Science is being transformed so that massive computation is central to scientific experiments, with scientists using computer code to analyze huge amounts of data. Computational science might be used to study climate change, to simulate the formation of galaxies, for biomolecular modeling or for mining a vast set of data looking for patterns. But, Stodden says, this relatively new form of scientific inquiry has not yet developed standards for communicating the details of how the work was done or for validating results. The lack of such standards is causing a credibility crisis, Stodden says. Her research looks at the "reproducibility" of computational science -- how findings can be verified and an experiment replicated or used as a basis for further research.
