[bip] Reproducible research

[Andrew Dalke]

On Mar 9, 2009, at 8:20 AM, James Taylor wrote:
> Um... no. If nobody can reproduce it, it is not science.

How reproducible are astronomical observations? Are they
science? What about those observations of rare deep-sea
animals seen only once, which I've seen published in
Nature?

One of the theories of science is that the ability to predict,
with falsifiability, is the key to science. Reproducibility is
a subset of that.

The two descriptive events I listed have predictability.
They provide ways to test existing theories. With astronomical
events you should see red shifts and H-alpha lines. With
biological observations you should see evolutionary heritage.
That's why they are science even though the observations
themselves are not reproducible.

Consider also medical research, let's say a treatment for
some disease. You can run a trial but you don't have strict
reproducibility, because the test subjects change, partially
because of having the disease. You can try with a different
set of subjects, but the result will not be exactly
reproducible. The results should be correlated, but that's
a lesser criterion than 100% reproducibility.


> This standard *must* be applied. Questions about whether results are
> interesting or important mean *nothing* if you (the reader) can't
> trust the results in the first place.

Agreed. But trust doesn't require reproducibility.

				Andrew
				dalke at dalkescientific.com