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> Asking a scientist to do better than whole teams of software engineers makes little sense to me. This is not what is being asked, shame on you for the strawm

> Asking a scientist to do better than whole teams of software engineers makes little sense to me. This is not what is being asked, shame on you for the strawman. Your entire post can be summed up with the following sentence: "if we can't be perfect then we may as well not try to be better".

kalenx 6y ago
I was reacting to the part of your post I quoted. The thing is that it has little to do about rigor -- or if I may sin again, it is equivalent to say that software developers lack rigor: sure, some of them do (as some scientists do), but even among the most significant and severe bugs of the history of software, it is seldom the case that we can tell "right, definitely the guy who wrote that lacked rigor and seriousness". Of course this is not a blank forgiveness for every bad scientist out there. Of course we should aim at getting better. But we should make the difference between the ideal science process and the science as performed by a human, prone to errors, misunderstandings and mistakes, and realize that these things will always happen, however many times we call for "more rigor because bugs have consequences".
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  All you did was restate the argument that I've already rejected. And stop comparing scientists to software developers, it's a hidden argument by authority, and it isn't needed.
  - kalenx 6y ago
    I don't even understand the point you are making then (apart from me apparently arguing solely with sophisms, which is kind of a prowess). How this "rigor" you are calling for should manifest, then? Put bluntly, my point was that every software has bug, so how "more rigor" would help? What should we do, what should we ask for in _practical_ terms? Also, please do not rephrase this last sentence as "oh so since every software has bugs, then you obviously say that we shouldn't fix bugs, anyway other bugs will remain!".
    - RandoHolmes 6y ago
      > Also, please do not rephrase this last sentence as "oh so since every software has bugs, then you obviously say that we shouldn't fix bugs, anyway other bugs will remain!". That's exactly what I'm going to do. Point out that we can demand better even in the face of a lack of perfection. There are two problems here with your stance. 1. The assumption that all bugs are created equal, and 2. The assumption that the truth isn't the overriding concern of science. It's real easy to define the set of bugs that are unacceptable in science. Any bug that would render the results inaccurate is unacceptable. The fact that some jackass web developer wrote a bug that deleted an entire database in no way obviates that responsibility of the scientists.

kalenx 6y ago

I was reacting to the part of your post I quoted. The thing is that it has little to do about rigor -- or if I may sin again, it is equivalent to say that software developers lack rigor: sure, some of them do (as some scientists do), but even among the most significant and severe bugs of the history of software, it is seldom the case that we can tell "right, definitely the guy who wrote that lacked rigor and seriousness". Of course this is not a blank forgiveness for every bad scientist out there. Of course we should aim at getting better. But we should make the difference between the ideal science process and the science as performed by a human, prone to errors, misunderstandings and mistakes, and realize that these things will always happen, however many times we call for "more rigor because bugs have consequences".

RandoHolmes 6y ago
All you did was restate the argument that I've already rejected. And stop comparing scientists to software developers, it's a hidden argument by authority, and it isn't needed.
- kalenx 6y ago
  I don't even understand the point you are making then (apart from me apparently arguing solely with sophisms, which is kind of a prowess). How this "rigor" you are calling for should manifest, then? Put bluntly, my point was that every software has bug, so how "more rigor" would help? What should we do, what should we ask for in _practical_ terms? Also, please do not rephrase this last sentence as "oh so since every software has bugs, then you obviously say that we shouldn't fix bugs, anyway other bugs will remain!".
  - RandoHolmes 6y ago
    > Also, please do not rephrase this last sentence as "oh so since every software has bugs, then you obviously say that we shouldn't fix bugs, anyway other bugs will remain!". That's exactly what I'm going to do. Point out that we can demand better even in the face of a lack of perfection. There are two problems here with your stance. 1. The assumption that all bugs are created equal, and 2. The assumption that the truth isn't the overriding concern of science. It's real easy to define the set of bugs that are unacceptable in science. Any bug that would render the results inaccurate is unacceptable. The fact that some jackass web developer wrote a bug that deleted an entire database in no way obviates that responsibility of the scientists.