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No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

chicagoboyz.net

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I think there is a certain disconnect between how scientists understand science and how it is presented to the public at large. It certainly doesn't help in this regard that many scientists involved in Environmental Science are also passionate political activists. Maybe it is understood by scientists that peer review has flaws, but when they appear on morning talk shows the term "peer review" is wielded as a hol…

It certainly doesn't help in this regard that many scientists involved in Environmental Science are also passionate political activists. Absolutely. I think we're going to have to have some kind of new certification system for research that affects public policy. Scientists simply can not be activists -- the conflict of interest is too great. If you find a meteor is going to strike the earth next year, you'd better b…

"Public-funded science should run from a public wiki or source control system where the scientists are the only authors but the public at large are readers."

The IPCC report is free and public, for exactly this reason. It's quite plain from their arguments that few "skeptics" ever actually look at it.

"Yes, I know that will drive some scientists mad compared to the current secretive system but it's time to let some daylight in, folks. You'll never, ever win an argument with an honest skeptic if you're keeping secrets."

Riiight. Because the politicians and lobbyists who advocate for the "skeptics" are paragons of honesty and openness. Those dirty scientists could learn a thing or two.

(I have to say...your comment is the most brazen example of black-is-white, up-is-down spin I've ever seen on HN. Bravo.)

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: I see some comments that are already talking about huge data volumes. To those guys, simply take a look at Google, or Amazon, or the credit-card processors. Lots of places deal with huge datasets in a peer-reviewed, transparent manner. Of course,use common sense here.

In what meaningful sense do Google or Amazon have peer-reviewed and transparent data sets? Please be specific.

I'll pick on Google, and use memory.

1) Google is notorious for peer-reviewing code.

2) IIRC, Google also has some functional/provable code

In general, large, critical datasets are routinely processed by businesses. Businesses who use separate testing groups, code reviews, and tiger teams to validate each others' work. None of this is new information (at least to me)

Of course, transparency doesn't extend beyond the organization's walls in many instances. If you thought I was saying that it did then I mis-communicated.

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#23
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I think there is a certain disconnect between how scientists understand science and how it is presented to the public at large. It certainly doesn't help in this regard that many scientists involved in Environmental Science are also passionate political activists. Maybe it is understood by scientists that peer review has flaws, but when they appear on morning talk shows the term "peer review" is wielded as a hol…

"Then I think there is a certain disconnect between how scientists understand science and how it is presented to the public at large." There's clearly a disconnect between how science is performed, and how it is perceived. It's not clear that this is the fault of scientists. It's also very clear that certain political groups intentionally cultivate this misunderstanding, so that they can convince the public that an e…

>"It's not clear that this is the fault of scientists. It's also very clear that certain political groups intentionally cultivate this misunderstanding, so that they can convince the public that an entire field of science is wrong."

It sounds like you're excusing bad behavior by saying that other people sometimes behave badly. There is no "certain political group" that is over-representing the value of "peer review" to the public, unless we are talking about environmentalists:

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSGEE5AP1Y5

No "certain political group" forced the scientists involved in this scandal to act in unethical and secretive manners. Just because politicians act in unethical and dishonest ways doesn't mean that scientists are excused for sinking to their level.

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what meaningful sense do Google or Amazon have peer-reviewed and transparent data sets? Please be specific.

I'll pick on Google, and use memory. 1) Google is notorious for peer-reviewing code. 2) IIRC, Google also has some functional/provable code In general, large, critical datasets are routinely processed by businesses. Businesses who use separate testing groups, code reviews, and tiger teams to validate each others' work. None of this is new information (at least to me) Of course, transparency doesn't extend beyond the…

Yes, you did miscommunicate; even allowing for the miscommunication you're making an extremely poorly-considered analogy.

The kind of peer review that matters for purposes of scientific integrity is review by outsiders; eg, a paper is "peer-reviewed" when experts in the field not involved in writing it or conducting its research give it a going-over and see if it appears to hold up.

The kind of transparency that matters for purposes of scientific integrity is making data available as-is to outsiders, so that they can meaningfully replicate your results ab initio (or, perhaps, not!).

Neither Google nor Amazon conducts meaningful amounts of peer review in the scientific sense nor are they transparent in the scientific sense (nor should they be, the last thing I want is any old anyone seeing the raw data backing someone else's gmail account or search history).

So you're making a useless assertion in the context of the issue at hand: neither Google nor Amazon does much "peer review" (to my knowledge Microsoft in fact does to some limited extent with shared source and hiring 3rd party auditors for some important code chunks); neither is "transparent".

In this thread you'll find multiple people speaking from positions of actual experience working on large-scale endeavors of scientific computation who've commented at length upon their internal practices.

I'm not going to repeat what they've typed but if you read those comments you will see that at least those commenting here were in fact engaging in what you're calling "peer review" and "transparency" wrt their development practices; their reports match my experience concerning scientific computation with large annual budgets but I won't claim any authority for my anecdotal experiences.

I will close out by posting a protip here; you might benefit from it but it's not specifically aimed at you.

If a blog with a name like "chicagoboyz" makes a bold, sweeping, and somewhat shocking assertion about an entire area of human endeavor -- that it itself has no plausible claim to expertise in (it's an ec blog, not a large-scale computation blog, and no claim of direct experience was made that I saw) -- and you find yourself nodding your head and thinking "yeah, that sounds plausible", proceed to do the following:

- slow down, step away from the computer, and count to 20 backwards in greek

- ask yourself: do I have any concrete knowledge, at all, about the area this claim is being made? Any involvement in a project in that area, or business involving that area, etc.? (In this case: do you have any direct experience with large-scale computational efforts in science? do you know anyone who's been involved in such a project? anything beyond the flamebait du jour?)

- if you do have any concrete knowledge: great, you have at least some nonzero evidence base from which your initial "yeah, that's right feeling" may or may not be substantiated. Think carefully about what you already know and see if the "yeah that's right" feeling holds up.

- if you don't have any concrete knowledge: you've given yourself an awesome opportunity for self-discovery and personal growth. Clearly there's something that makes you want to uncritically believe this specific sweeping claim about some area about which you literally know nothing concrete; we generally consider who believe sweeping claims without evidence suckers, and we've found an area where your preexisting biases leave you a sucker, and therefore at the mercy of others. You might still have the right intuition about the sweeping claim, but at least take the opportunity to de-suckerify yourself on this front before drawing your conclusion.

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#25
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what meaningful sense do Google or Amazon have peer-reviewed and transparent data sets? Please be specific.

I'll pick on Google, and use memory. 1) Google is notorious for peer-reviewing code. 2) IIRC, Google also has some functional/provable code In general, large, critical datasets are routinely processed by businesses. Businesses who use separate testing groups, code reviews, and tiger teams to validate each others' work. None of this is new information (at least to me) Of course, transparency doesn't extend beyond the…

However, in many instances, transparency does extend well beyond an organizations boundaries to the public domain.

Many scientific and business code-bases are open source. Since the advent of portable languages and VM-based back-ends, the practice of open sourced software has increased - not decreased. Many algorithms themselves are published and peer-reviewed. You can purchase Corman's Introduction to Algoritms, Knuth's books Sedgewick's books, the Stony Brook Algorithm Repository. Scientific software has been especially drawn to participate in open-source. From the beginning, efforts of scientific software were focused on to increased accuracy and minimizing error. Start from Anthony Ralston's books and Richard Hamming's book for instance.

Peer review is available and performed at numerous levels. The original criticism "no one" does peer review is over-drawn, misleading, and I would say, unfounded.

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#26

I work in a fairly large scientific collaboration. Our data sets are on the scale of a few hundred terabytes per year. So, there's a lot of software to convert from the bits that stream out of the detectors to something that end users (grad students) can analyze. We have a software group devoted to maintaining the core code. Our code has a nightly autobuild for development code and libraries are released every couple…

The code I wrote for my simulations is not that big, but it's certainly big enough to be complicated and buggy. And it's GPL and available on my website.

And while I certainly don't expect any of my referees to go over the code line-by-line, one of the rationales I had for GPLing the code was to make it possible for someone to replicate my study. One of the basic tenets about publishing research is that articles should contain all the information needed to reproduce the results. This is not possible for simulation papers unless the source code is public (or maybe a binary is provided, but that has many pitfalls by itself).

Results generated with proprietary codes could just as well be hokus-pokus in my mind. It's not clear how it adds to the field unless others can reproduce and build on the results. And with reasonably complicated codes, it's not realistic to think that someone will implement their own version (though that is of course the absolute best thing).

So while I don't necessarily think scientific software should be peer reviewed, I'm very hesitant about results obtained with proprietary software.

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#27
post #26

I work in a fairly large scientific collaboration. Our data sets are on the scale of a few hundred terabytes per year. So, there's a lot of software to convert from the bits that stream out of the detectors to something that end users (grad students) can analyze. We have a software group devoted to maintaining the core code. Our code has a nightly autobuild for development code and libraries are released every couple…

The code I wrote for my simulations is not that big, but it's certainly big enough to be complicated and buggy. And it's GPL and available on my website. And while I certainly don't expect any of my referees to go over the code line-by-line, one of the rationales I had for GPLing the code was to make it possible for someone to replicate my study. One of the basic tenets about publishing research is that articles shou…

What's your view on the mountains of scientific code that depend on proprietary math kernels and in some cases proprietary compiler platforms?

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#29
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly doesn't help in this regard that many scientists involved in Environmental Science are also passionate political activists. Absolutely. I think we're going to have to have some kind of new certification system for research that affects public policy. Scientists simply can not be activists -- the conflict of interest is too great. If you find a meteor is going to strike the earth next year, you'd better b…

"Public-funded science should run from a public wiki or source control system where the scientists are the only authors but the public at large are readers." The IPCC report is free and public, for exactly this reason. It's quite plain from their arguments that few "skeptics" ever actually look at it. "Yes, I know that will drive some scientists mad compared to the current secretive system but it's time to let some d…

> Because the politicians and lobbyists who advocate for the "skeptics" are paragons of honesty and openness.

You got it backwards, nobody expects any politicians and lobbyists to be paragons of honesty and openness!

That is why when scientists start acting as politicians and lobbyists, they lose their credibility, and that is the issue he was pointing out.

Re: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software

#30
It's unusual to peer review software in computer science research as well. There is no requirement that you release the source or even the binary of your shiny new system, especially in time for review. I've recently reviewed a paper that had a reference to an open-source project associated with the paper on a well-known site for hosting such things, but the project was content-free.
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