Open AccessThe Great (Toilet) Paper Chase: Our Study of the 1979 San Francisco Bay Sewage Spill (As Motivated by Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News)
Author(s) -
Oremland Ronald S.,
Cloern James E.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
perspectives of earth and space scientists
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2637-6989
DOI - 10.1029/2020cn000132
Subject(s) - toilet , evening , friendship , event (particle physics) , bay , sociology , operations research , history , environmental ethics , psychology , engineering , social science , archaeology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , astronomy , waste management
Earth system science is boundless. There are no limits to the kinds of questions, problems, mysteries, or paradoxes that motivate our research and shape its direction. So how do we decide which directions to take, which questions to answer, what problems to solve? Sometimes our research is motivated by an unanticipated event requiring a degree of stochastic interpretive crystal ball gazing. Last year we ended our careers of more than four decades as life scientists at the USGS in Menlo Park, CA. We find ourselves in a state of reflection and want to share a story about a stochastic event that brought us together as collaborators, taught us essential lessons of life as research scientists, and seeded a friendship that endures.