My own first thoughts on the the thermal ratchet model for the devlopment of pingos were presented in a paper given to the 21st International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM-04) held in Warsaw in Auggust, 2004. While this was received with polite interest by the mechanics community it was disappointing that few people from the periglacial and permafrost communites were present. For this reason I prepared a slightly amended version of the paper for possible publication in the Proceedings of the Royal society, thinking that this would provide a suitably interdisciplinary venue to encourage discussion. Sadly this was not to be. The reviewers raised objections to the new model which it would have been very helpful to have been able to discuss. But peer review processes generally do not encourage dialogue between author and reviewer and so despite a second try with an amended manuscript and a few years of back and forth the manuscript remains unpublished. A similar fate awaited more recent attempts to publish in more specialist journals. And even an application for research funding was met by a similar range of objections to the new model. This was my first real experience of meeting a publication brick wall and made me realise all too clearly how resilient are the barriers for change and obstacles put in the way of anyone daring to try and publish work in disciplines outside their own little patch.
As future blogs will show I am becoming something of an expert in this experience.
Croll, J. G. A. (2004) An alternative model for “pingo” formation in permafrost regions, paper presented at 21st Int Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, ICTAM-04, Warsaw, 15-21 Aug., 2004, Abstracts and CD Rom Proceedings, 99.
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But surely you must have considered that perhaps your little theory is just plain wrong? Might this be the reson it has been turned down by various review processes? For example, might it just be the case that the permafrost is not subject to sufficiently large changes in temperature to induce the levels of stress required to form an upheaval buckle?
ReplyDeleteConstantly sottevoce1, after all the reviewers were clearly all experts in the field whereas at the time I had not even visited an area in which permafrost is present - or as one commentator perceptively put it "you haven't even stood on permafrost". So yes, despite a lot of reading around the subject I am all too aware that the thermal ratchet model may be completely off the wall. But surely that should not stop me from trying my utmost to test as best I can the possibility, however remote, that it might just have some kernels of truth? And surely it should be possible to do just that within some form of appropriate scientific discussion?
ReplyDeleteExperiences over the past few years have given cause to consider how the world of scientific publication has changed. One only need look at the publications of the 19th C to see how things have changed in my view for the worst. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Transactions of the Royal Society, the Philosophical Journal, … were full of scientific curiosity and speculation followed by informed and engaged discussion, and importantly open criticism that could be challenged. I shall be referring to certain episodes of this in future blogs. Yes, you could say that science has changed in the past 100 to 200 years. Many natural philosophers were of course enlightened amateurs pursuing their curiosity from the privileged position of a class based financial security. And it is sometimes said that what they were discovering was so much simpler that what we face today. But was it and is it? There still appear to be many wonderful phenomena and things to be properly explained. One of the big changes has been in the social/economic organisation of science. With all too rare exceptions scientists are forced to pursue their craft within career structures that discourage the asking difficult questions. If you want to gain acceptance, advance your career, and gain peer recognition it is not a good idea to challenge orthodoxies. If you wish to publish or gain funds from research funding bodies it is not a great idea to be proposing things that challenge the comfort zones of those likely to be peer reviewer your material. As a result too much science today is being done within little cliques into whose hallowed ranks it is the ambition of most scientists to be accepted.
And of course publishing reflects this change in the social organisation of science. Popular journals like Science, New Scientist appear to have no real outlets for the scientifically curious to express their ideas. Most of their articles are commissioned or written by in-house editorial staff – not really consistent with encouraging new ideas. Their letter columns, comment sections etc tend to be restricted to discussion of material that has already been published – again, not conducive to the exploration of that which is new. Specialist journals abound but appear to be motivated more by the need to be commercially viable than to encourage and uncover that which is new and/or challenging the orthodoxy underpinning those who control the journal. In most fields we are being choked by journals in which papers are published but alas very seldom read by any other than those who are inveigled into reviewing them. Or if they are read there is very seldom an appropriate outlet within the journal for accepting ongoing comment and discussion. And alas the publications from learned bodies such as the Royal Society have been forced to follow in the wake of this regrettable trend. Natural philosophy has become science in which the room for uncertainty, curiosity, and the gifted amateur seems to have almost disappeared.
But fortunately not quite.
Sottovoce1, apologies, I became so carried away with my little rant about the parlous state of science publishing today that I forgot to address your real issue as to whether or not there is sufficient change in temperature to develop the levels of force required to induce growth of pingos. I do not have direct field evidence of my own so must rely upon that reported by others. This shows that there is easily enough temperature variation through the thickness of the permafrost to induce thermal buckling. But even without the benefit of field measurements it seems pretty obvious that during the periods of downward propagation of the lower permafrost boundary the seasonal thermal waves must be reaching down to the underside of the permafrost. If the thermal waves were not reaching this depth there would clearly be insufficient heat flow to extract the latent heat from the pore water undergoing phase change. With the thermal gradient typically having an exponential decay with depth the average temperature changes through the thickness of the permafrost sheet at the location of the pingo will be a significant fraction of the changes occurring at surface level – all no doubt complicated a little by the thermal drag experienced by the seasonal freezing and thawing of the active layer.
ReplyDeleteI could if you wish provide references to the levels of temperature change – some of which were mentioned in a previous posting.
It seems you are not alone in your difficulties in having unorthodox ideas published and discussed. A few weeks ago BBC 4 ran a series called “Beautiful Minds”. One of the programmes focused on the life and work of the environmental scientist James Lovelock, a delightful chap who for the past 40 years or so has been beavering away doing what appears to have been highly original science in an old barn next to his house in Devon. Frustrated by the reactions he received from mainstream science - especially it appears in relation to his early thoughts on “Gaia”, a theory which seems to suggest how the living world self regulates its environment - he decided to set himself free from all the stifling constraints that bedevil so many scientists, and conduct his researches according to his own light. It was clearly not an easy decision - but judging from the adulation he is now receiving for this highly original work, was evidently the right one.
ReplyDeleteDid you manage to see this programme? I would be interested in your thoughts as to whether James Lovelock’s views are very widely shared? If you too have been able to free yourself from some of the more deadening influences of the scientific establishment how have you managed it? And do you have any thoughts as to how things might be improved more generally?
You asked me in an earlier post about the origins of my blog-name, and I confess it is a question which causes me no little embarrassment. I expect you are wondering what the name ‘Inessentially Speaking’ is intended to imply - and it will be of little satisfaction to you to learn that I hardly know myself. I wished, I believe, to convey the idea that I have reached that stage of life in which there are no longer any certainties - which being so, I might of course as easily have called myself ‘Vainly Seeking’, or ‘Obscurantist’, or something of that general nature...
It is a fact though, that throughout my academic teaching career I was accustomed, apparently, to preface most of my remarks with the phrase “Essentially speaking” – to such an extent that I was known in many quarters (with what I hope was a degree of affection), as “Old Essentially”...
All such meagre certainties as I then possessed have long since departed me, however: I would speak ‘essentially’ now, about almost nothing ! Hence the little prefix ‘in’ -denoting my perplexity in the face of most things. It is against this background that I have welcomed your researches, and your brave inquiring voice. It’s late for me – but not too late for you perhaps? All power to you: I shall continue to follow your thoughts with the greatest possible interest, and contribute where I can.
I was most intrigued to read of the origins of your enigmatic blog name, “inessentially speaking”, especially since it attracts a wavy red line beneath every time I type it within a word document, but it is funny how over a long career of lecturing one develops certain linguistic quirks that students are most certainly quick to pick up on. I shudder to think what my own may have been and the names they may have attracted. I am not sure I wish to find out! But I would hope one day to learn a little more about what it was you were involved with and for which you seem to have lost a little of the clarity of vision you once had.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was pleased to have seen the programme on James Lovelock’s life in science. He is indeed a remarkable scientist who in shunning the more conventional career route has been able to make some major contributions, although it should be recognised that some of his important early work was carried out while employed within some of the country's most distinguished research laboratories. There was a time that even I can almost remember when these laboratories encouraged a certain degree of maverick thinking. I suspect that many of the problems encountered in the development of his holistic thesis on “Gaia” may have arisen from the changes in the way science was and now is being run, and the gradual decline and eventual dismantling of some of the nation’s best publicly owned research laboratories.
As to Gaia itself I have to confess I have not read all of James’s books, but from what I have read and from the excellent BBC programme, I do still have some questions in my own mind. It does seem clear that homo sapiens may be the first species to be in a position to consciously recognise the need for change in our behaviour and interaction with the rest of the natural world if we are to not to produce environmental conditions incompatible with our continuing existence. And while we probably possess the technical ability to regulate our environment to create conditions more amicable to our and other species continuing existence there must remain considerable doubt as to whether we yet possess the political will to allow it to come about. If the ideas of Gaia can help shape that political will they most certainly will prove to be of major historic significance. As to whether these ideas account for the ways in which other species and the environment interact I am not totally convinced. Most of the examples considered seem to be equally explicable in terms of Darwin and natural selection. In other words those species that survive most effectively within a given change in environmental conditions are unlikely to have been responsible for bringing about those changes for which they are best adapted. I may be wrong but I am far from convinced by “daisy world”.
Although now retired I am still pretty heavily involved in teaching and have a pile of unmarked exam scripts sitting beside me. I will therefore have to return to some of your other questions at a later time. Meanwhile, thanks for your comments and encouragement.
Little did I realise when commenting on some of the interesting questions you raise "insessentially speaking", that it would be nearly 2 years before I again found the time to contribute to the blog. This I regret since I had only partly addressed yours and many other interesting issues. So let me start to put the record straight in relation to your questions of 11 May, 2010. .
ReplyDeleteYou ask how it is that I have managed to "free myself from some of the more deadening influences of the scientific establishment”. Well of course the glib answer to this is that I clearly have not and hence my resort to the blog. But to the very limited extent that I have been able to get material out there in what is for me are rather new areas of science, is to a large extent due to my recent retirement. Having basically had my professional career and to some extent played the game (I say to some extent since I have never shied away from taking an unconventional or unpopular view of the areas within which I have been engaged – but perhaps more on this in some future blog), it is a liberating experience to be able to write what you believe without having to worry as to whether it will be accepted in this or that journal or whether the testing of the hypotheses upon which it is based will be likely to attract external research funding. I hope this is not to suggest that what I am saying in these blogs is in any way frivolous but simply that I can pursue with much greater freedom theories and ideas with which many might, or indeed most probably will, vehemently disagree. Over my career I have always been pleased to get a strong reaction, and most often these have been hostile, to some published or attempted published idea. But what has been less satisfactory is the lack of effective mechanisms by which such areas of disagreements can be brought out into the open and effectively debated and resolved. Too often these disagreements become played out through sniping and usually anonymous reviews with the result that publication is sought in outlets to which these hostile reviewers may be less likely to contribute. The result is the growth of mutual admiration clubs, which are powered by the growing importance of things like citation index as a measure of the perceived importance of a particular piece of work. So perhaps one of the answers to your question as to how things might be improved more generally is to encourage more retired, angry old scientists and engineers to remain active, productive and most of all say what they really think! To do so might even help solve some other looming problems. More in a further comment since I appear to have exceeded the allotted space.
Continuing from my last comments I would add that we now face a perceived global problem of an ageing population. It has always struck me as somewhat absurd that so often at the peak of their intellectual prowess and in many cases at the peak of their knowledge base in whatever field they might have worked, so many people are forced to retire; forced out of the very structures within which their skills were honed and hopefully productively utilised. Why when they still have so much to give are so many encouraged to down tools and become increasingly dependent upon pension incomes for which it is becoming clear we are increasingly unable to honour? Clearly there will be many cases where ill health prevents it but in those cases where the mind and body are still intact why is it we are seemingly unable to find ways that allow society, the economy, and our cultures to take advantage of this huge, largely untapped potential – not to mention the psychological and medical benefits to the individuals continuing to be seen as an important cog in the wider big wheel? I think there are many things that could be done to improve the current situation. If we do not, the burden on the upcoming generations is likely to very considerable indeed. I guess I am one of the lucky ones in having spent most of my career within the university sector. And although there has been a past reluctance to keep people on post retirement there remains a certain degree of institutional support to those of us who want to continue our intellectual passions. But fortunately by being off the payroll there is no longer the pressures to publish, attract research funding, build up a research group, make certain that they have the highest possible citation indices, … that now provide an increasing burden for academics. Perhaps the solution to the shortage of public funding is to more effectively harness the massive potential of grey power back into the productive economy!
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