5 ms·

It's not coddling as much as professional courtesy. Mistakes are often brought up at conferences and in peer review, but most scientists within a specific rese

It's not coddling as much as professional courtesy. Mistakes are often brought up at conferences and in peer review, but most scientists within a specific research area try to be on good terms with one another and don't see value in publicly shaming colleagues for their mistakes.

wyager 10y ago
There are two options here: Use a bot to find tons of mistakes automatically and risk coming across as rude. Or Let social trivialities dominate scientific discourse and let most of those mistakes go unchecked forever because there's no feasible way to "politely" address hundreds of authors who made mistakes and keep checking back to make sure they actually fixed the mistake. The former is clearly the preferable choice. Some individual scientists will suffer for it, but the scientific community as a whole will benefit greatly.
- danharaj 10y ago
  Science being a social activity, I think you have to justify the presumption that we are talking about social trivialities here.
  - wyager 10y ago
    >Science being a social activity Hoo boy. Research might be a social activity, but science is the application of probabilistic reasoning to evidence collection. Science isn't a "social activity" any more than topology is. Any social complications are entirely incidental.
    - elbear 10y ago
      Yes, but that probabilistic reasoning is applied by humans with feelings which sometimes get in the way of their reason. Wanting to have those feelings simply go away is unrealistic.
      - wyager 10y ago
        What does that have to do with calling out papers for being incorrect?
        elbear 10y ago
        Sorry for replying so late. Your findings have to be accepted by the others. If they're not accepted it's like they don't exist. Think of all the great theories that didn't take off at first, because nobody accepted them (for various reasons). When you attack someone, they are less likely to listen to you, even if you are offering valuable feedback. They care about saving face, so they will focus on defending themselves. I realize this can be frustrating, because it means truth doesn't always prevail. However, it's what we have to work with, our emotional brains.
- dahart 10y ago
  There is a third option that's better than either one you proposed. Get people writing new papers to use statcheck before they publish. The only rudeness here was an avoidable choice - publishing statcheck's results on a huge set of already published papers. The statcheck authors chose to do that for exposure, they even said so, it was not for posterity or the scientific well being of the community. I don't personally think what they did was wrong, I don't particularly care that some people felt it was rude. But the fact of the matter is that the rude part was completely avoidable.
  - wyager 10y ago
    And what happens when a new fact-checking algorithm comes out? What I said in my comment.
    - dahart 10y ago
      Only if they're also rude about it and run it on a huge set of old papers, and do a big PR campaign to get attention. Otherwise, the only thing that happens is papers quietly get better and everyone on all sides is happy.
      - int_19h 10y ago
        So they shouldn't run it on the old papers, so as to not offend anyone's sensibilities? Do we just declare said papers completely useless then? Or do they keep getting cited by new papers, and used to guide policy? If the latter, then not vetting them using the newer and better methodology would be unethical.
        dahart 10y ago
        That would be jumping to a conclusion I didn't state. I think I already address this comment above, I don't think what they did was wrong, and I don't care if people were offended. But, since you brought it up - old papers are already dead, they cannot be fixed. They can only be referenced as prior work, or retracted in extreme cases. We're not talking about extreme cases here. Statcheck can only help new papers, it cannot help old papers. Running it on old papers was done as a publicity stunt for statcheck, and nothing more. The authors said so.

wyager 10y ago

There are two options here: Use a bot to find tons of mistakes automatically and risk coming across as rude. Or Let social trivialities dominate scientific discourse and let most of those mistakes go unchecked forever because there's no feasible way to "politely" address hundreds of authors who made mistakes and keep checking back to make sure they actually fixed the mistake. The former is clearly the preferable choice. Some individual scientists will suffer for it, but the scientific community as a whole will benefit greatly.

danharaj 10y ago
Science being a social activity, I think you have to justify the presumption that we are talking about social trivialities here.
- wyager 10y ago
  >Science being a social activity Hoo boy. Research might be a social activity, but science is the application of probabilistic reasoning to evidence collection. Science isn't a "social activity" any more than topology is. Any social complications are entirely incidental.
  - elbear 10y ago
    Yes, but that probabilistic reasoning is applied by humans with feelings which sometimes get in the way of their reason. Wanting to have those feelings simply go away is unrealistic.
    - wyager 10y ago
      What does that have to do with calling out papers for being incorrect?
      - elbear 10y ago
        Sorry for replying so late. Your findings have to be accepted by the others. If they're not accepted it's like they don't exist. Think of all the great theories that didn't take off at first, because nobody accepted them (for various reasons). When you attack someone, they are less likely to listen to you, even if you are offering valuable feedback. They care about saving face, so they will focus on defending themselves. I realize this can be frustrating, because it means truth doesn't always prevail. However, it's what we have to work with, our emotional brains.
dahart 10y ago
There is a third option that's better than either one you proposed. Get people writing new papers to use statcheck before they publish. The only rudeness here was an avoidable choice - publishing statcheck's results on a huge set of already published papers. The statcheck authors chose to do that for exposure, they even said so, it was not for posterity or the scientific well being of the community. I don't personally think what they did was wrong, I don't particularly care that some people felt it was rude. But the fact of the matter is that the rude part was completely avoidable.
- wyager 10y ago
  And what happens when a new fact-checking algorithm comes out? What I said in my comment.
  - dahart 10y ago
    Only if they're also rude about it and run it on a huge set of old papers, and do a big PR campaign to get attention. Otherwise, the only thing that happens is papers quietly get better and everyone on all sides is happy.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      So they shouldn't run it on the old papers, so as to not offend anyone's sensibilities? Do we just declare said papers completely useless then? Or do they keep getting cited by new papers, and used to guide policy? If the latter, then not vetting them using the newer and better methodology would be unethical.
      - dahart 10y ago
        That would be jumping to a conclusion I didn't state. I think I already address this comment above, I don't think what they did was wrong, and I don't care if people were offended. But, since you brought it up - old papers are already dead, they cannot be fixed. They can only be referenced as prior work, or retracted in extreme cases. We're not talking about extreme cases here. Statcheck can only help new papers, it cannot help old papers. Running it on old papers was done as a publicity stunt for statcheck, and nothing more. The authors said so.