Studying Avalanches A Little Too Closely

Makarand writes "ABC News has an interesting article about a Professor in Montana State University who is trying to perfect avalanche prediction techniques. He studies avalanches using the 'direct method,' i.e. he sets off an avalanche and puts himself right ahead of it so that he gets buried alive, a routine he has been doing for 20 years now. His goal is to be able to use data about the climate, mountain topography and snow microstructure in a model to forecast if we are prone to avalanche conditions."

Comments

Spam

[fredrikj]

he sets off an avalanche and puts himself right ahead of it so that he gets buried alive

Sounds like studying spam by giving out your e-mail address in an EFNet warez channel...

Or submitting a story with a link to the site you run off your DSL connection to Slashdot, and then trying to surf the 'net...

Rule out the invariant

[Hubert_Shrump]

As a serious scientist, I'm worried that having the same person buried again and again will skew the results of this study.

I have a short list here that will help fix this otherwise wonderful experiment.