{"id":5168,"date":"2015-02-02T07:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T15:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/?p=5168"},"modified":"2014-12-29T13:10:38","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T21:10:38","slug":"software-development-scientific-research-jeopardized-by-black-box-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/software-development-scientific-research-jeopardized-by-black-box-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Software Development: Scientific Research Jeopardized by Black-Box Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2009, a scandal nicknamed ‘Climategate<\/a>‘ hit the scientific community in the UK after hackers broke into the computers of the University of East Anglia. \u00a0The researchers had refused to release the data analysis software for public review that they used for processing their data. \u00a0It was\u00a0discovered that the prominent British climate researchers were manipulating climate change data. \u00a0Whether there is ill intent or not, this case calls into question the reliability of software being used in research today.<\/p>\n

\"SSI\"<\/a>Dirk Gorissen, former research software engineer at the University of Southampton, told the UK Times Higher Education<\/a> that “the problem is, academia all comes down to what publications you make. When you spend a lot of time on software it can be difficult to turn that into publications. \u00a0The code you write \u2013 the quality of it \u2013 doesn\u2019t really matter. You put effort in and make sure it\u2019s well developed and up to scratch, but I\u2019ve been told a number of times that it is not important. All that matters is whether you can get numbers out so that we can publish them in a paper: the code that makes it happen gets forgotten.”<\/p>\n

Simon Hettrick<\/a>, deputy director of\u00a0the Software Sustainability Institute<\/a>, said that “Look around any lab and you will see software being used in all disciplines and by all seniorities\u00a0of researchers. \u00a0Software is clearly fundamental to research, and I find it terrifying that we don\u2019t understand quite how much we rely on it…\u00a0It\u2019s a terrible concern, because you can work your way through software development\u2014researchers are intelligent people, they can work this stuff out\u2014but you can\u2019t build software that is reliable. \u00a0If you\u2019re producing your results through software, and your software doesn\u2019t produce reproducible results, then your research results aren\u2019t reproducible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hettrick said that “Software use is not going to decline. \u00a0We need to be aware of our reliance on software so that we can ensure that the [academic] community has the tools and the skills they need to stay at the forefront of research… \u00a0There\u2019s not much institutional memory around software artefacts created by research \u2013 and these could very well fit into the impact agenda of the research excellence framework that universities think a lot about. Software is one of the outputs of a lot of research projects, and it deserves to be treated as something that other research groups around the world can use.”<\/p>\n

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In 2009, a scandal nicknamed ‘Climategate‘ hit the scientific community in the UK after hackers broke into the computers of the University of East Anglia. \u00a0The researchers had refused to release the data analysis software for public review that they…<\/span><\/p>\n

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