Data from: On formation-based sampling proxies and why they should not be used to correct the fossil record

The fossil record is a unique resource on the history of life, but it is well known to be incomplete. In a series of high-profile papers, a residual modelling technique has been applied to correct the raw palaeodiversity signal for this bias and incompleteness, and the claim is made that the processed time series are more accurate than the raw data. We apply empirical and simulation approaches to test for correlation and directionality of any relationships between rock and fossil data. The empirical data comprise samples of the global fossil record through the Phanerozoic, and we use simulations to assess whether randomly sampled subsets of modelled data can be improved by application of the residual modelling technique. Our results show that using formation counts as a sampling proxy to correct the fossil record via residual modelling is ill founded. The supposedly independent model of sampling is information-redundant with respect to the raw palaeodiversity data it seeks to correct, and so the outputs are generally likely to be further from the truth than the raw data. We recommend that students of palaeodiversity cease to use residual modelling estimates based on formation counts, and suggest that results from a substantial number of papers published in the past ten years require re-evaluation.

化石记录是探究生命演化历史的独有资源，但学界公认其并不完整。在一系列高影响力研究论文中，已有研究者采用残差建模（residual modelling）技术，针对化石记录的偏差与缺失问题对原始古生物多样性信号进行校正，并声称经处理后的时间序列相较原始数据具备更高准确性。本研究采用实证与模拟两种方法，检验岩石数据与化石数据间各类关联的相关性与方向性。本研究的实证数据涵盖显生宙（Phanerozoic）全球化石记录的采样样本，同时通过模拟实验评估：对建模数据的随机采样子集应用残差建模技术，是否能够提升其数据质量。本研究结果显示，通过残差建模技术以地层单元数量作为采样替代指标来校正化石记录，其立论基础并不成立。该研究预设的独立采样模型，与其试图校正的原始古生物多样性数据存在信息冗余，因此经其处理得到的输出结果，通常反而会比原始数据更偏离真实情况。我们建议古生物多样性领域的研究者停止使用基于地层单元数量的残差建模估计结果，并提出：过去十年间发表的大量相关论文所得到的研究结论，亟需重新评估。