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.

Comments

Re:Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

[Rogerborg]

If a lab has spent a long time, let's say 10 years, accumulating some hard fought data

If a lab has been spending my tax money for 10 years, I want my employees to give me my data right Goddamn now.

The "reward" for doing publicly funded research is that you keep getting funded. I don't care one whit what you think you're entitled to: if you're taking my money, you work for me.

Re:Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

[TapeCutter]

"This hubbub all came about because of the difficulty in prying the source data out of the hands of the guy who produced the "hockey stick" figures. It's covered in the book "Broken Consensus" I think it's called. The "hockey stick" is not the "source data", the source data is all of the individual readings from all the instruments, prior to corrections for sampling errors or known issues. One cannot verify the quality of the "hockey stick" result without having the source data and being able to verify the processing steps that were done to it."

I threw away some mod points because it irks me how unskeptical the garden variety climate skeptic actually is when it comes to accepting the hockey stick has been discredited. Here are a few points you should consider with your skeptics hat on...

1. Mann's original hockey stick was published in the jounal Nature, they are not well known for publishing shoddy work.

2. A senate inquisition was held on Mann's paper in which the National Acedemies of science were called in to give expert testimony on the veracity of Mann's paper. As you will no doubt learn when reading the testimony the NAS came down firmly in favour of Mann although they did highlight some minor technical problems.

3. Given that the NAS were able to agree with Mann's conclusions under oath at a hostile inquisition, how did they do so without access to the data?

4. The journal science is also not well known for publishing shoddy work. So why did NAS then publish a follow up study by Mann in their journal Science if they were not satisfied he had no only addressed the minor technical problems in the original but also greatly increaed the robustness of the findings?

5. Why can't I find a listing for a book called "broken consensus" which you cite as a source? Shouldn't you at least adhere to your own standards of evidence?

6. How do you explain the links to the data and methods found in an article called Dummies guide to the hockey stick on Mann's website?

7. Why do people belive that some difficult to obtain data (ie: time consuming) from a few nations means that the other 99.99999% of the raw data available on the web is insuffitient to recreate the hockey stick?

8. Why is McIntrye only interested in "auditing" climate science that disagrees with his opinion? Could this be because his own paper did not stand up to the traditional auditing method called "the test of time"?

If the above points do not at least cause you to question your sources then I can only conclude your sketics hat must have slipped down over your eyes...