Sitting under a tree, you feel the spark of an idea, and suddenly everything falls into place. The following days and tests confirm: you have made a magnificent discovery — so the classical story of scientific genius goes…
But science as a human activity is error-prone, and might be more adequately described as "trial and error". Handling mistakes and setbacks is therefore a key skill of scientists. Yet, we publish only those parts of our research that did work. That is also because a study may have better chances to be accepted for scientific publication if it confirms an accepted theory or reaches a positive result (publication bias). Conversely, the cases that fail in their test of a new method or idea often end up in a drawer (which is why publication bias is also sometimes called the "file drawer effect"). This is potentially a waste of time and resources within our community, as other scientists may set about testing the same idea or model setup without being aware of previous failed attempts.
Thus, we want to turn the story around, and ask you to share 1) those ideas that seemed magnificent but turned out not to be, and 2) the errors, bugs, and mistakes in your work that made the scientific road bumpy. In the spirit of open science and in an interdisciplinary setting, we want to bring the BUGS out of the drawers and into the spotlight. What ideas were torn down or did not work, and what concepts survived in the ashes or were robust despite errors?
We explicitly solicit Blunders, Unexpected Glitches, and Surprises (BUGS) from modeling and field or lab experiments and from all disciplines of the Geosciences.
In a friendly atmosphere, we will learn from each other’s mistakes, understand the impact of errors and abandoned paths on our work, give each other ideas for shared problems, and generate new insights for our science or scientific practice.
Here are some ideas for contributions that we would love to see:
- Ideas that sounded good at first, but turned out to not work.
- Results that presented themselves as great in the first place but turned out to be caused by a bug or measurement error.
- Errors and slip-ups that resulted in insights.
- Failed experiments and negative results.
- Obstacles and dead ends you found and would like to warn others about.
For inspiration, see last year's collection of BUGS - ranging from clay bricks to atmospheric temperature extremes - at https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/session/52496.