Using non-sequiturs to further an argument is a common ruse, often just an un-harmful way of making a point that the listener catches. “Pass the salt, please.” Salt spills from the hand of the recipient. “See what you made me do,” the recipient says. Logically, we might say that the salt-passer was part of the circumstance, but not the direct cause, which was the clumsiness of the recipient. That one act follows another does not definitively tie the two in a cause-effect relationship. But the logical fallacy is common, and sometimes it is used even by those who should know better.
So, in this era of jumping to conclusions based on a series of non sequiturs, should we be surprised that even at the supposedly “highest” levels of academia such fallacies abound? Take the University of Oxford as an example of a supposed high level of academia. It’s Oxford, right? Hey, those guys and gals are really smart. It’s Oxford. Tweed and pipes and disheveled hair flopping over wire-rimmed glasses. Oxford. And that’s where we can find a report that is ostensibly about our lack of knowledge but where we can find conclusions drawn from it.
An online report * about our lack of information on deep-sea life posted in August, 2017, suggests that the life of the deep sea is in grave danger from human activities. Deep sea.** Just what does that mean, and how are you affecting it? Deep means really deep. If not the Mariana Trench deep, which lies farther below sea level than Mt. Everest stands above it, the deep ocean floor is still more than a couple miles (or a few km) under water. It’s the unseen area that covers more than half Earth’s surface. And there’s life down there, unknown life and a few species that people in deep-diving submarines and cameras on autonomous underwater vehicles have revealed. So, here comes the non-sequitur: The report says that although we don’t know much about the life of the deep sea because we have only 77 population genetics studies about invertebrates living there, scientists at Oxford say we are negatively impacting that population (no mention of the vertebrates). Only one study, by the way, has been conducted on species that live deeper than 5,000 meters. The report does acknowledge that “life in the depths of the ocean remains a relative mystery.”
So, here’s Christopher Roterman, co-author of the report: “Today humans have an unprecedented ability to effect [sic.] the lives of creatures living in one of the most remote environments on earth—the deep sea.” From this, we get the following: “The effects [Whew! Finally, the correct word—who would have tied misuse of “effect” and “affect” to someone at Oxford?] of human activity, such as pollution, destructive trawl-fishing, deep sea mining and climate change, appear to be intensifying and increasingly affecting [Correct word] populations of seafloor invertebrates.” And then this: “As ecosystem engineers, corals are biodiversity hotspots….” Wait! Corals! Deep Sea? Yes, there are cold water corals, but there’s no catalog of widespread coral reef development in the deep sea. Studies of “deep” corals have been largely limited to places like the outer continental shelf near the Farallon Islands, hardly a place comparable to the really “deep” sea environment that lies in total darkness and temperatures at and even below freezing.
Main point: Apples and oranges, non-sequiturs, too. Is no place on the academic planet safe from twisted logic based on bad science and incomplete information? Do we live in a world where hypotheses about anything can be taken as realities about something? Is it possible that human activities are impacting organisms on the deep ocean floor? Yes. Do we know? No. Should we assume? Maybe. Are coral reefs being impacted currently? Yes. Do we know if human activities beyond stirring up polyp-choking and sunlight-blocking fine muds are causing a die-off? Not completely. Do we have definitive proof that the current demise of some corals is different in kind from coral die-offs over the course of hundreds of millions of years? No. Is it possible that some deep sea life is currently prospering by human activities? Yes. Seems that we are ready to find a cause where we are examining the circumstances and calling them a cause. And at Oxford! They probably have salt shakers with sea salt on the refectory tables.
“See what you made me do?” OR, more importantly in the context of an epidemic of online and media non sequiturs, "See what you made us believe?"
* http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-08-21-shocking-gaps-basic-knowledge-deep-sea-life-3
** Quick primer: Oceanographers divide the ocean into zones. Most people are probably familiar with the littoral zone because they can visit it when they go to the beach. Farther out and off large segments of continents are continental shelves with overlying neretic zone water not much more than about 200 meters or 600 feet deep. The shelves end at the shelf break, and there a steep continental slope leads through a bathyal zone to the ocean floor. Oceanographers classify the water of the “open” ocean as pelagic, with zones at increasing depths: epipelagic, the upper 200 meters, mesopelagic to about 1800 meters, bathypelagic to about 4000 meters, and the water over the ocean floor, the abyssopelagic, and down in the deep trenches, the hadal (from Hades) water zone.
So, in this era of jumping to conclusions based on a series of non sequiturs, should we be surprised that even at the supposedly “highest” levels of academia such fallacies abound? Take the University of Oxford as an example of a supposed high level of academia. It’s Oxford, right? Hey, those guys and gals are really smart. It’s Oxford. Tweed and pipes and disheveled hair flopping over wire-rimmed glasses. Oxford. And that’s where we can find a report that is ostensibly about our lack of knowledge but where we can find conclusions drawn from it.
An online report * about our lack of information on deep-sea life posted in August, 2017, suggests that the life of the deep sea is in grave danger from human activities. Deep sea.** Just what does that mean, and how are you affecting it? Deep means really deep. If not the Mariana Trench deep, which lies farther below sea level than Mt. Everest stands above it, the deep ocean floor is still more than a couple miles (or a few km) under water. It’s the unseen area that covers more than half Earth’s surface. And there’s life down there, unknown life and a few species that people in deep-diving submarines and cameras on autonomous underwater vehicles have revealed. So, here comes the non-sequitur: The report says that although we don’t know much about the life of the deep sea because we have only 77 population genetics studies about invertebrates living there, scientists at Oxford say we are negatively impacting that population (no mention of the vertebrates). Only one study, by the way, has been conducted on species that live deeper than 5,000 meters. The report does acknowledge that “life in the depths of the ocean remains a relative mystery.”
So, here’s Christopher Roterman, co-author of the report: “Today humans have an unprecedented ability to effect [sic.] the lives of creatures living in one of the most remote environments on earth—the deep sea.” From this, we get the following: “The effects [Whew! Finally, the correct word—who would have tied misuse of “effect” and “affect” to someone at Oxford?] of human activity, such as pollution, destructive trawl-fishing, deep sea mining and climate change, appear to be intensifying and increasingly affecting [Correct word] populations of seafloor invertebrates.” And then this: “As ecosystem engineers, corals are biodiversity hotspots….” Wait! Corals! Deep Sea? Yes, there are cold water corals, but there’s no catalog of widespread coral reef development in the deep sea. Studies of “deep” corals have been largely limited to places like the outer continental shelf near the Farallon Islands, hardly a place comparable to the really “deep” sea environment that lies in total darkness and temperatures at and even below freezing.
Main point: Apples and oranges, non-sequiturs, too. Is no place on the academic planet safe from twisted logic based on bad science and incomplete information? Do we live in a world where hypotheses about anything can be taken as realities about something? Is it possible that human activities are impacting organisms on the deep ocean floor? Yes. Do we know? No. Should we assume? Maybe. Are coral reefs being impacted currently? Yes. Do we know if human activities beyond stirring up polyp-choking and sunlight-blocking fine muds are causing a die-off? Not completely. Do we have definitive proof that the current demise of some corals is different in kind from coral die-offs over the course of hundreds of millions of years? No. Is it possible that some deep sea life is currently prospering by human activities? Yes. Seems that we are ready to find a cause where we are examining the circumstances and calling them a cause. And at Oxford! They probably have salt shakers with sea salt on the refectory tables.
“See what you made me do?” OR, more importantly in the context of an epidemic of online and media non sequiturs, "See what you made us believe?"
* http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-08-21-shocking-gaps-basic-knowledge-deep-sea-life-3
** Quick primer: Oceanographers divide the ocean into zones. Most people are probably familiar with the littoral zone because they can visit it when they go to the beach. Farther out and off large segments of continents are continental shelves with overlying neretic zone water not much more than about 200 meters or 600 feet deep. The shelves end at the shelf break, and there a steep continental slope leads through a bathyal zone to the ocean floor. Oceanographers classify the water of the “open” ocean as pelagic, with zones at increasing depths: epipelagic, the upper 200 meters, mesopelagic to about 1800 meters, bathypelagic to about 4000 meters, and the water over the ocean floor, the abyssopelagic, and down in the deep trenches, the hadal (from Hades) water zone.
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