(no subject)

[wolffyluna]

Some observations:

The more 'basic' a fact is, the more proportionally difficult it is to find a peer reviewed citation for it.

Signed, Someone who definitely didn't have to expend way more effort than she should have to find a source for how old the Earth is.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Really??? Like, that's not exactly something you can derive from commonly accepted facts on your own... or is it?

[wolffyluna]

It's not. The problem is that most of the recent work has been trying to increase the precision of the age of the Earth, or trying to work out how old the continental crusts are, and it can kind of drown out older things like 'the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old'. Also, sometimes people don't cite that claim, so you can't use them as a step on the hunt to find the original citation.

(Also, while this doesn't happen with the age of the Earth, you do get things where because people want to find and write about Cool Things, it can be hard to find out things like "what is the oldest shelly fossil we all agree is a shelly fossil?" because everyone wants to say the thing they found is the oldest shelly fossil and they are not always right.)

[yvannairie]

That sounds like a potentially very fun accidental research hole to fall through but man :'DD That's a thing that probably needs to be cited quite often, so it's weird there isn't a standard reference you can use for it.