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UK University Researchers Must Make Data Available
Sara Chan writes "In a landmark ruling, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office has decided that researchers at a university must make all their data available to the public. The decision follows from a three-year battle by mathematician Douglas J. Keenan, who wants the data to do his own analysis on it. The university researchers have had the data for many years, and have published several papers using the data, but had refused to make the data available. The data in this case pertains to global warming, but the decision is believed to apply to any field: scientists at universities, which are all public in the UK, can now not claim data from publicly-funded research as their private property."
There's more at the BBC, at Nature Climate Feedback, and at Keenan's site.
The public pays for gathering the data, the public should have access to that data. Kinda hard to find fault with that.
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Science journals have long fought this, because their profit model is strongest when they own copyright and are the exclusive publishers of a paper. Peer review and scientific principles don't mesh well with peer review though, and many academes have either "published" their papers on their own websites or found other ways to try to work around the journals.
Ridding peer review and science of copyright would be a great improvement.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
"Scientists" scared of goofy analysis are priests, not scientists. Take their funding away and use their PhD parchment for toilet paper.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
On the other hand, this will likely produce a whole stream of deliberately inaccurate analyses with ulterior motives behind them.
But with the data public, it'll be easier to shoot them down for picking, choosing, skewing, and what else.
There is no reason why this kind of data should ever be "secret"
Phil Willis, a Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Science and Technology Select Committee, said that scientists now needed to work on the presumption that if research is publicly funded, the data ought to be made publicly available.
That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Appendices with raw data are often included already in the online editions of journals. Of course, if the ruling applies to all data generated in the course of a study, whether it is used in publications or not, it could be onerous indeed.
That doesn't matter. The important thing is that the attacks are made. Even if every one is shown to be completely wrong, people will still remember all those (erroneous) anti-global warming reports. Especially since the media will enthusiastically report the initial attack and relegate the news of its rebuttal to a small paragraph on page 34, if they report it at all.
I am more concerned with the time and effort it will take to format data for external users.
An accompanying more detailed methodology will surely have to be provided for the data to be used correctly.
That is indeed an issue. Presumably the methodology is already published, as is the rule for scientific papers. What could happen is that competent scientists have to waste their time debunking incompetent analyses by axe-grinding cranks.
Actually, if the requirement is specified up front as terms for the grant, I'm not opposed to it. I don't think it'll do any good, mind you, as a rule all that's useful is published, and scientists are generally happy to cooperate if you need more, as long as you have honest intent. But the current system is a charter for arseholes using FoI requests to harass scientists.
But with the data public, it'll be easier to shoot them down for picking, choosing, skewing, and what else.
Not sure what regulations are on "release all data to the public" but seems like there are loopholes big enough to drive a bus through. For instance, in my field, no one but me knows how many cells I looked at. Maybe that thing I said happens in these cells happens in all those cells. Maybe I looked at 300 before seeing one doing what I said, took a picture of that one, and that was that. All my data would be that one cell I cherrypicked.
Even if I did take pictures of all 300, no one knows but me. Those other 299 can dissapear.
If I'm -not- evil though, this could hurt me. If I looked at say 3000 cells, and 10 were doing a thing that I thought was significant, I could have my reasons. Maybe the other 2990 were the wrong cell type or something. Being the expert, that might be obvious to me just from looking at them. A non expert looking at them might not see that. They would just see that out of 3000 cells, I chose the 10 that supported my data. They might call foul without bothering to have me explain myself.
There's no reason the data should be secret, but most data doesn't stand on it's own, and writing up supporting information to -all data gathered- just isn't going to happen.
errr... no always.
Putting data into peoples hands whoa aren't experts often leads to bad things. See every non expert who believed Wakefield study because they didn't understand how to interpret data. In that case kids died , and kids are still dying.
In principle I agree with you, but we live in an are where everyone thinks they are a qualified expert in anything. That simply isn't true, and no good will come out of this.
The data wan't show a flaw in the study because it wasn't used, but he will inevitably cherry pick data to 'prove' the study is wrong. And people like Hannah Devlin are always happy to publish claims without proper study. So no good can come from this, and people need to understand that.
It's hard problem to solve.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You say that until he gets on a major talk show, talks about his improperly interpret results and suddenly 20 million people are parroting his incorrect results.
Suddenly it's not a good thing because those same outlets will not give the same time to actual experts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What could happen is that competent scientists have to waste their time debunking incompetent analyses by axe-grinding cranks.
It's much more likely that incompetent scientists will be debunked by more competent analysis, because as soon as there is any controversy regarding a study the scientific community swarms to verify one way or the other.
Also, it's just as important to know what data was disregarded, and why (there are a plethora of valid reasons, but there are even more invalid reasons) as it is to know what was included. The GP's point about the tree ring data that was collected but never used, why wasn't it used? Was it simply because they weren't interested in doing a tree-ring study, and used the data for something else entirely? Or did it make their model not work quite right so they tossed it out? How is anybody to know if they can't look at the data they collected?
Furthermore, if the raw data is not provided, you cannot verify that the models and statistical conclusions are correct. What if there is a problem with the model the researchers were using? Well, if you plug the data into a better model, or even just a different model, you'll see a big difference if one of them is wrong. Climate science relies heavily on computer models, and often multiple researchers will use the exact same model in their study, so it's not hard to get a systemic error across multiple studies.
In other words, how can you verify anybody's science without the original data they observed to begin with? I'm never going to look at this data, I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it, but I know there are a lot of climate researchers who are chomping at the bit to verify these studies.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
"No good"?
None?
Are you quite sane?
If people cannot replicate your results it isn't science.
And with Climate Science part of the process is showing how you collected and interpreted the data. If you are not willing to share the raw data so other researchers can attempt to replicate your methods and results then don't bother publishing.
MOD PARENT UP!!
The problem that the climate scientists have created for themselves is that they are hiding the data from everyone. Up until a few months ago, these requests were relatively rare. Some of the requesting parties actually have fairly strong credentials. Steve McIntyre may be hated by the folk at realclimate, but he is an IPCC reviewer. To stonewall him is a little different than refusing to provide it to Jenny McCarthy.
As opposed to the proselytizers who are funded by the NGO's and the new "Green" capitalists and rent-seekers.
One of the more interesting bits of the Climategate emails showed that Mann was happy to share his data EXCEPT to people who he thought would disagree with his methods and results.
And in this case Mann was also the recipient of the tree ring data showing that again if you agreed with the owners ideas he had no problem getting you copies of what you needed.
For many academic scientists (i.e. professors, post-docs, graduate students), a part of their pay is the ability to publish their research findings. It takes long thought and work to devise and carry out experiments which gather pertinent data. It's not unreasonable to allow some time for these scientists to analyze their data and properly understand it.
If you mandate all data be immediately made public, the researcher can be "scooped" by anyone. This is bad for science because it removes the incentive to actually gather the data. This is one argument for why data may be kept internal, at least for a while.
I am a pretty big cynic, and I remain unconvinced that AGW is a significant problem. It doesn't help that the raw data isn't disclosed. I wish scientists would go back to doing science and quit trying to be policy makers.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
The problem is that we dont apply the same standard to a talk show as we do to a scientific institution.
If a talk show spreads incorrect information absolutely nothing happens, if a scientific institution does the same there will be a royal commission, investigation, scrutiny and even if they are found innocent someone's career is still ruined.
What we need is to get rid of the double standard, lets just say if Box News makes a deliberately misleading statement about the Australian Hoop Snake they should be investigates, charged and the editor, producer and reporter fired and barred from working in the media field again. If we started giving news agencies with the same scrutiny and punishments as universities then the level of misinformation would drop dramatically.
Published scientific reports should also have the data published publicly, however there should be severe punishments for the misuse of this data to spread misinformation and attempts to ruin careers.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If a lab has been spending my tax money for 10 years, I want my employees to give me my data right Goddamn now. .....if you're taking my money, you work for me.
Just stop and think for a second about exactly what it is that us scientists are being paid to do. We are NOT being paid to collect data we are being paid to figure out how the world works and how to apply that knowledge for the betterment of mankind. The data is an end towards that means.
Now, do you REALLY want us to spend a serious fraction of our time and money preparing and making available the raw data in a form which will probably be useless to you instead of analysing and coming up with results which you are far more likely to find useful? Is that REALLY the best way for us to serve the public interest?
Examples of how this could go horribly wrong immediately come to mind: it could delay finding medical cures as researchers spend time releasing, instead of analysing data, companies could request the data and develop/patent drugs which YOU will then pay through the nose for, nutters will start horribly misrepresenting the data to "prove" their pet theory on warp drive etc. etc. How does any of this serve the public interest?
If you want an even clearer example: taxpayers fund each country's intelligence agencies. So does this mean that since you own all the data every tax payer should be able to request to see it whenever they want? Obviously not because it would not be in YOUR best interest for such data to be public. While the reasons are different the conclusion is the same for scientific data. It may be your data but you are paying us to collect it, analyse it and come up with results which ultimately improve yours, and everyone else's, standard of living.
Unfortunately, Climategate proved that, at least in the field of climate research, "peer review" is worthless; Mann et al were actively conspiring to ensure that only "friendly" eyes carried out the reviews; anyone thought to be showing signs of scepticism were blacklisted, whether individuals or publications.
To add to that, Glaciergate proved that much of what was claimed to be peer-reviewed was actually just regurgitated propaganda, often based on anecdotal evidence (reminisces of mountaineers published in a student rag? Puh-lease!)
So, appeals to authority ("oh but all this research has been peer reviewed") just don't hold any more. Not until all the data and all the methods used to arrive at the results are made available, and the results can be independently confirmed or denied, can we say whether the research was worth the weight of mouldy notebooks it was archived on.
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
Simply generating massive amounts of data isn't considered science - figuring out what it means is. I say this as someone who is very good at generating data quickly, but not particularly good at interpreting it.
Spot on. I have a PhD in Comp. Sci. (Multi-Agent Systems / Market Based Control). One of the things you learn (maybe in you Universitity degree courses or in your first paper presentation) is that data does not mean *anything*, what matters is the interpretation of such data.
Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that programs used for the generation / manipulation of such data should also be free / scrutinable. Specially those developped during the research as they are also being paid by the tax payers money.
In the field I am working now (Agent based computational economics) a lot of people do these so called agent-based simulations, then they write a nice paper about what their simulations showed and try to publish it. The problem is that they keep their code! and in that respect they are deffinitely removing a good chunk of the "methods" part of their research. It is absolutely impossible to duplicate that work without the code.
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