Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 16th Apr 2012 02:08 UTC
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Member since:
2012-04-16
Well, it can also work quite easily in the opposite. The source code is taken, with little or no review, and new data are run through it, confirming the original result.
I am sure that this happens. Not too long ago I run in to this issue while looking at studies done in the field of psychology. They run most there studies through SPSS to make a factor analysis, do get something out of the data. Everybody using the same software the same way of conducting the study, of course they confirm the result of others. Most of the conclusions drawn are just simply wrong, because less than half of the data is actually supporting the result.
Now since most psychologist aren't statisticians, they just take the work of others as template for their own. And you propagate a wrong method / software.
The same is going to happen with opening the source code for all research. If the code is critical to the research than it should be implemented independently to confirm the results, based on the same data. If the code is auxiliary to the problem, then who cares anyway.
Also I know of Professors that stopped publishing all together because of that requirement. Now what do you gain?
The good thing from all the published work is, we KNOW that certain things work/exist, so they can be re-discovered and independently verified.