...and this is why science works

Scientists are not afraid to be wrong - this is an important distinction between this profession and many others. Some time may be lost going down paths whose results are maybe not as "exciting" as you wish they were. However, the beauty of science is that even a "less exciting" story is still... in the end... a story, which leads to a better understanding for those involved.




After discussing my proposed project in Israel months ago with my collaborators, we all thought it was a good idea to take a small sample-subset, analyze it in advance for barium (Ba) concentrations (which are a pretty good indicator of whether or not isotopic fractionation will occur), and then get some preliminary Ba-isotope data.

From this data subset, we hypothesized that we would see trends similar to other published findings in open ocean settings (such as this one here from Horner et al., 2015):
 

However, the lines came out a lot flatter than initially hypothesized with little surface variability. There are a few different reasons why this might be:
1) the Gulf of Eilat is just so oligotrophic that there is very little barite (BaSO4) formation occurring, which is what we generally think to be the primary driver of Ba fractionation in the surface ocean
2) the barite formation is confined to a much shallower surface zone (<200m), so increased depth resolution in the upper 200m is needed to elucidate the signature
3) the Gulf of Eilat's Ba chemistry may just be so driven by terrigenous dust inputs that the barite effect is really small and requires further work to deconvolve it from the dust

Either way, my initial hypothesis for how Ba isotopes would function in the Gulf of Eilat is so far not supported. Now it's time to determine what else is needed to truly reject the hypothesis, adjust the experimental parameters for alternative hypotheses, and evaluate their efficacy.

This is why I love science - its ability to change with new information.