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The author explains exactly what he means by that in a bullet point. "Because there are many other modeling groups, and scientific results are filtered through

The author explains exactly what he means by that in a bullet point. "Because there are many other modeling groups, and scientific results are filtered through processes of replication, and systematic assessment of the overall scientific evidence, the impact of software errors on, say, climate policy is effectively nil." The commenter seemed to completely ignore the explanation, and took the quote out of context. The rebuttal was answered in the original statement.

greenyoda 12y ago
I don't find the author's explanation very reassuring for a couple of reasons: 1. There's probably a considerable amount of overlap between the software used by different research groups. The article says: "Single Site Development – virtually all coupled climate models are managed and coordinated at a single site, once they become sufficiently complex, usually a government lab as universities don’t have the resources" Which implies that several university research groups use the software being maintained by a handful of large labs. They might be running models with different parameters, but the underlying modeling software is the same. So an error in the software might be widely propagated across hundreds or thousands of research papers. Also new scientific results frequently build upon previously published research, so anyone who cited a buggy result as evidence may have a weaker case. 2. If other scientists have similar attitudes toward writing software (i.e., that climate software is "different" from other software), they're also not likely to be using the best practices of software development, and much of the modeling software in the world is likely to be unreliable. In that situation, how would you be able to figure out which modeling software is giving the correct result? As that commenter wrote in another comment: "Unfortunately, I have encountered the following argument a distressing number of times: 1. As a good scientist, I am automatically a good engineer. 2. As a good engineer, I am automatically a good programmer. 3. As a good programmer, I am automatically a good Software Quality Assurance Analyst (whatever that is, nothing significant I would guess). What hubris. Programming is a domain in its own right. It’s the most complicated domain there is because if people could make their programs any more complicated they would. Programming is also an art. Even a computer science degree does not make you a good programmer."

greenyoda 12y ago

I don't find the author's explanation very reassuring for a couple of reasons: 1. There's probably a considerable amount of overlap between the software used by different research groups. The article says: "Single Site Development – virtually all coupled climate models are managed and coordinated at a single site, once they become sufficiently complex, usually a government lab as universities don’t have the resources" Which implies that several university research groups use the software being maintained by a handful of large labs. They might be running models with different parameters, but the underlying modeling software is the same. So an error in the software might be widely propagated across hundreds or thousands of research papers. Also new scientific results frequently build upon previously published research, so anyone who cited a buggy result as evidence may have a weaker case. 2. If other scientists have similar attitudes toward writing software (i.e., that climate software is "different" from other software), they're also not likely to be using the best practices of software development, and much of the modeling software in the world is likely to be unreliable. In that situation, how would you be able to figure out which modeling software is giving the correct result? As that commenter wrote in another comment: "Unfortunately, I have encountered the following argument a distressing number of times: 1. As a good scientist, I am automatically a good engineer. 2. As a good engineer, I am automatically a good programmer. 3. As a good programmer, I am automatically a good Software Quality Assurance Analyst (whatever that is, nothing significant I would guess). What hubris. Programming is a domain in its own right. It’s the most complicated domain there is because if people could make their programs any more complicated they would. Programming is also an art. Even a computer science degree does not make you a good programmer."