Science Is Open Software
Science Is Open Software. Skip to contentTL;DR I claim that modern science is synonymous with open source software.
What happened
In fact, I think open source software is science. I posit that open source software is a necessary condition if we are to science in a computerized world. Why do you care about (open source) software? – EveryoneI spend a lot of my time working on software. Why we as scientists must insist on the scientific method and why that means working on open and reproducible software. How many fields have been held back, and how many people have had their careers disrupted, because of a buggy program? – Greg WilsonSoftware is ubiquitous in modern science.
If the software is wrong, the science is wrong. (Software bugs already cause numerous retractions, such as here, here, here, and several places here). We found that software needs to beReproducible, meaning executable, as well as modifiable, andReliable, meaning that the results are consistently trustworthyModifiability is important for science for the same reason that equations are important for scientific predictions.
The wider picture
Of course, open source software is not a perfect cure. From that perspective, one can claim that open source software is the scientific method—just in simulation. A vision for future scienceIf we accept these premises we can ask: what would truly open (computational) science look like? This is particularly true for small fields such as neuromorphics, where a recent Nature paper pointed out that open source software is key to scaling. Go check out the Open Neuromorphic software guide and see if you can’t find libraries close to your work.
The open source movement embodies these same principles for software, but there is much more work to be done. A team at a US-based startup compromised a number of OpenAI employees’ ChatGPT accounts, starting a process that enabled them to access their target’s software cache – and potentially more. They then made a harmless “pull request” – an attempt to change the code in a file – to OpenAI’s service on the GitHub software repository.
What has been reported
Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The GuardianReviewPixel 11 Pro Fold review: the foldable with the best triple cameraBig screen folder with slick software and advanced AI is just like a regular Android when closedGoogle’s latest folding phone sticks with its tried and tested design of a traditional phone shape when closed and almost square when open, in the face of new competition from Apple’s squat iPhone fold. I have been asked why software matters more times than I can remember.
It challenges many of the current trends in academia, but it is an important move towards better science that doesn’t turn us all insane. If you look up science on Wikipedia, here’s what hits you:Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. – WikipediaNow, go and grab a random arXiv paper. This point seems obvious today, but it highlights the goal of pursuing science in the first place: you, as an acting entity, improves your inner model to the point that you can make better predictions than before.
The inner model here is critical: if the arXiv paper does not help their readers predict the world, it is not science. This is why computational reproducibility matters–software is how we encode and share predictive models. This becomes clear if we do a quick thought-experiment where we replace “software model” with “mathematical model”.
What happens next
Just as we wouldn’t accept a physics paper that said our equations predict X but we won’t show the math, we shouldn’t accept (computational) science that hides its methods. Anything from CoVid models to search algorithms to lab protocols are build on software built by other people. They don’t bother to look through all software dependencies to verify correctness, understand implementation details, or check for potential errors that could invalidate results.
From that follows that the scientific results depend on the software. For that to happen, it (software) needs to be reliable. Science communication improves because the models themselves become part of the conversation—not just their conclusions. Every piece already exists—open source communities, reproducible environments, collaborative development platforms.
The report has been compiled by Press Orb using information reported across jepedersen.dk, theguardian.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.