The role of the scientific method

Here is an interesting article by John Polanyi published by The Globe and Mail.

Hope lies in the scientific method by John Polanyi.

The article discusses the role of science, and in my opinion, more importantly, the importance of the critical view of scientists on the impact that political decisions may have on the lives of many.

Food for thought, indeed.

Scientific Data For All!

The Wired Blog is running a brief article about yet another Google's initiative. The idea is to provide storage, and as far as I understood, free access to scientific data sets.

One interesting point of the article is the following:

(Google people) are providing a 3TB drive array (Linux RAID5). The array is provided in "suitcase" and shipped to anyone who wants to send they data to Google. Anyone interested gives Google the file tree, and they SLURP the data off the drive. I believe they can extend this to a larger array (my memory says 20TB).

It sounds exciting that in the near feature, we might have access to a long list of data sets. Perhaps, under a standard API. If you like buzzwords, this might be named (if it is not the case already) -- Science in the Cloud. Despite the name they will give to this, this initiative can bring a long list of advantages for the the scientific community, I think.

Finally, I wonder when the RFC for the "suitcase-based transport protocol" will be available (similar to RFC 1149). :-)

On The Repeatability of Experiments

As someone with an experimental background, I have found this initiative by the organizers of PODS/SIGMOD quite interesting.

In their page about guidelines for research papers, the program committee not only present the format guideline, but also a set of steps to help the committee to assess the "repeatability level" of an experimental research.

From their page:

...
we attempt to establish that the code developed by the 
authors exists, runs correctly on well-defined inputs, 
and performs in a manner compatible with that presented 
in the paper.
...

respice finem


These days, a passage from a book I read a while ago reoccurred to me several times. It sounds interesting and it seems to have a broad applicability in science (and in life, if you wish).

[...]

Look at the unknown. This is old advice; the corresponding 
Latin saying is: "respice finem." That is, look at the end. 
Remember your aim. Do not forget your goal. Think of what is 
required. Keep in mind what you are working for. Look at the
unknown. Look at the conclusion. The last two versions of 
"respice finem" are specially adapted to mathematical problems,
to "problems to find" and to "problem to prove" respectively.

[...]

From: G. Polya. "How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method", page 123, 2nd Edition, 1973.

The only addendum, perhaps, is that the goal may change time to time.