I agree though, we can argue open science is much better and more reliable. We can argue privatly conducting a study and doing all the steps that would be conducted by the academic community within one organisation leads to more biased and less reliable results. But it's still science by its very definition, I'd even argue denying that is a bit disrespectful to all scientists doing so.

For sure, and calling Elon a twat would be an insult to twats out there. But saying "if it's not published it's not science" to one of the greatest grifters while having to explain the nuance of what you tweeted is a big L in my book.

Much more measured take than "if it's not published, then it definitely is not science."

I agree with you last point, and I really, really want to with the first.

Sometimes science feels more like an art, for chemistry at least. I suppose the counter-point to this is: if you provide sufficient detail to reproduce but your results are still difficult to reproduce reliably by others, then your process wasn't very robust and should have undergone more development before publishing. Those details may be so minor that you don't even realize that you overlooked something.

GPT told me it was "Standard Operating Procedure" in the context of the previous comment. That wasn enough for me. I didn't have to know it applies to your job in an English speaking country.

Well, modern science is interdisciplinary, it relies on resource sharing and peer review to reach consensus, which all require many people. In practice, it's merely research without collaboration if contributions aren't being made because Science isn't defined when you apply the scientific method. Science is what we do collectively. So when offshoot research is vetted, it becomes part of the science.

This reminds me of a few people I've met who believe themselves to be scientists who claim to do science by themselves, but in reality, it's numerology nonsense. They're arguably researching a system they invented but nobody worth their weight would take them seriously.

Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?

Why is "research" not the appropriate label?

Because you can't employ the scientific method with only one person.

You need at least 2 to perform peer reviews.

If I publish a book outlining a hypothesis about the origins of the Big Bang, is it not science because it doesn’t have any reproducible experiments?

Yes. It's just a hypothesis. If you could reproduce conditions similar to the big bang and see the same thing happen, then it would be science. If we can look at our universe through our instruments and see that the universe could have formed no other way (or at the very least that this way is by far the most plausible), then those experiments would be science. Speculation on its own, however, is not science.

Is any research that deadends in a uninteresting way that isn’t worthy of publication not science?

I disagree that there could be such research. An anticlimactic conclusion is an important conclusion nonetheless, and no less worthy of publication than an earthshaking one. If people who edit scientific journals disagree they can take it up with me. That team in China that thought they created a superconductor and then found out they hadn't, found out an extremely effective way to not create a superconductor, and now no one needs to try that exact way again.

The word "legit" there is doing alot of work.

I ask with genuine curiosity, as I am not an academic and come from a software development mindset

Why is paid-for services the only "legit" way to get others to evaluate your research? Why is it not kosher to publicly publish your research, and simply invite peers to evaluate it? This idea is essentially the entire process behind Open Source Software, and is the backbone of most modern tools/programs/apps/software/linux development.

What does paying a publishing company provide you, as a researcher, that makes it worth it?

Every time someone thinks science and studying natural phenomena are the same thing Newton sheds a single tear from his non-poked eye.

Pretty sure it was like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xlQaimsGg

You can use all the metaphors you want, bottom line is you are still arguing online with a man child.

lol fair enough

ladder climbing in academia is not fun, but I feel like communicating (or marketing) science is a essential part of scientific process, as we are often the only person able to describe our work in great technical detail.

A famous professor once told me "we are all entertainers", which seems absurd from an outside prospective, but is a notion that I and many of my colleagues have now found peace with.

Scrambled and unreadable mathematics should seldom be valued in modern scientific community, IMO; not everyone is Ramanujan after all. Even among geniuses, from Poincaré to Hilbert to Godel to Grothendick and to Tao, most genius are able to communicate their research quite well, and thrive in academia.

Lol I think you're onto something. Maybe better off sticking to sea cucumber posts.

It did make me learn some things, though. The person who I was responding to told me to "See any textbook on the Philosophy of Science," so I did, and I learned about the Demarcation Problem, Logical Positivism, and some new Karl Popper ideas. So, it has not led to a collaborative discussion, but it was pretty interesting, and I'm much more confident now about what's reasonable to say about what "counts as Science." Time well spent, IMO.

(In case you were wondering: Any activity performed while wearing safety goggles or glasses is technically science.)

Oh thanks for editing in an example-- that wasn't there when I wrote my reply, but what did you think of the other Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy links I provided?

That article that you linked (Scientific Pluralism) is an interesting read, but it's more about the importance of diversity in the scientific community... it doesn't really address the Demarcation Problem, and it doesn't discuss peer review or anything as far as I could tell.

Mentioning in passing that "science is social" (which is IMO uncontroversially true in a non-demarcation way, btw) is a few shades away from "any textbook will tell you that science is a particular process of peer review." I think the Science and Pseudo-Science entry that I linked is more germane.

Your desire to collapse all fact-finding into the concept of “science”

Well that's a reach. I had to buy a new laptop charger and find facts about what voltage, etc. I needed... I certainly don't consider that fact-finding exercise to be science, and I don't think I said anything to suggest that.

But okay, I don't have a textbook handy, but let's see what we can find out about the Philosophy of Science:

Philosophy of Science - Wikipedia

Seems to pretty clearly indicate "lots of interesting and useful ideas, no consensus." Peer review mentioned 0 times. The "Defining Science" section links to a page for the demarcation problem, so let's go look at that.

Demarcation Problem - Wikipedia

"The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields."

And the article basically continues to that effect, IMO: Demarcation is difficult, unclear, and there is no consensus. Peer review mentioned 0 times.

Maybe it's just Wikipedia that has this misconception. Let's check some other sources.

The Philosophy of Science - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

"Despite this diversity of opinion, philosophers of science can largely agree on one thing: there is no single, simple way to define science!"

Re: Demarcation problem:

"Modern philosophers of science largely agree that there is no single, simple criterion that can be used to demarcate the boundaries of science."

Starting to sound familiar. Lots of opinions from Aristotle to Cartwright, none of whom highlight peer review or acceptance by the institutions as criteria. The page does talk about empiricism, parsimony, falsification, etc. though, consistent with other sources.

Glossary - "science" - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

This one is simple:

Our knowledge of the natural world and the process through which that knowledge is built. The process of science relies on the testing of ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world. Science as a whole cannot be precisely defined but can be broadly described by a set of key characteristics. To learn more, visit A science checklist.

Let's look at the checklist.

Science is embedded in the scientific community - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

The page heading sounds pretty prescriptive, and that's about the closest I can find that claims "if it's not peer reviewed, it's not science." The body (IMO rightfully) describes the importance of community involvement in science, but doesn't say anything like "it's not science unless it involves the community."

Take this excerpt about Gregor Mendel:

However, even in such cases [as Gregor Mendel's], research must ultimately involve the scientific community if that work is to have any impact on the progress of science.

So yes, sharing his findings with the world was why it was able to have an impact, but I don't think it's reasonable to interpret that he wasn't doing science while he was working in isolation, or that it only became science retroactively after it was a) shared, and b) accepted.

Let's take a look at another textbook and see what it says:

1.6: Science and Non-Science - Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science

This chapter suggests that you can take two approaches to demarcation:

• What makes a theory scientific or non-scientific?
• What makes a "change in a scientific mosaic" scientific?

For theories - They're clear that there are no clear universal demarcation criteria, but offer these suggestions:

• Suggestion 1: An empirical theory is scientific if it is based on experience.
• Suggestion 2: An empirical theory is considered scientific if it explains all the known facts of its domain.
• Suggestion 3: An empirical theory is scientific if it explains, by and large, the known facts of its domain.

For changes - This pertains specifically to whether a change to "a scientific mosaic" is scientific or not, which necessarily pertains to a scientific community. But I'd argue that this analysis seems pretty clearly downstream of a priori participation in a scientific community, not attempting to define science as such.

Didn't read the whole textbook, so I might still be missing something, but the focus in the chapter is still definitely on the properties of the inquiry, not on the scientific institutions surrounding it.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Also looked at the entries for Scientific Method and Pseudo-science, which seem to be consistent with the other sources

TL;DR/Conclusion

So I'm still getting a really strong signal that:

• Science/non-science doesn't have a clear demarcation line, and that problem is called the Demarcation Problem. It has a special name because it's still a big deal.
• Ideas about what is science vs. non-science focus mostly on the properties of the inquiry: Is it a testable, falsifiable hypothesis that can be investigated with empirical observations?
• Scientific communities are still super important, and you can make statements about how scientific activity should interact with communities, but community involvement is not usually a factor in demarcation
• Peer review is useful and stuff, but has little interaction with the science/non-science demarcation question... I don't think it came up in any of the sources I looked at

So... Do I still seem misguided? Are Wikipedia and UC Berkeley and this textbook called "Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science" and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy all also misguided? Or am I just interpreting them wrong?

Like I started this investigation feeling 100% ready to learn that my concept of "what Science is" was misguided... But idk, I did a bunch of reading based on your suggestion, and I gotta say I feel pretty guided right now.

If you wanna throw something else to read my way though, I'll happily have a look at it.

Seems like the only difference is that if it's public or not ie published. I think it becomes a matter of opinion then, because independent teams within the same organisation can absolutely peer review eachother, use completely different methodology to prove the same hypothesis and publish papers internally so it can be reproduced internally.

Science should be made public, but just because it's not doesn't mean it's not science. When the organisation starts making public claims they should have to back that up along the official route, but they could just as well keep their findings a secret, use that secret to improve their working formula and make bank while doing that. Not calling their internal peer reviewed studies science just seems pretentious.

I can live with downvotes. It’s the internet and not everyone knows me. And to be fair, I’ve made some “friends” along the way.

But to your point, in the Venn Diagram of life, I admittedly was basing my question on the smaller subset of actual papers that are scientific in nature, and certainly not fantasy novels. You do raise a good point about published and peer reviewed pseudoscience, like cosmology. I would hope that , as pointed out by Yann LaCun, those publications need to be reviewed and vetted by people too and that’s where their claims hopefully fall apart.

I digress. I see now how my questions holds a lot of assumptions; which by its very nature is unscientific. It was an earnest question, so I thank you for pointing out its flaws.