Stable but Wrong: An Inference Limit in Galactic Archaeology

TL;DR

This paper reveals that in Galactic archaeology, high-quality data can still produce systematically biased stellar ages, leading to stable but incorrect conclusions about the Milky Way's formation history.

Contribution

It demonstrates a fundamental inference limit where improved observational quality does not guarantee unbiased results in stellar age estimation.

Findings

Identifies a parameter space where age inferences are systematically offset by 0.5-1 Gyr.

Shows that small statistical uncertainties can mask significant systematic biases.

Highlights a stability issue in high-quality data leading to wrong scientific conclusions.

Abstract

Statistical inference in observational science typically relies on a fundamental assumption: as sample size increases and uncertainties decrease, the inferred results should converge to the true physical quantities. This assumption underpins the notion that big data lead to more reliable conclusions. In Galactic archaeology, stellar ages inferred from spectroscopic surveys are widely used to reconstruct the formation history of the Milky Way disk. The age metallicity relation (AMR) and its derived formation timescale are often regarded as key physical diagnostics of early disk evolution. This interpretation carries an implicit premise: that observational quality does not introduce systematic bias into age inference. Here we show that this premise may fail. Using a large sample of subgiant stars, we identify a region in the observational quality parameter space (signal-to-noise ratio and parallax precision) where the inferred formation timescale exhibits a systematic offset of 0.5-1 Gyr relative to an independent asteroseismic reference, while the statistical uncertainties remain small, thus producing a stable-but-wrong inference state.