Paleoclimate Proxies and the Benefits of Disunity.

Measuring the climates of the deep past requires the use of paleoclimate proxies. I describe two proxy data and measurement practices, regarding proxy calibration and proxy data infrastructure. I document how at least some data and measurement practices in paleoclimatology are disunified: these prac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophy of Science Vol. 91; no. 4; pp. 793 - 811
Main Author: Watkins, Aja
Format: Article
Published: Cambridge University Press Oct2024
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:Measuring the climates of the deep past requires the use of paleoclimate proxies. I describe two proxy data and measurement practices, regarding proxy calibration and proxy data infrastructure. I document how at least some data and measurement practices in paleoclimatology are disunified: these practices do not involve intercalibration or otherwise statistical combination of multiple proxy records, and metadata necessary for proxy data to be reused or intercompared is often not provided. I argue that, perhaps counterintuitively, this lack of standardization and unification of proxy data and measurements has several benefits, especially related to the management of error and uncertainty.