Scientific American has sounded the alarm about the dangers of ‘doing science’ and then presenting the results without permitting anyone to see the code which was used to ‘massage’ process the data. (Global Warming apocalypse-predicting ‘computer models’ pop into my mind: ‘Yeah, our computer models predict catastrophic climate changes – no, you can’t see how! Just take our word for it!’)
Pseudo-scientists hide behind the ‘copyright on source-code’ to present bad research – and many genuine scientists are truly limited by it, too. The result is that, without the source-code, it is impossible to replicate their research: an essential step in the actual real scientific process.
Without this step – replicating one team’s research by another, unrelated team to either verify or disprove their results – we will not be able to tell ‘good science’ from ‘bad science’ – or, indeed, downright scientific fraud. This will not only undermine people’s trust in all ‘science’, it will lead to people getting seriously hurt as ‘bad science’ becomes public policy.
This is yet another example of how copyright has been taken to a level which is harmful to us all.
