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While I agree that checking source code and running software is relatively easier than running experiments, there's more to science than experiments. Many wrong
by btrettel 7y ago
While I agree that checking source code and running software is relatively easier than running experiments, there's more to science than experiments. Many wrong things in science are even easier to identify than the "easy" case you identify, but you still don't see them checked. In fact, the example I gave was for a math error that should be much easier to check than looking at someone's software or source code. All you needed to do was go through the claimed derivation to see that something was off. No fancy math was involved either, just algebra. I think problems like this are much more common than is appreciated.
- rtkwe 7y agoYeah the issue is probably partially weird results can be lazily explained as a number of sources; genuinely new science, experimental design problems, or equipment errors to list a few, so if you're quickly reviewing a paper it's easy to just gloss over checking all the math because it's easy to trust on that. With computers we know exactly what we expect a piece of code to do and if it doesn't we're not discovering some new truth about the universe it's just that something was done incorrectly or our assumptions were wrong if it's someone else's code/program/library.