[HN Gopher] The Scientific Paper is Obsolete (2018)
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       The Scientific Paper is Obsolete (2018)
        
       Author : PhilipVinc
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2021-12-13 21:42 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
        
       | otrahuevada wrote:
       | I myself enjoy reading papers.
       | 
       | At least after I transfer them to a single column, 14/16pt tall
       | font with real headers, that is.
       | 
       | The graphic format itself is dated and annoying, yes, but I find
       | the expositional tone and immediately searchable references
       | pretty cool.
        
       | PhilipVinc wrote:
       | Papers today are longer than ever and full of jargon and symbols.
       | They depend on chains of computer programs that generate data,
       | and clean up data, and plot data, and run statistical models on
       | data. These programs tend to be both so sloppily written and so
       | central to the results that it's contributed to a replication
       | crisis, or put another way, a failure of the paper to perform its
       | most basic task: to report what you've actually discovered,
       | clearly enough that someone else can discover it for themselves.
        
         | rtkaratekid wrote:
         | I think this almost every time I read the paper. It's like
         | Linus' "show me the code." I just want papers now to "show me
         | the data and the code." And include a discussion about why
         | these results are important. I think it's a great time for the
         | scientific community to improve transparency on these fronts.
         | 
         | Sincerely, someone who reads a lot of research but contributes
         | none because I'm an amateur.
         | 
         | Edit: when I say data, I mean the raw data.
        
           | netizen-936824 wrote:
           | Raw data can be on the order of terabytes, not that it can't
           | be shared but this is a real barrier when it comes to raw
           | data
        
           | d110af5ccf wrote:
           | I agree that they should ideally come with raw data along
           | with all code that was used to process it to produce the
           | results as presented.
           | 
           | > but contributes none because I'm an amateur
           | 
           | I don't mean to be rude but it seems relevant to point out.
           | Papers aren't written for the benefit of amateurs. They're
           | written for experts who actively work in that specific field.
           | I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
        
       | queuebert wrote:
       | As a practicing scientist, I firmly believe the world would be
       | much better off if we simply published version-controlled Jupyter
       | notebooks on a free site, such as GitHub or ArXiv.
        
         | d110af5ccf wrote:
         | > As a practicing scientist
         | 
         | > version-controlled Jupyter notebooks
         | 
         | That's awfully field specific. It probably wouldn't work for
         | most of STEM. Even for ML I shudder to imagine trying to make
         | sense of the inevitable monstrosities. Writing a paper is part
         | of the thinking process. It forces the author to sit down and
         | work through things in an orderly manner and they're _still_
         | often difficult to read.
         | 
         | I'm definitely in favor of all papers being accompanied by
         | working source code when relevant though.
        
         | robotresearcher wrote:
         | Do you do so? If not, why not?
        
           | queuebert wrote:
           | I do share code that way, but the traditional ivory tower
           | standards by which I am judged require "refereed journal
           | publications" in high impact factor traditional journals. I'm
           | trying to fight back against that, largely unsuccessfully.
           | 
           | What would help me is to have the old geezers consider GitHub
           | issues, PRs, and commits as a type of citation and to have a
           | better way of tracking when my code gets used by others that
           | is more detailed than forks.
           | 
           | I also think citations of your work that find errors or
           | correct things should count as a negative citation. Because
           | otherwise you are incentivized to publish something early and
           | wrong. Thus the references at the end of the paper should be
           | split into two sections: stuff that was right and stuff that
           | was wrong.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dr_dshiv wrote:
       | http://distill.pub/about/
       | 
       | It's been done and it is amazing. This is the best journal in the
       | world imho
        
         | antognini wrote:
         | It is also on hiatus :(
         | 
         | https://distill.pub/2021/distill-hiatus/
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-13 23:00 UTC)