If it looks like an elephant...

 


This is a great cartoon from a forthcoming article by Marc Young that he's allowed me to share. It's funny, but actually expresses the most important concept in science, namely 'model efficiency'. 

Otherwise known as Occam's razor, it expresses the concept that the simplest explanation tends to be correct. In other words, the theory that can explain more observations with less input data should be preferred. In research papers this concept is often expressed in terms of 'parsimony'. My favourite way of expressing this principle is "If it looks like an elephant, walks like an elephant and sounds like an elephant, it's a ******* elephant".

The cartoon applies this concept to the Younger Dryas impact debate, but I use exactly the same principle in the latest revision of my 'Lunisolar' paper.

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