In a debate between Musk and Yann LeCun who is at Meta, aka Facebook, they argue over what is "science". LeCun demands peer reviewed publications. The Nature article notes:
LeCun, chief scientist at tech giant Meta who is known for his foundational work in deep learning and neural networks called out Musk’s post, saying that he “claims to want a “maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth” but spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories on his own social platform”. It escalated quickly, with Musk questioning what science LeCun had done in the past 5 years. LeCun, who also holds an academic post in AI at New York University in New York City, replied: “Over 80 technical papers published since January 2022. What about you?” LeCun then posted saying “if you do research and don’t publish, it’s not Science”. He argued that research is only ‘science’ when it is collected as a body of knowledge, tested for correctness and reproducibility, and then published. “Technological marvels don’t just pop out of the vacuum. They are built on years (sometimes decades) of scientific research,” he said. Without sharing that scientific information, “technological progress would slow to a crawl”.
The Frenchman perhaps forgot Darwin, Darwin took forever to publish his work. In today's world publishing comes in a variety of means and methods. Ironically in the same issue of Nature they note:
The retraction rate for European biomedical-science papers increased fourfold between 2000 and 2021, a study of thousands of retractions has found. Two-thirds of these papers were withdrawn for reasons relating to research misconduct, such as data and image manipulation or authorship fraud. These factors accounted for an increasing proportion of retractions over the roughly 20-year period, the analysis suggests. “Our findings indicate that research misconduct has become more prevalent in Europe over the last two decades,” write the authors, led by Alberto Ruano‐Ravina, a public-health researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Other research-integrity specialists point out that retractions could be on the rise because researchers and publishers are getting better at investigating and identifying potential misconduct. There are more people working to spot errors and new digital tools to screen publications for suspicious text or data.
That is, many published papers are useless. The Frenchman seems to neglect reality. Science is a progression of ideas and counter ideas. Some are correct and some need alterations. I have found that "publishing" draft ideas of value, having had some 100,000 readers. Some ideas may be great, others lacking. My Technical Reports all are DRAFT and subject to revision. The Frenchman seems to have that arrogance I have seen frequently in those of self-possessed excellence, yet lacking in substance.
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