The sound of hard, the scent of cold

[Dennis Piechota]

In my previous post I celebrated how conservators use any clue, any data, any personal experience to better understand and preserve the uniqueness of the object before them. So I read with some suspicion any efforts to prioritize or limit data sources through discussions of 'quality of evidence'. 

​It can be a slippery slope towards the 'silo-ing' we see in modern science and engineering. 

Those mature fields show that it is too easy to conflate a stricter data acquisition regimen with improved rigor. 

One should 

promote innovative ways to incorporate any and all sources into analyses before one evaluates quality of evidence.

A case in point is presented by Epidemiology: Basic Ideas Applied to Museum Collections. T

he authors report on an expert discussion of how the reasoning characteristic of clinical and classical epidemiology can be imported into conservation to improve the 'quality of evidence' we use in the preservation of collections. Improved evidence quality from limited types of data sets does not necessarily lead to stronger inferences.

Also while borrowing new ways of thinking can lead to conceptual advances that are essential to the future development of our still young field we must fully discuss the assumptions and limitations of borrowed concepts before advancing to their data collection protocols. Here for example we should be mindful that we are comparing (inanimate) collection health with the public health of human populations. Among the discussants I did not see any representatives from living collection repositories such as zoos or aquariums, logical venues for transitioning this concept to inanimate collections. I came away wondering if the article might itself be prey to

​an

 'overconfidence bias' (p. 14).

Cited:

Epidemiology: Basic Ideas Applied to Museum Collections:

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A Report from an Experts Meeting

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Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, June 15–16, 2015

​ by ​

Jim Druzik and Foekje Boersma

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Dennis

Dennis Piechota

Archaeological Conservator

Fiske Center for Archaeological Research
UMass Boston
Office: 617-287-6829

ALTCONS Group Admin

an Alternative Conservation Discussion