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Comment by MarkMc | Hacker News Reader

Am I being naive to think that scientific papers should be written in a way such that people outside the area of expertise can reproduce it? You shouldn't need to be a psychologist to run a psychology experiment. You shouldn't need to be a physicist to run a physics experiment.

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As much as I hate that sceintific papers don't give good introductions to the public, specialists do have their values. An educated, intelligent reader has limits when it comes to frontline research. It is like asking someone flying a 787 jetliner without touching an airplane before. Prior knowledge and experience are important.

What I absolutely reject is false exclusivity that some scientists hide behind. A professional statistician can spot statistical errors even if he or she never did any cancer study before. A rational person can discern the trustworth of a scientific report if enough details and background are well explained. I always find that popular press lacks a degree of healthy comptempt for specialists. It actually has improved somewhat recently. Still sometimes newspaper reports read like press release.

I accept that there is some skill and training required to run an experiment - particularly with hard sciences - but generally far less than is required to design it and analyze the results.

To extend your metaphor, it would be like saying that only people who design jetliners should be able to fly them.

Yes. You are being naive. You could reproduce rote aspects of the experiment. Not even all of them, you don't know how to calibrate some expensive lab equipment, its not the paper's job to explain that. And lots of things like conclusions and analysis take expertise. It's not about "being", its about having expertise. Papers say because foo, we conclude bar. If you have almost no idea what foo is, you just can't write that. It's not the paper's job to give you an introduction to physics or anything.

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