Bootstrap Geologist: My Life in Science

Epilogue

Epilogue Changes in Science Much has changed since this bootstrap geologist/scientist began his everwinding and widening road trip. During my long career, I experienced the introduction of vacuum tube room-sized computers, fax machines, desktop computers, more powerful slim-line screens, and finally the ones that fit in your hand, and all the while the World Wide Web was growing. For me the toughest change was the advent of digital cameras and the demise of Kodachrome film. Cell phones, called mobile phones in much of the world, certainly changed life as I knew it. They now link the planet with more information than any single person can ever digest. As a musician and music lover, I went from 78 rpm phonograph records to 45 rpm and then 33 rpm, and there were wire recorders leading to reel-to-reel tape, 8-track and 8-millimeter tape cassettes, followed by CDs, which at this writing are almost obsolete. Solid-state chips the size of your fingernails are here already. Of course, television and commercial jets also became accessible during my lifetime, as well as remote sensing from satellites and orbiting space stations. With all these changes, one has to ask, are we better off? And what have these changes done for science? Clearly, these inventions have sped our ability to process data and instantly reach faraway people, in fact, faster than most of us humans can think. Airlines and businesses, as well as governments, could hardly operate without them—or could they? As I write this, I am reminded that somehow we were able to make Epilogue 258 complicated air and hotel reservations in exotic places while traveling the world by air. That was all before computers! On the other hand, we now write scientific papers and communicate with coauthors, collaborators, and journals at the speed of light. Nevertheless, I still worry about quality. Are we making new discoveries at the rate we did before these warp-speed time-saving devices began to rule our lives? A recent book titled The End of Science concluded, NO! It said we are making fewer fundamental discoveries . Its thesis is that we just process more information faster and faster, and in physics, we simply add more decimal points to existing knowledge while we polish up old hypotheses and theories. The End of Science also makes the point that fine-tuning existing knowledge requires ever more sophisticated and expensive tools. The public usually pays for these expensive tools, and the public increasingly wonders what it’s gaining from it all. Interest in science is waning, and the public who pays for it with their taxes is increasingly restless. To the public, myself included, we often seem to be—as the old adage says—reinventing the wheel. I realize that this makes me sound like an old geezer who can’t keep up. That may be true! I have seen much in my field of study that fits the title of that controversial book. Much of what was published before PDFs hardly exists in current literature because an increasingly younger generation of scientists now thrives on Google and other Web-based resources rather than libraries. We may be experiencing what my professor friend Pam Muller calls “Google Science Syndrome.” This new syndrome likely will make Paradigm Disease more pronounced. I remember the day when a young Bob Halley said, “I must be getting old.” He was in his thirties. “Most of the papers I read on carbonate research now are not new!” My response was, “Welcome to the club!” It happens to all of us. Just try and find a researcher over forty who hasn’t said that. I think I noticed it more than most because, in my case, Shell University had been far ahead of academia. That was when our new work was also proprietary , so academia didn’t see the results until they were released. During those golden years of research, it took a while for such knowledge to reach the published literature. Now information literally moves in all directions with the speed of electricity. Historians often lament, “We are doomed to repeat the past.” I must also admit I have often rediscovered old information, thinking “I was the first.” Epilogue 259 As they say, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Nevertheless, much has changed, and it has a lot to do with the availability of money and energy...