:sale at uwindsor.ca>
> www.petersalebooks.com<http://www.petersalebooks.com>
> new in 2021: Coral Reefs - Majestic realms under the sea.
> https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253832/coral-reefs
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>


-- 
Dennis Hubbard - Emeritus Professor: Dept of Geology-Oberlin College
Oberlin OH 44074
(440) 935-4014

* "When you get on the wrong train.... every stop is the wrong stop"*
 Benjamin Stein: "*Ludes, A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream*"