> I'll add that besides a workflow system which would have helped (but > not necessarily panacea, errors could be made there too), an open data > reproducible paper would have helped even more: with all those > skeptics, someone would have tried to re-run the analysis seeking for > errors, and probably found it much sooner.
Agreed. In trying to research this example for a talk I'm giving, it turns out the data is available - but not licensed or easy to find if you're not interested in African genome data: http://africangenome.org/index.php/African_genome_ftp Simply depositing and referencing this data to the original Science paper would have made allowed easier reanalysis, given that the authors did do a pretty good job of describing their workflow (even if it was run incorrectly) in the supplemental materials. It also points back to the fact that validation in science often relies on the scratch and sniff test of seeing if it looks "right". In a case like this where the result appears to contradict other established theories, it's even more important to open your work to scrutiny. >> Do you have a list of these cases on the web, or is this an informal thing >> between you two? I'd be interested in seeing the list. Me too! Neil >>> On Jan 26, 2016, at 09:36, C. Titus Brown <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> for many years, Greg and I and others have been collecting "mea culpas" >>> on research failures due to computational mistakes -- here's one that >>> caught my eye the other day: >>> >>> http://www.unz.com/gnxp/there-was-no-vast-migration-of-eurasians-into-africa/ >>> >>> Reads to me like a workflow system would have helped here... >>> >>> This is pretty high profile; last paragraph: >>> >>> If something like this happened to me I’d probably literally throw up. This >>> is horrible. But then again, this paper made it into Science, and Nature >>> wrote >>> articles like this: First ancient African genome reveals vast Eurasian >>> migration. The error has to be corrected. >>> >>> cheers, >>> --titus >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discuss mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org -- Neil Chue Hong Director, Software Sustainability Institute EPCC, University of Edinburgh, JCMB, Edinburgh, EH9 3FD, UK Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5957 http://www.software.ac.uk/ LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/neilchuehong Twitter: http://twitter.com/npch ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8876-7606 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
