Open Recipe: Why Open Source Methodology in Science Matters

If data is the ingredients, then methodology is the recipe. Previously in Credibility of Science and the Freedom of Data, I raised the issue that even so-called raw data is often interpreted data, just as the temperature reading of a classic mercury-in-glass thermometer is really an interpretation of the height of the column of mercury. Modern scientific instruments wrap a lot of interpretations of the raw sensor feed up before presenting anything to the user as "raw" data.  But why does this even matter?

A key component that makes science so effective for discovering useful properties of the world is that experiments can, and are, repeated to ensure discoveries are in fact consistent properties of the world rather than the result of mere chance or accident. Being able to repeat some procedure to get back the same or similar result is a very important and useful feature of science. It is like having a recipe that claims to produce a great souffle: we'd have to verify the claim by repeatedly baking souffles to see if we repeatedly get good tasting souffle. We could, however, only do this if the entire recipe is open for us to follow and examine.

Book Review: "Philosophy of Mind"

Philosophy of Mind (Dimensions of Philosophy) is a fantastic introduction to the subject, and to the basic fundamental issues surrounding any topic that relates to the mind, including cognitive science, artificial intelligence as it relates to cognitive science, psychology, etc.

It covers a lot of ground without presuming specialist knowledge of terminologies, and it briefly explains all related concepts that are required to understand the issues at play (eg, concepts from as far afield as philosophy of science, language, or the computing science concept of a Turing machine).

Science Losing Its Credit Over Money

In Tarnishing Science, I said "That scientists are human and are susceptible to ordinary persuasions like power, prestige, or money, isn't news."  What is news is just how widespread some of the problems are becoming, due to money, money, and more money.

Previously, I've offered my views on how scientific credibility could be enhanced through using open sourcing the scientific methodologies and allowing the free and open source distribution and use of the scientific data.

When it comes to the influence of money though, that's probably not enough.

Case in point, industry-sponsored medical science studies (see Med schools not responding to ghostwriting scandals). What can be done about the billions of dollars in biomedical research? All the money flowing into that research is a great thing, but even without maliciously cheating in the scientific process, the money can be targeted into research programs that are inherently biased in favour of the company bankrolling it. In Economics, this would be called voting with your wallet.

Re: "Call For Scientific Research Code To Be Released"

The Guardian is running this piece "If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too", about the need to have open source program code from scientific studies.  And Slashdot picked up on it too: Call For Scientific Research Code To Be Released.

It's good to see this view being recognized. I have, of course, expressed similar ideas before as in Credibility of Science and Open Source Methodology. Beyond open sourcing the methods, I also recommended the opening of the data sources as in Credibility of Science and the Freedom of Data, as a response to the recent Tarnishing of Science's respectability from the Climategate incident.

We need to recognize that this will continue to be a recurring issue in science as computing technology continues to revolutionize how all science is done.

"As the science scandals keep coming"...

The subtitle to The great global warming collapse (from The Globe and Mail) is:

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement.

That is an example of the very point I made in Tarnishing Science:

It's concerning when I hear people mock or ridicule climate science research as "climate science" rather than as a "climate pseudo-science".  It's concerning because it suggests, to those who don't spend time looking carefully [2] at the situation, that it's not just climate science that has problems, it's that science — all of it — has problems.

Sure, The Globe and Mail article's hits are specifically delivered to climate science, but fairly or not, I'm afraid the lasting damage will be to the image of all sciences. It certainly will be that way for those who are, or who are leaning in the direction of, anti-scientific or anti-intellectual thinking.