Shouldnt this question be moved instead of closed ?
I'm a little disappointed that How can Single Vision lenses slow myopia for adults too? was deemed off topic. Can anyone explain to me why?
It is indeed science speculation, it should be on rigorous sciences. The author linked multiple sources and made a good question, pointing out what makes him ask the question, with tons of information. It's well written. Why close instead of move?
2 answers
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First, moving questions rewards people for asking in the wrong place. That's not something that should be encouraged.
Second, that's not a great question because it requires following links to get pertinent points. Information necessary for understanding a question must be in the question itself.
Third, the actual question doesn't make sense. Premises seem to be
- There are lenses advertised to control myopia in children.
- The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) has not approved these lenses.
The question then asks how these lenses can work for adults too.
The fact that the FDA hasn't approve the existing lenses even for children casts doubts on whether they work at all. In any case, all seem to agree that they don't work on adults, so asking how they can doesn't make sense. They don't.
The OP could possibly have asked by what mechanism these lenses seem to work, and why those don't apply to adults, but that's not what was asked.
It's not our job to fix messes. We close and move on. Doing anything else only encourages more messes.
On topic for the community name only
The question could be assumed to be on topic for the name of this community: "Scientific Speculation". It is indeed a speculative question about science that hasn't been discovered yet, extrapolated from science that is still in the process of being tested.
Likely off topic for the community purpose
Like many websites, the name does not fully describe the purpose. The top of the Q&A category states the purpose for this category:
General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
This community is for people who are building a fictional world, and want to establish what would be realistic. For example, they may be making board games, computer games, screenplays, or novels.
The separate category "Rigorous Science" is still serving the same purpose, just with a stricter requirement for well founded science.
Grey areas
Different people may ask the same question for different purposes, so there will always be grey areas where it is not clear if a question is on topic.
In this particular example, it is possible someone might want to ask about preventing sight deterioration in adults as part of their work on a novel set in the near future, but that does not appear to be the case here.
For any community it is difficult to define exactly what is on topic, so the scope is refined over time by discussion on Meta. Now that you've identified this example, anyone is free to make the case for it being on topic, or for more generally accepting scientific questions that are not related to building fictional worlds.
By discussion and voting the community will decide what should count as on topic. By the current guidance, the example appears to be off topic to me personally.
Existing documentation
You can find guidance in the Scientific Speculation help section, which in particular includes the Frequently Asked Questions.
New communities
If you'd like Codidact to have a new community where scientific questions in general are on topic, or a community for a specific branch of science, or anything else, you can propose it at Codidact Proposals.
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