Anthony Lanati

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Happy to share that Leuven was selected as host for the BepiColombo Mercury2026 conference! Looking forward to organizing it!
@BepiColombo
@KU_Leuven
@leuvenresearch
#Mercury

Probably should have put the hammers on this one if I wanted a discussion hey 😅😜

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Job alert: lecturer in Geoscience, James Cook University (AU). Apply by 13 January. More info: www.eag.org/jobs/

@eurogeosciences.bsky.social did the same and its kinda sad. They announced their awards on twitter but not here... Maybe next year I guess.

100% and I think this is something that needs to be overcome. Filtering and correcting some geochemical data then calling it software or a revolutionary database when similar things already exist, is not cutting it. Especially when there is no new science in the paper.

The other point I would make is that the variability of funding systems means it's not always that clear what is done on a teaching fellowship or as part of the PhD. In Australia, it is a one-size fits all scholarship. In parts of the EU a PhD is a well paid job. That changes the perception a lot!

The issues I am more concerned with is true 'copying' or near copying. Also the examples of spreadsheets being promoted as software or data compilations (which more or less exist already) being published solely as papers with no scientific justification. Those are where I see the biggest harm/ waste

I think overall I agree with what you're saying and the 'case-by-case' approach to these things. I think Paleo does this better than most of the Earth Sciences. I have no problem with incremental software/ packages in R/Python etc.
Petrology/ geochem are less good at this, but getting better!

Outside of Australia I am not sure how widely known that Australian Earth Science is in trouble. @sabinzahirovic.bsky.social lays out the issues + impacts in this interview. Strongly recommend everyone give this a listen and get involved in promoting the crucial role of Earth Sciences in society. ⚒️

Today’s fun was making some chocolate glaze for a cake and seeing these structures in the cocoa powder and icing sugar. Little faults and “soft sediment” deformation

Continues to prove earth science and baking are best friends 😋😁
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Check this out @earth-science.bsky.social a well paid #earth-science / #geoscience PhD position in a pretty amazing lab group! Bonus that you can spend some time in Italy too! ⚒️

Münster

Perugia

📣open PhD Position📣 We’re looking for a PhD student to experimentally investigate the role of aqueous fluids in the transfer of carbon in subduction zones at @unimuenster.bsky.social🇩🇪 in collaboration with the University of Perugia🇮🇹. More info here stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/7...

It's also really hard to take his departing speech seriously. Warning unironically of culture wars and an era of populism... Like Bruz, you did this too.

The lack of self-awareness is ridiculous. I respect him and his service greatly, but that speech was a piss-take. He played that game too. 🙄

Anyway. If you agree or not, I am happy to have this discussion. I think it is important that we reflect on our place in society.

Obviously, I was triggered by something being published but I am not going to talk specifically about that. This issue clearly goes beyond that because we keep doing it.

I know it won't stop just bcoz I have a whinge on social media, but I can't help thinking:

All of this harm it is at the hand of poor-research planning & academic ego trips, usually by professors, rooted in mistrust.

It's just really sad to think what we could do truly trusting & working together.

The worst part of this all is that we even say in the paper we've seen those resources but we wanted to make our own for *reasons*.

It's ridiculous wasteful. It steals opportunity.

It fails the pub test, it fails the vibe check, it fails on every metric and it fails us all.

They view me travelling around the world to collect, or analyse, or talk about rocks (ones we can't even mine!?) as money that could be better spent.

When we initiate studies that partly or fully duplicate other resources, we prove we are disconnected. It's not "our" money after all.

This waste and harm only exemplifies that.

Regardless of politics, I think any researcher who doesn't reflect on the social disconnect and dismay that the wider society has toward the academic community is fooling themselves. My non-academic family views what I do as a luxury.

I think if you made it to this point you know my answer. It's not.

My answer is informed by the fact that coming from #Australia where funding is going backwards and Earth Sciences is being wiped out, we struggle to make our case that we are reflective, self-aware, collaborative, & responsible.

Well here is the real kick in the guts!

Funding is finite. Time is finite. Effort is finite. Everytime one of these duplicated resources comes to life they provide short-term benefit but long-term they steal finite resources from the entire community.

Is it worth it?

These teams do that work, logically coming at the expense of advancing the primary infrastructure they've built and are (poorly) funded for.

We can't even track the cost or wasted potential here, because it's not spoken about.

So what though?! Who cares about this team and the PhD student.

The harm here is that these teams aren't funded well enough to do the essential work needed to just maintain their resources, let alone improve them.

Then they get asked to spend time & money they don't have to save a resource that partly or fully duplicates work they might have originated.

These all sound horrible!!! There must be a better way?!

There is! There are large teams of people who take on these resources and take care of them. Solves the problem, right?

Well no.

The initial waste is still there. On top of that these teams develop & maintain their own resources too.

There are indeed!

You can have lots of individual versions (usually outdated) independently advanced by lots of people. They aren't centrally maintained; in the worst case diverging in structure and consistency.

Does that affect the science?

(probably if we aren't careful, but I'm not sure)

Well the first option is that the resource gets forgotten or superseded by another groups efforts to replace or advance on what is forgotten. Which means, you guessed it, more work to mostly DUPLICATE something that exists or existed.

Surely there are other options?

Of course they get a publication that will serve their career well, but if they leave or don't maintain the resource then within a few years the resource is stranded.

These are NOT trivial time investments.

Wasted time. Wasted money. Wasted opportunity.

What happens next?

There is A LOT of harm.

Firstly, this warrant duplication thinly disguised as intellectual advancement. It is usually lead by a PhD student at the hand of a supervisor to serve their niche. Meaning despite a similar resource existing the PhD student has their time wasted for almost nothing.

The times they don't it is usually because of either:

1) future planning (think Wessel and GMT; Hoffman/Langmuir with GEOROC/PetDB); or

2) they get rescued by other teams (discussed here: doi.org/10.1016/j.gc... & doi.org/10.1016/B978...)

What's the harm you might ask?