Turekian reflections

Statistical inference and reproducibility in geobiology

“…The joke had its roots in a seminar Dr. Turekian gave far earlier in his career, where the entire talk focused on the first data point of a novel measurement (a hard‐won data point, but only one nonetheless). When an apparently exasperated audience member pointed this out, Turekian reportedly replied “well it's one more than anyone else has!” (Thiemens, Davis, Grossman, & Colman, ). This anecdote raises two important points about our field: First, establishing new analytical techniques is laborious, expensive, and requires considerable vision and skill, and second, at the nascent stages of any new record, the number of observations will be small.…”