Re: "Cargo cult science is a bit harsh for most."
Granted someone deserves being named and shamed for this fiasco. There is a point at which one has to trust someone else to their job correctly. The vendors apparently did not bother to properly test or more telling did not apparently publish their data. To me, the principle blame falls on the vendors because they claimed they did their job correctly and obviously failed. The researchers get a much smaller portion for not asking the correct questions up front which may be obvious in hindsight.
I remember a metallurgy professor commenting about crack detection equipment. Vendors tout the smallest crack it can find. But he said one should ask what is the biggest crack it will miss. The size of the crack is critical when trying to determine if a fatigue failure will occur. And I wonder how many fatigue failures occur because this overlooked. This situation sounds similar. The researchers may not have know the right questions to ask until now.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
