Well, it's not my analogy. But I think it's a good one, it just undermines the point of the person who made it.
If I go into Momofuko, I'm looking for a good meal. A good meal is one that tastes good, in this case. If I'm looking at a Julia Child cookbook, I'm looking for a good recipe. One of the criteria for a good recipe may be that it tastes good, or that it produces a healthy meal -- there's several different criteria you can use here. But one criteria for a good recipe is reproducibility -- in order for a recipe to be good it must contain enough information and be accurate enough for me to create the dish that the recipe is for. A recipe for a tasty meal that does not contain the right ingredients or enough detail in the steps to prepare it is a bad recipe.
By the same token, an experiment that cannot be repeated is a bad experiment. It may not be false. But its explanatory value is limited -- if a reaction can only take place in water that's treated a certain way or has/lacks certain minerals, then a paper that doesn't tell me that is leaving out important information. Regardless of whether or not you define the point of cancer research in purely scientific terms -- that is, to learn more about cancer -- or in more pragmatic terms -- that is, to allow us to create better cancer treatments -- omitted information about the circumstances surrounding the test that has a significant effect on the test result gives us less information and is less likely to lead to better cancer treatments.
If I go into Momofuko, I'm looking for a good meal. A good meal is one that tastes good, in this case. If I'm looking at a Julia Child cookbook, I'm looking for a good recipe. One of the criteria for a good recipe may be that it tastes good, or that it produces a healthy meal -- there's several different criteria you can use here. But one criteria for a good recipe is reproducibility -- in order for a recipe to be good it must contain enough information and be accurate enough for me to create the dish that the recipe is for. A recipe for a tasty meal that does not contain the right ingredients or enough detail in the steps to prepare it is a bad recipe.
By the same token, an experiment that cannot be repeated is a bad experiment. It may not be false. But its explanatory value is limited -- if a reaction can only take place in water that's treated a certain way or has/lacks certain minerals, then a paper that doesn't tell me that is leaving out important information. Regardless of whether or not you define the point of cancer research in purely scientific terms -- that is, to learn more about cancer -- or in more pragmatic terms -- that is, to allow us to create better cancer treatments -- omitted information about the circumstances surrounding the test that has a significant effect on the test result gives us less information and is less likely to lead to better cancer treatments.