Notes from the field: Failures

I organized/managed/collected data over three field seasons in New Zealand.

Now, as a big chunk of my work has shifted to theory, the time I spent in the field has made me appreciate how hard it is to collect data.

And although none of the NiB contributors are in the field this summer, we have all experienced the joys and woes of field work.

So it seems appropriate that as the summer (and many people’s field seasons) winds down that I share the most epic twitter hashtag of the summer.

Carrie Cizauskas:
When your drugged zebra finds the ONE tree on the Namibian plains, which also has a neck-height fork #fieldworkfail

Tony Gamble:
That cool spider you took photos of then released was an undescribed species #fieldworkfail

Kate Jones
Getting the @ZSLScience truck stuck in a river in the middle of Mongolia whilst searching for bats #fieldworkfail

Dr. Alistair Dove
Skillfully applied thousand dollar satellite tag to manta ray. The same manta ray I tagged yesterday #fieldworkfail

TSV ‏
Group leader read a map wrong. We ended up a mile into an active USAF target range. Left very quickly. #FieldWorkFail

Andrew Hendry ‏
Student fishing for guppies in Trinidad just inches from a Fer de Lance. NOT STAGED.

Laurie Santos
2007: “We can swim there. There are *never* jellyfish.” You can’t swim there. There are many jellyfish #fieldworkfail

3 comments on “Notes from the field: Failures”

Peter says:

When was the black-and-white cabin photo taken, because it surely wasn’t 2008 (two years after the colour photo labelled as 2006)?

cej9f says:

21 August 2015 at 13:46

I don’t think it was a color vs. black and white photo, but rather a sunny vs. rainy day situation. I thought I had successful included captions for each one, but that one must have slipped my notice. Sorry for the confusion!