Bad software spoils scientific research.

Scientific research is impossible without the use of computers and software. This opinion was expressed by 69% of scientists who participated in the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) survey . At the same time, in reality, software is used by 92% of all researchers.

The results of this survey would seem completely banal if it were not for one detail: 56% of scientists said that they are developing their own software (interestingly, 70% of men and 30% of women do this, that is, there is some gender inequality).

So, every fifth scientist from those who create their own software, has no education in the field of software development.

“This is a serious concern. Yes, you can independently find a way to create a program, scientists are smart people, they are able to figure it out, but you cannot make a program that works reliably, ” says Simon Hettrick, deputy director of SSI. If you produce scientific results using a program, but your program does not produce reproducible results, but scientific results will not be reproducible. ”
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Software is used everywhere in science. Even for simple things, such as generating graphs, a specialized program is sometimes required, not to mention software for processing huge amounts of data collected by scientific instruments.

When scientists develop programs, this is fraught with problems. The only error in the code leads to obtaining results that at first glance look innocent, but in reality turn out to be wrong.

Situations have repeatedly arisen when scientific journals refused to publish articles due to errors in home-made software . The situation is aggravated by the fact that many “buggy” programs are transferred from one research team to others, which multiplies the number of errors.

Representatives of the Software Sustainability Institute believe that it is necessary to conduct trainings for scientists on writing software, publish the source code of each program and check its quality.

UPD. Translation of press release from Software Sustainability Institute , Excel spreadsheet with survey results