4 ms·

These sayings like "welcome to the real world", "there's a difference between theory and practice", thought-killers are just excuses for being lazy. Science is

by nonbel 8y ago

These sayings like "welcome to the real world", "there's a difference between theory and practice", thought-killers are just excuses for being lazy. Science is hard, really hard. People who think doing a good job is too hard should get out of science instead of polluting the literature with their statistically significant results or whatever. Unfortunately its been the opposite happening and the people who cant handle it have been training the new people how to get away with half-assing it. This has been going on for a long time now, at least since the 1940s in some areas...

timr 8y ago
There's a huge difference between "bad science", and "it doesn't live up to the average HN reader's belief of how science works". Maybe the parent's comment is harsh, but the sentiment is, IMO, correct. Science is a system, not a series of published recipes. Even the best, most-cited papers in scientific history, when taken in isolation, are often riddled with problems. No paper is perfect, but the process of science, over time, validates the papers that are worth validating. Experiments are rarely reproduced exactly, but rather, reproduced under a thousand different conditions, thus proving that the result is robust over time. I've often felt that these efforts to mass-reproduce scientific literature are misguided. Anyone who has worked in a lab knows that most papers are difficult to reproduce for any number of reasons, and that even if you have a perfect description of materials and methods, plenty of correct and valid results are difficult to reproduce, just because lab work is hard and messy. It's not fair to fling accusations of impropriety simply because an experiment doesn't work in your hands.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Science is a system, not a series of published recipe Peer review and reproduction are essential components of a scientific system. If a paper does not provide—it its main text or supplements—the necessary detail to enable reproduction, it is not a scientific paper but a press release. > plenty of correct and valid results are difficult to reproduce There is lots of good science in figuring out why certain results reproduce in certain circumstances and not in others. With insufficient methodological detail, this exploration is rendered impossible.
  - timr 8y ago
    "If a paper does not provide—it its main text or supplements—the necessary detail to enable reproduction, it is not a scientific paper but a press release." No. That's ridiculous. When a paper doesn't have all of the necessary details to reproduce, then scientists contact the authors, and try to get those details. In nearly all cases, the details are resolved without incident. If the omissions are sufficiently egregious, errata are issued. If they're really, really bad, papers are withdrawn. If a paper is so old that the original authors are long gone, you look for a citation history, and see who else reproduced the work over the years. Papers that were never reproduced are unlikely to be fruitful. Mistakes happen and details get omitted, but thankfully, we have lots of ways of working around those mistakes. Nobody -- except for armchair scientists -- assumes that scientific knowledge is communicated exclusively by the methods sections of publications.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > In nearly all cases, the details are resolved without incident This article rebuts your assertion. In most of the cases, the details were not resolved despite great effort and expense. > armchair scientists I’m not a scientist, but I advise (without compensation) a grant-writing board. But okay.
      - timr 8y ago
        "This article rebuts your assertion. In most of the cases, the details were not resolved despite great effort and expense." No, you're just misinterpreting it. They stopped pursuing a number of papers after they discovered they couldn't possibly reproduce them all with their tiny budget. Nobody said it was cheap to reproduce science, just that it's possible. "I’m not a scientist, but I advise (without compensation) a grant-writing board. But okay." It sounds like you're unqualified to be doing that job, then.
- rlkf 8y ago
  > Science is a system Indeed; journals are repos, authors are committers, reviews are pull requests. But the unit tests are insufficient, and literature references don't quite make it as a form of continuous integration.
starpilot 8y ago
HN doesn't understand non-deterministic systems. They're just JavaScript programmers.
- anonuser123456 8y ago
  I've met plenty of JavaScript programmers that were experts at building non-deterministic systems.
rjkennedy98 8y ago
Many Big Pharma companies literally have their PR department run their clinical trial studies. If someone is surprised that a paper sounds like a press release they have a lot to learn how "science" works today.
- nonbel 8y ago
  >"Many Big Pharma companies literally have their PR department run their clinical trial studies. If someone is surprised that a paper sounds like a press release they have a lot to learn how "science" works today." I call it biomedical research rather than honor it with the name "science".

by nonbel 8y ago

timr 8y ago

There's a huge difference between "bad science", and "it doesn't live up to the average HN reader's belief of how science works". Maybe the parent's comment is harsh, but the sentiment is, IMO, correct. Science is a system, not a series of published recipes. Even the best, most-cited papers in scientific history, when taken in isolation, are often riddled with problems. No paper is perfect, but the process of science, over time, validates the papers that are worth validating. Experiments are rarely reproduced exactly, but rather, reproduced under a thousand different conditions, thus proving that the result is robust over time. I've often felt that these efforts to mass-reproduce scientific literature are misguided. Anyone who has worked in a lab knows that most papers are difficult to reproduce for any number of reasons, and that even if you have a perfect description of materials and methods, plenty of correct and valid results are difficult to reproduce, just because lab work is hard and messy. It's not fair to fling accusations of impropriety simply because an experiment doesn't work in your hands.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Science is a system, not a series of published recipe Peer review and reproduction are essential components of a scientific system. If a paper does not provide—it its main text or supplements—the necessary detail to enable reproduction, it is not a scientific paper but a press release. > plenty of correct and valid results are difficult to reproduce There is lots of good science in figuring out why certain results reproduce in certain circumstances and not in others. With insufficient methodological detail, this exploration is rendered impossible.
- timr 8y ago
  "If a paper does not provide—it its main text or supplements—the necessary detail to enable reproduction, it is not a scientific paper but a press release." No. That's ridiculous. When a paper doesn't have all of the necessary details to reproduce, then scientists contact the authors, and try to get those details. In nearly all cases, the details are resolved without incident. If the omissions are sufficiently egregious, errata are issued. If they're really, really bad, papers are withdrawn. If a paper is so old that the original authors are long gone, you look for a citation history, and see who else reproduced the work over the years. Papers that were never reproduced are unlikely to be fruitful. Mistakes happen and details get omitted, but thankfully, we have lots of ways of working around those mistakes. Nobody -- except for armchair scientists -- assumes that scientific knowledge is communicated exclusively by the methods sections of publications.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > In nearly all cases, the details are resolved without incident This article rebuts your assertion. In most of the cases, the details were not resolved despite great effort and expense. > armchair scientists I’m not a scientist, but I advise (without compensation) a grant-writing board. But okay.
    - timr 8y ago
      "This article rebuts your assertion. In most of the cases, the details were not resolved despite great effort and expense." No, you're just misinterpreting it. They stopped pursuing a number of papers after they discovered they couldn't possibly reproduce them all with their tiny budget. Nobody said it was cheap to reproduce science, just that it's possible. "I’m not a scientist, but I advise (without compensation) a grant-writing board. But okay." It sounds like you're unqualified to be doing that job, then.
rlkf 8y ago
> Science is a system Indeed; journals are repos, authors are committers, reviews are pull requests. But the unit tests are insufficient, and literature references don't quite make it as a form of continuous integration.

starpilot 8y ago

HN doesn't understand non-deterministic systems. They're just JavaScript programmers.

anonuser123456 8y ago
I've met plenty of JavaScript programmers that were experts at building non-deterministic systems.

rjkennedy98 8y ago

Many Big Pharma companies literally have their PR department run their clinical trial studies. If someone is surprised that a paper sounds like a press release they have a lot to learn how "science" works today.

nonbel 8y ago
>"Many Big Pharma companies literally have their PR department run their clinical trial studies. If someone is surprised that a paper sounds like a press release they have a lot to learn how "science" works today." I call it biomedical research rather than honor it with the name "science".