The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: A pragmatic guide to assessing empirical evaluations
Authors
Azul
H2O
Neurensic
Google
Charles University
DATA61
University of Alberta
McGill University
Australian National University
Ghent University
University of Kent
IBM Research
University of Waterloo
Saarland University
Università della Svizzera italiana
Microsoft
Oracle
Abstract
An unsound claim can misdirect a field, encouraging the pursuit of unworthy ideas and the abandonment of promising ideas. An inadequate description of a claim can make it difficult to reason about the claim, for example, to determine whether the claim is sound. Many practitioners will acknowledge the threat of unsound claims or inadequate descriptions of claims to their field. We believe that this situation is exacerbated, and even encouraged, by the lack of a systematic approach to exploring, exposing, and addressing the source of unsound claims and poor exposition. This article proposes a framework that identifies three sins of reasoning that lead to unsound claims and two sins of exposition that lead to poorly described claims and evaluations. Sins of exposition obfuscate the objective of determining whether or not a claim is sound, while sins of reasoning lead directly to unsound claims. Our framework provides practitioners with a principled way of critiquing the integrity of their own work and the work of others. We hope that this will help individuals conduct better science and encourage a cultural shift in our research community to identify and promulgate sound claims.
BibTeX Entry
@article{Blackburn_DHSABBCEFFHHHJKKNZ_16_2,
publisher = {ACM},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2983574},
month = oct,
journal = {ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems},
year = {2016},
issue = {4},
volume = {38},
title = {The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth: {A} Pragmatic Guide to Assessing Empirical
Evaluations},
author = {Blackburn, Stephen and Diwan, Amer and Hauswirth, Matthias and Sweeney, Peter and Amaral, Jos\'{e}
Nelson and Brecht, Tim and Bulej, Lubom\'{\i}r and Click, Cliff and Eeckhout, Lieven and
Fischmeister, Sebastian and Frampton, Daniel and Hendren, Laurie and Hind, Michael and Hosking, Tony
and Jones, Richard and Kalibera, Tomas and Keynes, Nathan and Nystrom, Nathaniel and Zeller, Andreas},
date = {2016-10-1},
pages = {15:1-20}
}
BibTeX