Challenging Paradigms

What is it about?

Too often, ideas become so well established that they take on the roles of paradigms, and challenging those paradigms can be difficult, even if they are flawed or incorrect in some way. Similarly, misconceptions can take root and become firmly entrenched, albeit rarely in the literature, and again are difficult to dislodge. Both of these situations are fundamentally unscientific. Science makes progress when established theories are shown to be incorrect or at least incomplete. To do that, we have to let the data that we collect tell their stories. We should not impose models upon the data, but rather allow the data to yield those models that best represent those features that are absolutely necessary to fit the data, an approach often called “Occam’s inversion”. We also should not impose non-physical and unscientific limits on our interpretation models. We present here a number of examples from our own experiences: non-uniqueness in potential fields; the electrical properties of faults; the geophysical response of sea floor mineralization; and the influence of non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) and of water on ground penetrating radar and electrical resistivity. In each case, a reviewer or another scientist questioned the conclusions using unscientific or incorrect arguments or assumptions. We must let the data speak.

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