Blog Assignment #1 Primary Source vs. Secondary Source

Liyan Liu

ID 0276777

ENVS*1020

Professor Jonathon Newman

University of Guelph

September 23, 2010

Blog Assignment #1

Primary Source vs. Secondary Source

In Nature article “Climate change: A glacial test of timing” (09 September 2010) the author, Martin P. Kirkbride, states few obstacles which encountered when we refer to the glacial test of timing in climate change. In Quaternary Geochronology, the article “In situ cosmogenic ¹⁰Be production-rate calibration from the Southern Alps, New Zealand” composed by A.E. Putnam, J.M. Schaefer and their colleagues demonstrate and present a rich array of statistics of the production-rate values and the consistencies of the production rate from their rigorous field investigations. In the rest of my blog I would like to compare and contrast these two articles in terms of their interpretations of dating the moraines deposited in the glacial formation, also the strength of their claims and the limitations in these two research sources.

First of all two articles are all investigating on the examination of the glacial timing. That is, we can find there are fundamentally similarities between them, like on the concepts of calculating the ¹⁴C and ¹⁰Be production-rate calibration in the tests, the seemingly intractable issues of the time-integrated production-rate uncertainties refer to the standard methods of measurements and also some problems which come across when they talk about errors related to the uncertanties.

At the time the dissimilarities of these two papers also can not be overlooked even they based on a same issue because the results are definitely different. Firstly by comparison of the two articles, in the secondary source article, the author pays more attention on laying out what problems or highlights have emerged in the research rather than really going through or addressing the problems. Nevertheless the Putnman and his teams have done tests and acquired to some degree of agreement and consistencies. For instance, in the discussion session of the research report, they obtains a successful performance of the Macaulay production rates at the BST (Boundary Stream tarn) test site which can be perfectly applied on the calculation of exposure ages in the New Zealand. Concequentially they also provide the conditions of usage of these production rates of the Macaulay calibration site, which exactly figures out avoiding the uncertainties that blocked in the calculations. Apparently, when we go back to the Martin’s article, it mostly like an impossible mission that how to settle down the deposit-date of the last glaciation. So we can see that the primary literature tries to use tests to clarify the problems instead of which in sencondary resource foucusing on attracting readers by bombarding them with exaggerated puzzles.

Moreover the strength of the claim of the magazine is not pretty concrete in compare with the original material. Obviously the primary source has illustrated more facts and evidences from their team research which has stronger and academic structure than that of the magazine article. Let’s be specific, when Martin tries to illustrate the study from the Southern Alps of New Zealand of a contemporary glacier advance, he can solely demonstrates no more than a general statement that the group of scientists have “combined rigorous fief investigations and state-of-the-art geochronology to resolve a long-standing debate” (Martin 2010), which feels like just getting right on the tangent or edge of the core but not being supported by any material. Whereas, in the original research paper that constructed by A.E. Putnam and his colleagues are thoroughly specific and providing enough evidences which could rely on thire data. For example, in the method session, they can firmly inventory the name of institutions and laboratories, like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) or the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) that have analysised and supported their data processing, which can be one of the reasons why the primary source is a reliable and authoritative reference material.

Admittedly the limitations of the two types of resources can still be exposed by their advantages. The magazine article is mostly written for common public readers so Martin is trying to make the article more interesting, fascinating, but also knowledgeable . In this case he illustrated many aspects of questions encountered from the academic research and study. However, these benefits can lead to the depreciating of the article. For example, after Martin finishes all the tangential statements about the problems, at the end of the report he makes a argument that the problem that why we still have these a lot of problematic difficulties is deposited by the scientists do not make effort on leaving us with a better set of questions. In my opinion I don’t think this kind argument could give me a relief from those intractable puzzles of the glacial test of timing if I am a big fan of this magazine.

On the other hand the original journal could be concretely and specifically related to the research, but it also could be overwhelming and lengthy for a common reader. For this case we can even compare by illustrations which showed in the articles.

A. Putnam shows a seneray photo as evidence to say how scientist dated moraine ridges. However the original reseach point out the selected sample sites when researchers operated the measurement.

In conclusion there is similarities in these two sources ,yet the distiguishments between them are also unavoidable. But I think this is also understandable that the publications must have its own target readers which have demands matching with the features of the press or sources.

References

Martin P. Kirkbride (2010) Climate change: A glacial test of timing. Nature 467,169-161, 08 September 2010.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467160a.html#/references. Published online 08 September 2010

A.E. Putnam & J.M. Schaefer (2009), “In situ cosmogenic ¹⁰Be production-rate calibration from the Southern Alps, New Zealand”, Quaternary Geochronology 5 (2010) 392-409

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B83WJ-4XWMNKX-1&_user=1067211&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000051237&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1067211&md5=354a3a8882d9b3e2cf135bd25f82b58a&searchtype=a