Recent advances in paleoclimatology and the growing digital availability of large historical datasets on human activity have created new opportunities to investigate long‐term interactions between climate and society. However, noncritical use of historical datasets can create pitfalls, resulting in misleading findings that may become entrenched as accepted knowledge. We demonstrate pitfalls in the content, use and interpretation of historical datasets in research into climate and society interaction through a systematic review of recent studies on the link between climate and (a) conflict incidence, (b) plague outbreaks and (c) agricultural productivity changes. We propose three sets of interventions to overcome these pitfalls, which involve a more critical and multidisciplinary collection and construction of historical datasets, increased specificity and transparency about uncertainty or biases, and replacing inductive with deductive approaches to causality. This will improve the validity and robustness of interpretations on the long‐term relationship between climate and society.

中文翻译：

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长期视角下的气候和社会：使用历史数据集的机遇和陷阱。

古气候学的最新进展以及人类活动大型历史数据集的数字可用性不断增长，为研究气候与社会之间的长期相互作用创造了新的机会。然而，非批判性地使用历史数据集可能会产生陷阱，导致误导性的发现，这些发现可能会成为公认的知识。我们通过系统回顾最近有关气候与（a）冲突发生率、（b）瘟疫爆发和（c）农业生产力之间联系的研究，展示了气候与社会相互作用研究中历史数据集的内容、使用和解释方面的陷阱变化。我们提出了三组干预措施来克服这些陷阱，其中包括对历史数据集进行更关键和跨学科的收集和构建，增加不确定性或偏见的特异性和透明度，以及用演绎因果关系的方法取代归纳法。这将提高对气候与社会之间长期关系的解释的有效性和稳健性。