Editing 2239: Data Error
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Destroying the evidence, hiding the error and publishing the wrong results as if they were right is what a dishonest scientist would do in such a situation. This behavior is what would be expected by a malevolent character such as Black Hat... But the unexpected turn is that Black Hat passes over {{w|scientific misconduct}} to go directly to pure supervillainhood. He obviously has some other ideas about what a researcher uses her time on, as he did not expect Megan to be frustrated about algae. | Destroying the evidence, hiding the error and publishing the wrong results as if they were right is what a dishonest scientist would do in such a situation. This behavior is what would be expected by a malevolent character such as Black Hat... But the unexpected turn is that Black Hat passes over {{w|scientific misconduct}} to go directly to pure supervillainhood. He obviously has some other ideas about what a researcher uses her time on, as he did not expect Megan to be frustrated about algae. | ||
− | The title text refers to the {{w|Great Oxidation Event}}, when prokaryotic photosynthetic organisms built up oxygen in Earth's atmosphere for the first time and most organisms, which weren't adapted to oxygen, went extinct. It's extremely unlikely that algae could again be dangerous to all life on Earth, though Black Hat may wish they could be. (Note that {{w|cyanobacteria}}, which are colloquially referred to as "blue-green algae", are not considered to be true algae by many scientists, who restrict the term to {{w|eukaryotes}}.) | + | The title text refers to the {{w|Great Oxidation Event}}, when prokaryotic photosynthetic organisms built up oxygen in Earth's atmosphere for the first time and most organisms, which weren't adapted to oxygen, went extinct. It's extremely unlikely that algae could again be dangerous to all life on Earth, though Black Hat may wish they could be. (Note that {{w|cyanobacteria}}, which are colloquially referred to as "blue-green algae", are not considered to be true algae by many scientists, who restrict the term to {{w|eukaryotes}}.) |
Megan's data error could have been any number of things. Her data pipeline might have had a unit conversion error, or perhaps she mistyped the baseline productivity value that she was comparing her algae to, or perhaps her calculations used assumed or estimated values related to phenomena that were poorly understood at the time but have since been resolved in an unfavorable direction. | Megan's data error could have been any number of things. Her data pipeline might have had a unit conversion error, or perhaps she mistyped the baseline productivity value that she was comparing her algae to, or perhaps her calculations used assumed or estimated values related to phenomena that were poorly understood at the time but have since been resolved in an unfavorable direction. |