Data struggles: The life and times of a database in Historical Climatology

Decker, Kris

doi:10.1177/0539018417739712

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(66 reference statements)

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“…Several historical climatology research groups have developed electronic databases containing information about drought and related phenomena (Decker, 2018). Most were initiated due to the need to manage and analyse large amounts of historicalclimatological data, and to make these data accessible to international researchers.…”

Section: Weather Compilationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Documentary data and the study of the past droughts: an overview of the state of the art worldwide

Brázdil

Kiss

Luterbacher

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. The use of documentary evidence to investigate past climatic trends and events has become a recognised approach in recent decades. This contribution presents the state of the art in its application to droughts. The range of documentary evidence is very wide, including: general annals, chronicles, and memoirs, diaries kept by missionaries, travellers and those specifically interested in the weather, the records kept by administrators tasked with keeping accounts and other financial and economic records, legal-administrative evidence, religious sources, letters, marketplace and shopkeepers' songs, newspapers and journals, pictographic evidence, chronograms, epigraphic evidence, early instrumental observations, society commentaries, compilations and books, and historical-climatological databases. These come from many parts of the world. This variety of documentary information is evaluated with respect to the reconstruction of hydroclimatic conditions (precipitation, drought frequency and drought indices). Documentary-based drought reconstructions are then addressed in terms of long-term spatio-temporal fluctuations, major drought events, relationships with external forcing and large-scale climate drivers, socio-economic impacts and human responses. Documentary-based drought series are also discussed from the viewpoint of spatio-temporal variability for certain continents, and their employment together with hydroclimate reconstructions from other proxies (in particular tree-rings) is discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn and challenges for the future use of documentary evidence in the study of droughts are presented.

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Section: Weather Compilationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Documentary data and the study of the past droughts: an overview of the state of the art worldwide

Brázdil

Kiss

Luterbacher

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…This article is based on a three-year ethnographic study of a group of scientists studying past climates from trees and, more specifically, attempting to establish whether current temperatures in Scotland are anomalously warm from the analysis of Scots pine tree growth. For periods before the existence of meteorological records, scientists or ‘paleoclimatologists’ use different materials (trees, ice-cores, sediments, corals and documents among others) as ‘climate proxies’ and sources of information of past climate for different timescales (Bradley, 1999: 7; Decker, 2017; Schinkel, 2016; Skrydstrup, 2017). Dendroclimatology is a science that employs trees (‘dendron’ is the Greek word for ‘tree’) for understanding the changes in climate over the past millennium.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It remains uncertain, though, whether trust in anonymous and abstract systems of expertise could become more relevant as the ‘core-set’ expands and more BI datasets are assembled. My hypothesis is that personal reputation linked to specific geographical areas of expertise is still important for the constitution of global climate knowledge infrastructures like the ITRDB (this is why the archived data can be filtered by the name of the ‘contributor’ and the local tree species– see Figure 3; see Decker, 2017: 16; Mahony and Hulme, 2016 for additional evidence supporting my supposition).…”

Section: Civil Skepticism and Scientific Credibilitymentioning

confidence: 97%

‘Civil skepticism’ and the social construction of knowledge: A case in dendroclimatology

Ramírez-i-Ollé

2018

Soc Stud Sci

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Early Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars recognized that the social construction of knowledge depends on skepticism's parasitic relationship to background expectations and trust. Subsequent generations have paid less empirical attention to skepticism in science and its relationship with trust. I seek to rehabilitate skepticism in STS - particularly, Merton's view of skepticism as a scientific norm sustained by trust among status peers - with a study of what I call 'civil skepticism'. The empirical grounding is a case in contemporary dendroclimatology and the development of a method ('Blue Intensity') for generating knowledge about climate change from trees. I present a sequence of four instances of civil skepticism involved in making Blue Intensity more resistant to critique, and hence credible (in laboratory experiments, workshops, conferences, and peer-review of articles). These skeptical interactions depended upon maintaining communal notions of civility among an increasingly extended network of mutually trusted peers through a variety of means: by making Blue Intensity complementary to existing methods used to study a diverse natural world (tree-ring patterns) and by contributing to a shared professional goal (the study of global climate change). I conclude with a sociological theory about the role of civil skepticism in constituting knowledge-claims of greater generality and relevance.

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“…For data to circulate across a wide network of data users, data are increasingly standardised in the ways it is produced and 'packaged' with detailed metadata describing their origins (Baker & Millerand, 2010;Edwards et al, 2011). Contributing to this debate, Decker (2018), in this journal, discussed what is at stake when constructing a database in historical climatology for individual researchers, their teams and research field. When data producers deposit 'their' data to feed the collective repository and make it freely accessible, they are concerned with how their data will be 'treated' by others.…”

Section: Large-scale Research Collaborations In Policy and Sts Literamentioning

confidence: 99%

When more data means better results: Abundance and scarcity in research collaborations in epigenetics

Pinel

2020

Social Science Information

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Drawing upon ethnographic findings from an epigenetics research laboratory in the United Kingdom, this article explores practices of research collaborations in the field of epigenetics, and epigenomics research consortia in particular. I demonstrate that research consortia are key scientific infrastructures that enable the aggregation of masses of data deemed necessary for the production of results and the fostering of epistemic value. Building on Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholarship on value production, and the concept of asset, I show that the production of valuable research within epigenomics research consortia rests on the active organisation and management of abundance and scarcity. It involves shaping and standardising the masses of data gathered in consortia, while it also entails research teams enclosing their data within their laboratories’ walls. As they do so, research teams construct data into scarce and monopolised assets, which they can put to productive use in collaborative endeavours against a revenue. In addition to contributing empirical and critical insights into the ways epigenetics knowledge is formed and negotiated in specific research contexts, this article offers conceptual tools to examine and problematise knowledge production practices in data-intensive research more broadly. In particular, it points out that while contemporary big biology is marked by the generalised imperative to ‘share’ data and ‘open’ science, collaborative endeavours within research consortia are built around forms of exclusions.

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Data struggles: The life and times of a database in Historical Climatology

Cited by 8 publications

References 51 publications

Documentary data and the study of the past droughts: an overview of the state of the art worldwide

Documentary data and the study of the past droughts: an overview of the state of the art worldwide

‘Civil skepticism’ and the social construction of knowledge: A case in dendroclimatology

When more data means better results: Abundance and scarcity in research collaborations in epigenetics

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