A few weeks back I watched Richard McElreath's "Science as Amateur Software Development" talk on YouTube. I though it was just a wonderful examination of some of the problems facing science and their potential solutions.

I'm quite excited that he has recorded an updated version. I'll be sharing it with many colleagues. Here's his description:

Software is both a cause of unreliable research and part of the solution. The bulk of scientific research relies upon specialized software for data management and analysis. The bad news is that much of this software is poorly tested and documented, and researchers often use software in unreliable ways. Part of the problem is that researchers are being asked to perform a job they have not been trained for: software development. The good news is that borrowing simple habits and open tools from software engineering brings huge benefits. Even more good news: Specialized curricula already exist to train scientists to develop and use these habits in their own research.

As far as I understand, the point is not to force academic scientists to become programmers (whatever that means.) It's about recognizing that many of them already are, however unwillingly. We don't really want to write code and debug scripts we don't understand, but it just so happens that we find ourselves doing that while trying to solve the problems we're interested in. And since that is the reality we find ourselves in, we might as well use the tools, mental models, etc. that enable the modern compute-driven world to exist.

Anyway, check out the video. It's just great.