[eesmith]

My example of a protein model is an example of empirical research, yes?

My understanding is the X-ray gives you a diffraction pattern which is hard to invert to a structure, while if you have the structure the diffraction pattern is easy to compute. The diffraction pattern therefore gives you a way to verify that one model is a better fit than another model.

It may not be perfect, certainly not. It might not even be correct once more data arrives. But if you predict a novel fold, and that fold matches the diffraction pattern significantly better than the current model, then it doesn't matter how you came up with the new fold, does it?

It could have been a dream. It could have been search software. The result is still publishable.

All of what you have said is true, but my point is for some research being able to verify the correctness of the result is all that matters, not being able to reproduce the research.

Can you reproduce Kekulé's dream?

[tsbischof]

What do you see as the fundamental point of scientific communication? In your counterpoints you narrow in on papers being a means of communicating concepts or proof of work. In this view, showing the process itself is pointless or at least irrelevant to the main axiom.

However, others (myself included) see the the communication of methods as a primary function of the literature, because this is what enables others to understand, critique, and build upon the idea.

[eesmith]

There is no single fundamental point.

If you want to be that broad about it, science journals publish a lot more than just method development, including obituaries and opinion pieces on where funding should be directed.

Here's a famous paper showing that "Euler's conjecture on sums of like powers" is incorrect - https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1966-72-06/S0002-9904-1966... . I will repeat the body in full:

> A direct search on the CDC 6600 yielded 27⁵ + 84⁵ + 110⁵ + 133⁵ = 144⁵ as the smallest instance in which four fifth powers sum to a fifth power. This is a counterexample to a conjecture by Euler [l] that at least n nth powers are required to sum to an nth power, n>2.

Do I need to know how the direct search was carried out to confirm Euler's conjecture was false?

No.

  >>> 27**5 + 84**5 + 110**5 + 133**5 == 144**5
  True

And now that you know it isn't true, you might adjust which project areas to spend your time on. Which is part of what we get from scientific publications.

Just because you prefer one sort of scientific research doesn't mean other forms aren't science.

Again, is Kekulé's model of the benzene ring less scientific because it came to him in a daydream?

We accept Newton's publications where he secretly used the calculus, even though he didn't publish the calculus, because they could be proved through other more laborious means.

Why is it not scientific to write publications which use secret software, so long as we can verify the results?

[tsbischof]

For the article on Euler's conjecture, I am aware of this paper and that it serves as a sufficient proof of work for publication. It includes context for its purpose by citation, and the methods for verification were well-established. There is a class of literature where this type of structure works.

For the Kekule paper [1] there is a significant amount of information about the context and reasoning for the claim. This is not an isolated concept and he wrote at length as to why the idea might be plausible given the current evidence. He also could have written solely about the dream without context, but that lacks a grounding in the reality he was attempting to describe.

If it is possible to write a paper where the result is possible to verify using already-known methods, then by all means write in that style. But this is a subset of the useful papers to be written, and in my experience a small one.

[1] https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k281952v/f102.item

[eesmith]

> But this is a subset of the useful papers to be written, and in my experience a small one.

Certainly. I never claimed otherwise.

But bloaf's and lonesword seem to think such papers are of only superficial merit at best, and that detailed steps to reproduce the research are essential.

I disagree with that viewpoint.