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Open v. Closed Source-Climate Change Research

Posted by timothy on from the it's-only-a-model dept.

theidocles writes "The ongoing debate over the 'hockey stick' climate graph has an interesting side note. McKitrick & McIntyre (M&M), the critics, have published their complete source code and it's written using the well-known R statistics package (covered by the GPL). Mann, Bradley & Hughes, the defenders, described their algorithm but have only released part of their source code, and refuse to divulge the rest, which really makes it look like they have some errors/omissions to hide (they did publish the data they used). There's an issue of open source vs closed source as well as how much publicly-funded researchers should be required to disclose - should they be allowed to generate 'closed-source' solutions at the taxpayers' expense?"

5 of 443 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It should be called argh! by the_womble · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Have you tried a google search for "r statistics"? Guesss what comes top?

  2. Taxpayer's expense? by flajann · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Rather than worrying about whether taxpayers should be paying for closed-sourced solutions, ask the question of why taxpayers are paying taxes at all, given that the ROI is mighty poor.

    Eliminate compulsory taxes, which are unconstitutional anyway, and let people choose where their money goes, if it goes anywhere at all.

    That way, silly projects like this would never see any funding.

    --
    Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
  3. Re:How much is enough? by ghoti · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    From your sig: they called it "San Diego", which of course in German means "a whale's vagina".
    Where did you hear that? "San Diego" doesn't mean anything in German, and doesn't even sound close to anything ...
    --
    EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
  4. Re:How much is enough? by Taladar · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Even with the source in the (invisible to most) AC reply it still looks stupid to everything speaking german. I would suggest a sig change.

    --
    Linux is not Windows
  5. y9uo fail it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    becom3 obsessed his cla5h with