{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "chem-bla-ics", "description": "Chemblaics (pronounced chem-bla-ics) is the science that uses open science and computers to solve problems in chemistry, biochemistry and related fields.", "home_page_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/", "feed_url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2010/12/10/trust-has-no-place-in-science-2.json", "icon": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/assets/images/chem-bla-ics_logo.png", "language": "en", "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286", "_orcid": "0000-0001-7542-0286" } ], "items": [ { "id": "https://doi.org/10.59350/h2rj3-04e17", "url": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/2010/12/10/trust-has-no-place-in-science-2.html", "title": "Trust has no place in science #2", "content_html": "

Thanks to all who replied and shared their views. Particular thanx to Christina\nwho replied in her blog.\nWith Saml ,\nand Cameron and Bill\nthey think this is about semantics. Linguistic tricks. I hope not; this is too\nserious to get away with such. “Reliable, trustworthy, assumptions”: it’s all\nworking around the real issue. Similarly, splitting up ‘trust’ into ‘blind trust’\nand ‘smart trust’ is just working around the real problem.

\n\n

Indeed, my point is different. The key of science is to replace trust by facts.\nOr, when talking about database, software, research papers in Nature, it is\nreplacing trust with traceability. Actually, we seem to have lost a long-standing\ntradition of citing previous work when we write down the arguments we base our\nargumentation on. Facts are backed up with references, providing the required\ntraceability.

\n\n

Now, compare that to current electronic sciences. We ‘trust’ our database to\nhave done something sane. Well, don’t. They made an attempt, but made errors.\nAs they say with software, having zero bugs just means you have not found them\nyet.

\n\n

The real point with ‘trust’ is, is that it is completely irrelevant. It adds\nzero to the scholarly discussion. Whether you trust the highly curated ChEMBL\ndatabase or not, it has errors. (Noel\npointed out one source of ambiguity in the ChEMBL database\nthis week). What does matter, instead, is if those errors are significant. Do\nthey affect the conclusions I draw when I use this data. That is what actually\nmatter. Trust has no place in science. Error has.

\n\n

Sadly, this is basically the hypothesis of the VR grant I wrote up but did\nnot get awarded .\nBut I trust I do better next time.

\n\n

Why this matters? Well, this is what ODOSOS\nis about: bring back the traceability into science, and get rid of trust.

", "summary": "Thanks to all who replied and shared their views. Particular thanx to Christina who replied in her blog. With Saml , and Cameron and Bill they think this is about semantics. Linguistic tricks. I hope not; this is too serious to get away with such. “Reliable, trustworthy, assumptions”: it’s all working around the real issue. Similarly, splitting up ‘trust’ into ‘blind trust’ and ‘smart trust’ is just working around the real problem.", "date_published": "2010-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-17T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": ["chemistry","odosos","science"], "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286" } ] } ] }