John clued me to this article: The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science

There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?

Before 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate. . .

I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs -- even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

I read an article today that smelled funny, so I thought I'd apply the rules of bogusity to it as an experiment.

The West has become 500 percent dustier in the past two centuries due to westward U.S. expansion and accompanying human activity beginning in the 1800s, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. . .

"From about 1860 to 1900, the dust deposition rates shot up so high that we initially thought there was a mistake in our data," said Neff. "But the evidence clearly shows the western U.S. had it's own Dust Bowl beginning in the 1800s when the railroads went in and cattle and sheep were introduced into the rangelands." . .

"There were an estimated 40 million head of livestock on the western rangeland during the turn of the century, causing a massive and systematic degradation of the ecosystems," said Neff. The 1934 Taylor Grazing Act that imposed restrictions on western grazing lands coincided with a decrease in accumulation rates of the San Juan lake sediments in the study -- a decrease that continues to today, he said.

hmmm, how many bison roamed the plains for millenia before that?

Bison once roamed from Canada to Mexico, grazing the great plains and frequenting the mountain areas of the North American continent. Their number being so great that the early explorers could not count them, describing them as "number-numberless," and "the country was one black robe" and the "plains were black and appeared as if in motion" with the herds of bison. The most commonly used estimate of their former numbers is approximately 60 million. . .

The near extermination of the American Bison did not occur just in a few short violent years. The fur trade, which began in the 1600s, initially focused on beaver but then demanded that bison (buffalo) robes be shipped to Europe. By the early 1800s, trade in buffalo robes and buffalo tongues significantly increased and caused approximately 200,000 bison kills annually on the plains. The 1830s to 1860s were the four decades in which most of the slaughter of bison occurred. Wagon load after wagon load of robes, tongues and, occasionally, selected cuts of bison meat, moved east. Soon, collection and shipping of bison bones to eastern cities where they ground up for use as phosphorous fertilizer or bone char became common. The arrival of the railroads further exacerbated herd conditions for the bison and by the early 1880s there were only a few free-ranging bison.

The sediment record of dust increase is one thing, but the explanation offered for that increase seems silly. I'd be more tempted to credit John Deere.

When a blacksmith named John Deere figured out how to mass-produce moldboard plows over 150 years ago, he did more than launch a new line of machinery. These plows gave farmers a reliable method for peeling back the top layer of tough prairie sod, unearthing the fabulous fertile wealth underneath. But as soon as that soil is exposed to the elements, it starts to deteriorate. Such exposure leaves the soil vulnerable to wind and soil erosion. It also speeds up oxidation of organic matter. Such oxidation can burn up nutrients before the roots of a field crop can absorb them, wearing out the soil at a fast clip. So far, farmers have been able to prop up the soil by adding nutrients in the form of chemical fertilizers or manure back into the soil. But the other downside of intense tillage-the increased erosion it causes-is harder to mask. The Dust Bowl made that clear in the 1930s. As crop tillage became increasingly more intense, erosion rates climbed to alarming levels, silting in waterways, polluting the air and causing entire farm communities to be abandoned.

But no one publicly questioned the moldboard plow's role in destroying soil until 1943, when an agronomist named Edward Faulkner wrote Plowman's Folly, a book-length argument against deep, intensive tillage. He called for systems which left more dead plant residue on the surface.

Livestock on western rangeland was its normal condition. Plowing it up for field and row crops was not. Without better evidence of some sort for the increased dust - causation rather than correlation - I'd say that the conclusions of the study are bogus even if the data gathered has value. The science bit - the data - has value but the interpretation seems steeped in grade A ignorance. Other human activities such as mining, logging and road building seem likely contributors as well since they are newly introduced changes to the western region.

I'm not sure exactly how to state it, but I think that the seven signs of bogusity should say something about interpretation since it isn't science at all though it is often the only part of scientific work that is discussed. Interpretation is a place for all of a scientist's superstitions and biases to surface, hiding behind the skirts of a lab coat.