Transcript

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Hi. My name is Richard Holliman and I’m one of the Block 1 authors on S350 Evaluating contemporary science.

I’m joined here by Clare Warren, who works in the School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems Sciences at The Open University.

We are here to discuss how science progresses.

So Clare – what’s your current topic of enquiry?

CLARE WARREN

I’m a geologist. My research investigates how rocks get buried, deformed, transformed into new and beautiful rock types and get brought back up to the surface again.

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Okay. One of the things we’re kind of interested in is what you see are the key characteristics of being a successful scientist.

CLARE WARREN

Well obviously all scientists have enquiring minds. You know, they’re the types of people who ask loads of questions as a kid and get told off by their parents for stop asking so many questions.

But good geologists certainly also need to be really observant because a lot of the key information they get from the field and from the rock samples they need to look at them properly.

Determination and cooperation are really important especially for field work and lab work, and you’ve got to be pretty hard working as well.

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Okay. So we’re also interested in the types of scientific evidence that you think that you see are currently agreed knowledge in your discipline. So what would you say is agreed knowledge?

CLARE WARREN

Well, I guess the theory of plate tectonics is probably the main one in Earth sciences and so this is a 1960s theory that describes how rocks on the surface move around the large-scale motions.

I mean that’s now taught in schools. Primary school kids know about mid-ocean spreading and subduction zones and volcanoes. So I would say that’s probably the most common knowledge.

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Okay, and how did you see that becoming kind of agreed knowledge in your discipline? How did it come about?

CLARE WARREN

Well, it was a series of observations from I guess starting in the 1800s where people noticed that there were fossils that were the same on different continents and the shapes of the continents fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle.

But nobody could really explain the mechanisms by which continents could drift and it wasn’t really until geophysical observations in the 1960s, so looking at the magnetic stripes on the sea floor, and satellite data looking at global positioning systems, how rocks are moving apart from each other, and those really nailed the previous observations and said, ‘Look, these things do happen. Plates do move apart, and do collide together again.’

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Okay. So you’re saying basically somebody kind of came up with some kind of theory and then the evidence comes in and basically cements that?

CLARE WARREN

Yeah, but the people who came up with the original theory were laughed at, because you know Alfred Wegener in the [nineteen] thirties said, ‘Hey look continents drift apart’, and everyone said, ‘No they don’t. How can they possibly be drifting apart? Rocks are rocks. They’re solid.’

But over time there was more and more evidence came together to show that actually they did. But it wasn’t until people found the mechanism by which that happened that that theory crystallised and became accepted fact.

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Cool. So what would it take for that to change? What would it take for somebody to come and say, ‘Actually, we’ve disproved plate tectonics? Here’s another theory’?

CLARE WARREN

I guess plate tectonics itself; there’s so much weight of evidence for it that it would, I reckon, be almost impossible to overturn, but the devil is in the detail to some extent. There are bits of that theory which don’t fit.

So plate tectonics describes how solid things move around the surface of the Earth and when you collide two continents together they act much more weakly. It’s much more fluid and plate tectonics theory doesn’t really describe that very well.

So I don’t think it will be a paradigm shift but I think incremental knowledge will suddenly help us to understand how two continents can collide together and form the Himalayas, for example, in a much more robust fashion.

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Okay. So you see small incremental changes, not a bit massive shift.

CLARE WARREN

Yeah, I think there are big shifts to be made in some parts of Earth sciences, for example, the origin of life on Earth, or how the Earth formed in the first place but plate tectonics itself I think is a pretty well embedded theory.

RICHARD HOLLIMAN

Cool. Thanks very much.

CLARE WARREN

You’re very welcome.