The Data Trove That Could Help Find MH370

An interview with NOAA's Rick Lumpkin about his massive store of marine data

The Platonic ideal of the scientific method is a dance of hypothesis and data. Scientists use hyptheses to explain data, then collect more data to see if their hypothesis is correct. If it’s not, they tweak their hypothesis or form a new one one,  then collect more data to see if that fits. And on and on.

But it’s not always like that. Sometimes, scientists collect a huge trove of data not really knowing what’s going to be found in it. There are discoveries waiting to be made, if you just dive in and know what you’re looking for. For centuries, botanists and zoologists traveled the world, collecting specimens and catologuing the species they found, creating elaborate taxonomies of what seemed to be related to what. Only in recent years, with the advent of DNA analysis, can we finally understand now these things are really related to one another.

A similar massive store of data could help us figure out what happened to MH370.

In order to understand where MH370’s debris came from, we need to know how marine organisms like the goose barnacle Lepas anatifera typically grow under similar conditions to those that the debris likely experienced. To do that, we’re going to need to collect specimens from buoys managed by an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. The AOML maintains reams upon reams of data that it makes freely available to anyone, scientist or not, all over the world, to use in their research. Mostly it’s used for modelling ocean currents. What we’re interested in isn’t their old data, but real-time information on where each individual buoy is right now, so that we can try to intercept them. On today’s episode I talk with the program’s Acting Deputy Directory, Rick Lumpkin, who knows more about Global Drifters and what happens to them than just about anyone on the planet.

As I discuss in the video, keeping an eye on the drifter buoys is a fun but never-ending task, and if any of our listeners and viewers would like to join in that would be a huge help. If started a Substack Chat at the show page where you can join in if your interested. You can join in here.

At the end of the show, I talk about the hall of mirrors that our information ecosystem has become. Thanks to recently revealed details of a federal investigation, we now know that Russian military intelligence paid American social media personalities amounts of money to assert that Russian subterfuge in the 2016 election was just a hoax, and that discussion of it amounted to a conspiracy theory. In other words, Russia and its fellow travelers in the US engaged in a conspiracy to convince the public that talk of another conspiracy was just a conspiracy theory. Whew! During the show I read from an excellent article about the matter by David Corn in Mother Jones.