On Full Disclosure and Transparent Data Flow from 40Ar/39Ar Geochronology Measurements to Data Reduction to Online Repositories

Abstract:

Arguably ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology is one of the most versatile techniques available to Earth scientists today for the dating of rocks and minerals and determining the rates of geological processes on Earth and in our solar system. Over the last four decades large quantities of high (and lower) quality ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar data have been produced using many different generations of mass spectrometry instrumentation. This wealth of data is only as useful as its description and availability of metadata allows. Many online data sets or compilations available in the science literature only carry the resulting product, an age and a related uncertainty in millions of years, for example. These data points are far from desirable as these don’t allow recalculation against modern-day age standards, decay constants and other parameters essential in ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology. Over time these data will become less useful to the research community and eventually these will be put by the wayside. In this presentation I will emphasize the need for full disclosure of all data and metadata involved in ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology. I will give examples of how a complex data flow can be kept transparent from sample preparation to measurement to data reduction and eventually the uploading into online data repositories. Without the full disclosure of our data and a transparent data flow, it is evident that we cannot live up to one of the governing doctrines in the sciences, namely reproducibility of our scientific experiments and findings.