A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning

A Safety Net for Scientific Data

But the essence of his scientific legacy was his passion for doing things in a meticulous way. Itexplains why, even as challengers try to pick apart every other aspect of climate science, his half-century record of carbon dioxide measurements stands unchallenged

Data curation is critical for scientific data digitization, sharing, integration and utilization

The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer weighs the strength of the scientific evidence that some food, drink, pesticide, smokable plant, whatever is a carcinogen. What it does not do is consider how much that substance actually increases your risk for actually getting cancer—even if it differs by magnitudes of 100.

We propose linked open data as enabling a more interlinked and easily navigable scholarly environment that would permit: better integration of research materials with primary and secondary source objects and datasets; the potential to bridge but also address the specificities of the nomenclature, discourses, and methodologies of humanities disciplines and sub-disciplines; and the ability to respect institutional and individual investments in ownership or credit of resources by allowing for identifiable collections of data while fostering resource interlinking.

Science is not about certainty. Science is about finding the most reliable way of thinking at the present level of knowledge. Science is extremely reliable; it’s not certain. In fact, not only is it not certain, but it’s the lack of certainty that grounds it. Scientific ideas are credible not because they are sure but because they’re the ones that have survived all the possible past critiques, and they’re the most credible because they were put on the table for everybody’s criticism.