Comment on Finish him. đȘ
kernelle@lemmy.world âš6â© âšmonthsâ© agoI feel like Iâm missing something here so Iâll be the devilâs advocate, why canât unpublished papers be reproducible? Multiple teams could independently be verifying hypotheses and results under the same organisation, adhere to the same standard but never publish, that would still be science no? Not doing humanity any favours, but science nonetheless.
originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee âš6â© âšmonthsâ© ago
Because science is about objective, provable fact following a known and public method. An organization can say their findings are reproducible, but reproducibility is more than just getting the same results every time the same lab runs the same PCR on the same machine. To be truly reproducible your results need to be able to be replicated by anyone with appropriate materials and equipment.
What you are describing is research, not science. Itâs not that research is bad, but that science is a philosophical adherence to a method as much as it is that method itself
kernelle@lemmy.world âš6â© âšmonthsâ© ago
Seems like the only difference is that if itâs public or not ie published. I think it becomes a matter of opinion then, because independent teams within the same organisation can absolutely peer review eachother, use completely different methodology to prove the same hypothesis and publish papers internally so it can be reproduced internally.
Science should be made public, but just because itâs not doesnât mean itâs not science. When the organisation starts making public claims they should have to back that up along the official route, but they could just as well keep their findings a secret, use that secret to improve their working formula and make bank while doing that. Not calling their internal peer reviewed studies science just seems pretentious.
originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee âš6â© âšmonthsâ© ago
No, they canât. Peer review is not the peers you determine - itâs the peers of your community. Science that is not public is not science, because it cannot be independently verified and reproduced. It is not a small point, itâs one of the foundations of the disciplines of science.
kernelle@lemmy.world âš6â© âšmonthsâ© ago
An organisation with fully independent teams tackling the same problems can absolutely be defined as peer review. Not in the traditional sense, but reviewing, confirming and replicating nonetheless. Following the scientific method is what makes something scientific, not the act of publishing.
You can argue of the merits of those papers, an organisation can never make public statements about private research. But saying that what their doing is not science, then youâre just needlessly gatekeeping.