Call For Scientific Research Code To Be Released

Pentagram writes "Professor Ince, writing in the Guardian, has issued a call for scientists to make the code they use in the course of their research publicly available. He focuses specifically on the topical controversies in climate science, and concludes with the view that researchers who are able but unwilling to release programs they use should not be regarded as scientists. Quoting: 'There is enough evidence for us to regard a lot of scientific software with worry. For example Professor Les Hatton, an international expert in software testing resident in the Universities of Kent and Kingston, carried out an extensive analysis of several million lines of scientific code. He showed that the software had an unacceptably high level of detectable inconsistencies. For example, interface inconsistencies between software modules which pass data from one part of a program to another occurred at the rate of one in every seven interfaces on average in the programming language Fortran, and one in every 37 interfaces in the language C. This is hugely worrying when you realise that just one error — just one — will usually invalidate a computer program. What he also discovered, even more worryingly, is that the accuracy of results declined from six significant figures to one significant figure during the running of programs.'"

Comments

Then give legal liability shield too

[orzetto]

The reason many researchers, especially climate scientists, are not so happy about divulging their models and data is that they can be sued by crackpots, as it has already happened. Even if they are proven right, a lawsuit is an expensive business. I can already imagine hordes of Exxon sockpuppets suing any random climate scientist they don't like.

Granting immunity from lawsuit should make them more willing to share data. Anyway, if something really bad is found in the research, the researcher will have their reputation tarnished, which in the environment is bad enough to ruin a career.

By the way: I am a researcher, and I attached the source code of my models in the PDF version of my PhD dissertation.

Re:This is not science.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Phil Jones and CRU had released a long time ago ALL THE DATA HE WAS LEGALLY ALLOWED TO DO and PUBLISHED his algorithms and code what is is your complaint? If you have a bitch with CRU TELLING YOU THAT YOU CANN'T HAVE Indian data talk to prime minister Manmohan Singh who insists that the Indian government be paid for it's met data in violation of it's agreement with the WMO. May be your talking about McIntyre who sent Briffa of CRU a collection of tree ring data and then spewed bullshit in the denialosphere that CRU and Briffa were with holding self same tree ring data Maybe your talking about Tony Watts and his surfacestations.org. You know the one where Watts claimed that all the surface data stations were located badly and that CAUSED THE TEMPERATURES TO BE TO HIGH, except when Menee et al used Watts data and software Menee et al found that poor siting of stations UNDERESTIMATED THE TEMPERATURE