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Maybe the #1 valued thing in "capital S Science" -- the institutional bureaucracy of academia -- is trust. Trust that the bureaucracy will be preserved, funded

Maybe the #1 valued thing in "capital S Science" -- the institutional bureaucracy of academia -- is trust. Trust that the bureaucracy will be preserved, funded, defended.. so long as the dogma is followed. The politics of Science. The #1 valued thing in science is the method of doing science: reason, insight, objectivity, evidence, reproducibility. If the method can be automated, then great!

ergl 2y ago
> The #1 valued thing in science is [...] reproducibility. If only. Papers rarely describe their methods properly, and reproduction papers have a hard time being published, making it hard to justify the time it takes. If reproducibility was valued, things like retractionwatch wouldn't need to exist.
- pmayrgundter 2y ago
  Well, agreed! I'd say that's good evidence the political bureaucracy of big-Science has substantially corrupted that (your?) culture. It's not the only way though. There's a bright light coming from open source. Stay close to the people in AI saying "code, weights and methods or it didn't happen" The code that runs most of the net ships with lengthy howto guides that are kept up to date, thorough automated testing in support of changes/experimentation, etc. Experienced programmers who run across a project without this downgrade their valuation accordingly It doesn't solve all problems, but it does show there's a way that's being actively cultivated by a culture that is changing the world
jltsiren 2y ago
Trust is the primary value, because it covers everything you listed. Most people who read research papers only skim through the paper to get the big picture. They trust that the authors and the publication system did a good-faith effort to advance science. If they can't trust that, they almost certainly won't read the paper, because they don't have the time and the interest to go through the details. Only a few people read the technical parts with the intent to understand them. Even fewer go through supplementary materials and external reproducibility instructions with a similar attention to detail.

ergl 2y ago

> The #1 valued thing in science is [...] reproducibility. If only. Papers rarely describe their methods properly, and reproduction papers have a hard time being published, making it hard to justify the time it takes. If reproducibility was valued, things like retractionwatch wouldn't need to exist.

pmayrgundter 2y ago
Well, agreed! I'd say that's good evidence the political bureaucracy of big-Science has substantially corrupted that (your?) culture. It's not the only way though. There's a bright light coming from open source. Stay close to the people in AI saying "code, weights and methods or it didn't happen" The code that runs most of the net ships with lengthy howto guides that are kept up to date, thorough automated testing in support of changes/experimentation, etc. Experienced programmers who run across a project without this downgrade their valuation accordingly It doesn't solve all problems, but it does show there's a way that's being actively cultivated by a culture that is changing the world

jltsiren 2y ago

Trust is the primary value, because it covers everything you listed. Most people who read research papers only skim through the paper to get the big picture. They trust that the authors and the publication system did a good-faith effort to advance science. If they can't trust that, they almost certainly won't read the paper, because they don't have the time and the interest to go through the details. Only a few people read the technical parts with the intent to understand them. Even fewer go through supplementary materials and external reproducibility instructions with a similar attention to detail.