BAMOS Vol 31 No.4 December 2018 | Page 37

BAMOS Dec 2018 Research corner with Damien Irving The Research Police You know who I’m talking about. I’m sure every research community has them. Those annoying do-gooders who constantly advocate for things to be done the right way. When you’re trying to take a shortcut, it’s their nagging voice in the back of your mind. You appreciate that what they’re saying is important, but with so much work and so little time, you don’t always want to hear it. Since I’m fond of creating lists, here’s my research police of the weather, ocean and climate sciences: Statistics Dan Wilks is a widely regarded statistics guru in the atmospheric sciences. He’s the author of the most clearly written statistics textbook I’ve come across (Wilks, 2011), as well as articles such as a recent essay in BAMS that is sure to make you feel bad if you’ve ever plotted significance stippling (Wilks, 2016). Data visualisation Ed Hawkins’ climate spiral visualisation received worldwide media coverage in 2016 (and even featured in the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics). He makes the list of research police due to his end the rainbow campaign, which advocates for the use of more appropriate colour scales in climate science. Communication David Schultz is the Chief Editor of Monthly Weather Review and has authored well over 100 research articles, but is probably best known as the “Eloquent Science guy.” His book is a must read for anyone wanting to improve their academic writing, reviewing and speaking (Schultz, 2009). Programming Unfortunately, I’m going to have to self-nominate here, as I’ve been a strong advocate for computational reproducibility for a number of years now (e.g. Irving, 2016). Now that I’ve formally released a set of lesson materials with Data Carpentry, I’m looking for other volunteer instructors in the community to get involved (Irving, 2018). I’d love to expand this list, so please let me know if you’ve got any suggested research police. References Irving, D., 2016. A minimum standard for publishing computational results in the weather and climate sciences. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(7), 1149– 1158. Irving, D., 2018. Data Carpentry for atmosphere and ocean scientists. Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, 31(3), 21. Schultz, D. M., 2009. Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker, & Atmospheric Scientist. American Meteorological Society, 440 pp. Wilks, D. S., 2011. Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences. (3rd ed.) Academic Press, Oxford, 676 pp. Wilks, D. S., 2016. “The stippling shows statistically significant grid points”: How research results are routinely overstated and overinterpreted, and what to do about It. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(12), 2263–2273. 37