Live data from Hacker News

Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

arxiv.org

21–30 of 77 posts

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#21
post #17
post #13

Seaborn is a visualization library. No statistical tests should have been done with seaborn as an intermediate processing step. I guess they used some of the convenience functions as part of the data analysis. Seaborn is a final step tool, not a data analysis tool. That's an embarrassing lesson to learn post-publication.

Take a look at the linked chart in my other comment. Visualization is absolutely a driver during research, it isn’t just an embarrassing revelation. Charts killed the Challenger crew.

It can be a driver. But then you do a deep dive. You create frequency tables, you create crosstabs, you calculate summary statistics, you do inferential statistics. There is no excuse for not catching this pre-publication.

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#22

Bizarre. How do people make such big, splashy findings that can mess with people’s sense of optimism about science and innovation, without doing the simplest types of checks on their data and methodology.

Confirmation bias? It’s easy to run with the assumption you had at the back of your mind when your experiment seems to confirm it.

I have definitely done that with benchmarks / profiles.

It’s probably even easier when the incentives encourage “the find”.

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#23
post #19

Bizarre. How do people make such big, splashy findings that can mess with people’s sense of optimism about science and innovation, without doing the simplest types of checks on their data and methodology.

It’s enough to make you lose faith in science.

As opposed to? The original claim being asspulled then not reviewed at all because that would be science?

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#24
post #19

Bizarre. How do people make such big, splashy findings that can mess with people’s sense of optimism about science and innovation, without doing the simplest types of checks on their data and methodology.

It’s enough to make you lose faith in science.

it is science that discovers errors in science :)

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#25
post #15

Reading the comments here hilarious. Like others, expecting a wildy different article...

What were you expecting? I read that as "a bug in the Seaborn graphing library caused wrong conclusions" and don't understand what other interpretations there are.

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#27
post #25
post #15

Reading the comments here hilarious. Like others, expecting a wildy different article...

What were you expecting? I read that as "a bug in the Seaborn graphing library caused wrong conclusions" and don't understand what other interpretations there are.

Ailment transmitted at sea has somehow made science less impactful.

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#28
post #25
post #15

Reading the comments here hilarious. Like others, expecting a wildy different article...

What were you expecting? I read that as "a bug in the Seaborn graphing library caused wrong conclusions" and don't understand what other interpretations there are.

I'd never heard of the Seaborn library. And since Seaborn is the first word of the title, I assumed it was capitalized for that reason only.

So I thought the article would be about some ocean-faring insect or microbe that somehow affected scientists' mental acuity.

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#29
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were you expecting? I read that as "a bug in the Seaborn graphing library caused wrong conclusions" and don't understand what other interpretations there are.

Ailment transmitted at sea has somehow made science less impactful.

Ahhh, "sea-borne bug", that makes sense, thanks!

Re: Seaborn bug responsible for finding of declining disruptiveness in science

#30
post #25
post #15

Reading the comments here hilarious. Like others, expecting a wildy different article...

What were you expecting? I read that as "a bug in the Seaborn graphing library caused wrong conclusions" and don't understand what other interpretations there are.

I have never heard of the Seaborn graphing library; I was curious as to how a marine virus or bacterium could cause a "finding of declining disruptiveness". maybe a similar mechanism to Toxoplasma gondii?
Post reply on HN