Cargo Cult Science¶
Feynman, R. P. (1974). Cargo Cult Science. Engineering and Science, 37(7), 10-13.
Retired. This entry was not a citation. Our extractor stored an inline prose definition from the article as though it were a bibliographic record: the title names a concept rather than a published work, and the citation text names no work at all. The page is kept because links to it still resolve, but it is withdrawn from the reference list. This entry is kept so the citations that pointed at it still resolve, and so the correction is visible rather than silent.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Mechanisms¶
- Essential/Incidental Feature Sort
- Its central risk is exactly the pathology it fights — cargo-cult reasoning, mistaking a salient surface feature for the cause because it is what you can see.
This sourceDescribes cargo-cult science as reproducing the outward forms of inquiry while omitting the practices that make those forms causally effective.
- Its central risk is exactly the pathology it fights — cargo-cult reasoning, mistaking a salient surface feature for the cause because it is what you can see.
- Genre/Form Fit Checklist
- A genuinely novel genre mismatch passes clean, and a passed checklist breeds false confidence — the form is adopted because the boxes were ticked, a surface imitation of fit rather than the real thing.
This sourceDefines the cargo-cult failure as copying a practice's visible form without the substance that gives the form its value.
- A genuinely novel genre mismatch passes clean, and a passed checklist breeds false confidence — the form is adopted because the boxes were ticked, a surface imitation of fit rather than the real thing.
- Lightweight Replication Playbook
- Its central failure mode is cargo-cult replication: readers copy the visible steps, skip the conditions, and produce a hollow imitation that looks right and doesn't work
This sourceDefines cargo-cult replication as copying visible forms while omitting essential conditions, producing an imitation that looks right but does not work.
- Its central failure mode is cargo-cult replication: readers copy the visible steps, skip the conditions, and produce a hollow imitation that looks right and doesn't work
- Scientific Claim Evaluation Template
- Its failure mode is ritual: fields filled with box-ticking boilerplate that satisfy the form while performing none of the thought — the paperwork equivalent of what Feynman called cargo-cult science, where the outward motions are copied but the substance that made them work is absent.
This sourceCharacterizes cargo-cult science as copying science's outward forms and apparent precepts while missing an essential element of scientific integrity.
- Its failure mode is ritual: fields filled with box-ticking boilerplate that satisfy the form while performing none of the thought — the paperwork equivalent of what Feynman called cargo-cult science, where the outward motions are copied but the substance that made them work is absent.
- Team-to-Organization Process Translation
- Team-to-Organization Process Translation starts by refusing the obvious move — copying the visible ritual, the meeting template and the five-whys document — because that is cargo-cult adoption: reproducing the form
This sourceDescribes cargo-cult practice as reproducing visible forms while omitting the essential substance.
- Team-to-Organization Process Translation starts by refusing the obvious move — copying the visible ritual, the meeting template and the five-whys document — because that is cargo-cult adoption: reproducing the form
Verification¶
Does it exist? Not checked yet. This entry carries no identifier to resolve. It was extracted from the citation as written in the article, normalized, and deduplicated against the rest of the registry.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 5 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
Was it audited? Yes. A second, independent pass read the citation against the article text and recorded a verdict.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 2 other ways.
- https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechES:37.7.CargoCult ×3
- https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/ ×2
Registry ID ref:eff37e06a604 · see in the full table