[rainforest]

Move fast and break things has its downsides: work that influenced public policy/political debate was retracted after an error in the model was discovered [1], errors have been found in widely cited databases [2]. These are things that should be avoided I'm sure you'll agree.

Science has this additional problem that its memory is short - mistakes seem to be discovered when work is in the long tail of the citation curve, once it's out of the news. Even if you retract a paper, there is no easy way to trace the contagion to the work that uses it. That's before you consider mistakes that might be deliberate [3].

I have no doubts that more software/data rigour would make science more accurate, but the cost would be substantial, and it would no doubt slow down discovery until the benefit of open source kicked in.

[1] : https://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how... [2] : https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/mistaken-identiti... [3] : https://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/26/yes-power-pose-study-...