Cargo Cult Science
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
A term popularized by Richard Feynman for work that imitates the appearance of scientific rigor without the substance of honest testing and self-correction. In tech culture it is often invoked when experiments, metrics, or AI demos look rigorous but avoid real falsification.
In plain English: Work that looks scientific on the surface but lacks real rigor underneath.
Example: "The dashboard-heavy growth presentation felt like cargo cult science because it had lots of charts and no serious attempt to rule out obvious confounders."