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Re:To software engineers criticizing Neil Ferguson’s epidemi... by munchbunny on Monday May 18, 2020 @10:39AM (#23222867)
should also let outside help come when the need arises.

expose your “non-expert code” to the software engineering communities (and all other associated fields) to take a look.

1. Software engineers are expensive. Hiring them to write your code is how you end up needing even more money to do your science, and I think the software engineering world if anything can appreciate prioritizing being scrappy to get more done.

2. Open source is slow and doesn't produce consistent results in the timeframes you need in order to get things implemented in one-offs. In fact, the value you get from others looking at your code is pretty anemic unless other software engineers find your code useful, at which point they have real incentive to help you improve existing functionality instead of reinventing the wheel. I do think code should be published alongside papers as a matter of reproduceability, but I don't think opening up the code beforehand will accomplish much.

Which is all to say that while I agree with you in principle, I don't think your recommendations are practical.

I think this letter has it right: we should make better tools to help non-experts do less foot shooting. C++ is very, very foot shooty, and the usual answer of "well get better at C++" is a non-starter for non-experts.

I think there are other solutions too - software engineers with partial specializations in academic fields, volunteers, etc.

Re:To software engineers criticizing Neil Ferguson’s epidemi... by rainforest on Monday May 18, 2020 @11:25AM (#23223513)
I believe this model is quite old (at least in some form) so there have been opportunities to review it. I confess I haven't looked, but I haven't heard any defects have actually been identified. If the model stood up to peer review I assume the results it produces are at least consistent with the expectations of the people who wrote the mathematical model.

Hopefully this will be a watershed moment that makes it easier to cost a research software engineer onto a grant in the future.

Re:To software engineers criticizing Neil Ferguson’s epidemi... by thu2111 on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @11:43AM (#23236087)
Many defects have been identified. A small collection are linked to from here:

https://lockdownsceptics.org/second-analysis-of-fergusons-mo...

Re:To software engineers criticizing Neil Ferguson’s epidemi... by noobaccount on Monday May 18, 2020 @10:52AM (#23223066)
I will personally pay for a professional review of the next model the British government uses to guide lockdowns. Cost problem solved.
Re:To software engineers criticizing Neil Ferguson’s epidemi... by munchbunny on Monday May 18, 2020 @11:09AM (#23223284)
While I appreciate the sentiment, we can probably both see why one person offering to solve the problem for one study isn't a solution to the systemic problem.

Private funding poses all sorts of issues. Surmountable issues, but still issues once individuals are paying for reviews at scale.