What if our world were free of geostatistics

A world free of surreal geostatistics is long past due. Geostatistics was called a new science in the 1960s but it turned out to be an insidious scientific fraud. Real statistics would have nipped the infamous Bre-X fraud in the bud but CIM and IAMG ruled in favor of surreal geostatistics in the early 1990s. Matheron’s so-called new science of geostatistics did make a mess of the study of climate change. That’s why our world ought to get rid of surreal geostatistics. And fast! Come frost bites or sun burns!
Thanks to all those who read my blogs. More than two million have done so. But I got fewer than ten comments. So, what’s the matter? Is it the way I write? All I do is put in plain words why geostatistics is a scientific fraud. Here’s what I have been writing for more than twenty years. Each weighted average has its own variance. Could I have put it any other way? It is a truism in real statistics. The Central Limit Theorem is bound to stand the test of time. Why then was the variance of the weighted average done away with in Matheron's novel science? It was G Matheron in the early 1960s who called the weighted average "a kriged estimate" to honor D G Krige. Matheron never derived the variance of his own kriged estimate. Neither did any of his docile disciples.
What happened in the 1970s defies common sense and sound science. Was it Matheron himself or one of his disciples who thought that every one set of kriged estimates ought to have its own kriging variance? Stanford’s Journel was Matheron’s most astute student. He figured out that an infinite set of kriged estimates gives a zero kriging variance. Wow! Here’s what he taught Stanford's neophytes in a nutshell. Assume spatial dependence between measured values in ordered sets, interpolate by kriging, and smooth a little but not a lot. Stanford’s finest geostatistical mind never took to testing for spatial dependence, or to counting degrees of freedom.
Some readers may want to study the odd opus on geostatistics. I suggest a paper on kriging small blocks. It was put together by genuine geostatisticians from the Centre de Géostatistique in France. Professor Dr Margaret Armstrong and Normand Champigny were the first scholars who cautioned against reckless over-smoothing by careless mine planners.

I messed up my own copy of Armstrong and Champigny’s A Study on Kriging Small Blocks. The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum has not yet posted this study on its website. It would have passed David’s review at CIM Bulletin with flying colors. Elsevier in 1988 published Professor Dr Michel David’s 1988 Handbook of Applied Advanced Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation. It’s by far the worst textbook I’ve ever read. Yet, universities all over the world have added this work of geostatistical fiction to their libraries.
It was early in October 1989 when Precision Estimates for Ore Reserves ended up on David’s desk. That's when we found out that geostatistical peer review is a shamelessly self-serving sham. Too many geoscientists do not know that measured values do give degrees of freedom, and that functionally dependent values (calculated values!) do have variances. If the difference between calculated and measured is a bit of a mystery, buy Moroney’s Facts from Figures, read Abuse of Statistics, or take Statistics 101.
So, who’s to blame for the rise of Matheron’s new science of surreal geostatistics? What comes to mind first and most of all is the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum and its APCOM appendix. The International Association for Mathematical Geosciences and a score of institutions of higher learning such as McGill, Stanford, UBC, and scores of others, are close seconds.
Thank goodness I still have plenty of geostats and stats stuff to write about. Every night I fall sleep in my straight-thoughts jacket and figure out what to do next. Tonight it’s full moon in Vancouver. I feel really good about real statistics!