Thread by @CriticalStress_

Feeling vindicated by a new paper on the Lusi mud volcano disaster in Marine & Petroleum Geology.

This is not your usual geoscience paper! The author is a Professor of English – and you do not often see geoscience papers that are written like this one!

Thread…

First, a bit of history.

Lusi, or Lumpur Sidoarjo, is a unique disaster that I have covered quite a lot, most recently as part of the #MudVolcanoOfTheDay series here:

https://twitter.com/criticalstress_/status/1133713553528016896?s=21

Debate on how this disaster was triggered is ongoing, & basically falls into two camps. One side argues the disaster resulted from an accident in the adjacent gas exploration well. The other camp argues Lusi was triggered by a big quake that struck 250km away, 2 days earlier.

For the record, I’ve studied the Lusi disaster for about 13 years.

Publications by colleagues and I have exhaustively studied both the quake and drilling trigger mechanisms and we suggest the evidence strongly supports a drilling trigger.

But, the debate goes back and forth, with generally the same groups publishing opposing papers each few years.

The latest round came last year. When Marine and Petroleum Geology published a special issue on Lusi.

This was an unusual special issue for many reasons. Such as only allowing papers from the earthquake trigger camp, all papers having the same author - who was originally also listed as the issue editor (until the journal later declared there was no issue editor). Anyway....

In particular, this special issue contained a major review paper on the triggering debate authored by Stephen Miller and Adriano Mazzini (M&M), the two academics most vocally advocating the earthquake trigger idea.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

M&M didn’t hold back in their paper! It made open attacks & numerous serious (and unfounded) allegations against myself & my colleagues. Elsevier even consulted lawyers to see if it constituted libel, & took the unusual step of forcing changes to the accepted pre-print version.

Colleagues and I wrote a comment to the M&M paper. Whilst we all felt the study was unprofessional, we held our tongue on that aspect, and made sure our comment tackled just the scientific claims.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

We focused on presenting the data and statements from original sources (like daily drilling reports) that contradicted the key (false) claims and statements made by M&M.

However, that M&M paper and our reply, To people outside the debate, looks like the ‘same old folks’ squabbling.

There has not really been anyone independent come in, look over the evidence and arguments of both sides, and publish their thoughts and views in a peer reviewed medium.

Until now…

This comment by Phillip Drake is a unique independent ‘outsiders’ perspective on the arguments made by M&M, and also our comment to the M&M paper.

In short, He is highly critical of the approach taken by M&M...

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

“inaccuracies and misrepresentations”, “erroneous”, “unprofessional”, “deceptive rhetoric”, “misleading and unsubstantiated claims”.

These are not common comments seen in geology papers – and that is just the abstract!

On page 4, Drake explains why he focuses his commentary on the M&M study, and is not critical of our work, by saying “because the latter have not included misinformation, personal attacks, and rumors in their publication”.

Wow...

The attacks in the paper by M&M caused me large amounts of stress and anxiety.

We made every effort to not hit back with the same rhetoric and tactics in our comment, but felt aggrieved that Elsevier let M&M’s paper be published.

#WorldMentalHealthDay

Whilst the comment is just by one person, it conforms with the many supportive informal comments I got from colleagues when the M&M study first came out.

It’s reassuring to know that others felt the attacks by M&M (happily published by Elsevier) were not appropriate.

Academia has more than enough toxicity. It’s one reason why I left academia.

So, it’s nice, and rare, to have some external vindication!

However, whilst those attacks were unpleasant, I’m white, middle-aged & male. So, those attacks are absolutely trivial compared to what other academics experience daily.

And they are also nothing compared to the decade of suffering experienced by the victims of the Lusi tragedy.