An analysis of the quality of experimental design and reliability of results in tribology research

In recent years several high profile projects have questioned the repeatability and validity of scientific research in the fields of psychology and medicine. In general, these studies have shown or estimated that less than 50% of published research findings are true or replicable even when no breaches of ethics are made. This high percentage stems from widespread poor study design; either through the use of underpowered studies or designs that allow the introduction of bias into the results. In this work, we have aimed to assess, for the first time, the prevalence of good study design in the field of tribology. A set of simple criteria for factors such as randomisation, blinding, use of control and repeated tests has been made. These criteria have been used in a mass review of the output of five highly regarded tribology journals for the year 2017. In total 379 papers were reviewed by 26 reviewers, 28% of the total output of the journals selected for 2017. Our results show that the prevalence of these simple aspects of study design is poor. Out of 290 experimental studies, 2.2% used any form of blinding, 3.2% used randomisation of either the tests or the test samples, while none randomised both. 30% repeated experiments 3 or more times and 86% of those who repeated tests used single batches of test materials. 4.4% completed statistical tests on their data. Due to the low prevalence of repeated tests and statistical analysis it is impossible to give a realistic indication of the percentage of the published works that are likely to be false positives, however these results compare poorly to other more well studied fields. Finally, recommendations for improved study design for researchers and group design for research group leaders are given

Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?

Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance

Assessment of grid-based whole-rock delta D surveys in exploration: Boulder County epithermal tungsten deposit, Colorado

Important epithermal tungsten mineralization in the Boulder County district is mainly hosted by quartz-ferberite (FeWO4) veins. Isotopic studies based on an extensive grid (deltaD) and individual samples of wall-rock alteration and mineralization (deltaD, deltaO) have demonstrated the dominance of meteoric fluids during alteration processes. However, the involvement of magmatic fluids during the deposition of the ferberite veins cannot be ruled out. The fluids responsible for alteration exchanged with the country rocks to produce a large deltaD anomaly but no concomitant delta O-18 anomaly, indicating that water/rock ratios were small. The deltaD anomaly coincides closely with those produced by H2O+ and Rb/Sz used as a proxy for hydrothermal alteration, but does not correlate closely with either lithochemical W anomalies or areas of greatest W production. It is concluded that the fluids responsible for district-wide hydrothermal alteration are distinct from those that produced the W mineralization and that ED anomalies, while a sensitive technique for highlighting areas of significant fluid-rock interact ion, must be used with caution for identifying drilling targets. The study has provided an estimate of the stable isotope composition of early Tertiary meteoric water in the Front Range (ca. deltaD = -140%, deltaO = 18.7%)