I think the real issue is that Anonymous Coward has dissociative identity disorder. He/She/It keeps making statements and then disagreeing with him/her/itself.
At my university, this is already the policy, more or less. If you develop software and release it GPL, they'll let you be. But otherwise, they own everything you produce. This is also true for most companies. Interestingly, if a history prof writes a book, he gets to keep all the profit. But if you as an engineer or programmer develop something and try to sell it without the university, even if done on your own time, the university will claim a conflict of interest and claim ownership. Many corporations do this as well. In some cases this may have some merit in that you have additional resources that you wouldn't otherwise have, and therefore couldn't have done this without corporate help. But in many cases the individual truly is developing this on their own - and the corporate entity still claims it. My thinking is that if corporations want to raid the fruits of their employees' off hours activity, they ought to be forced to take it to court. Of course, the only way this can be fair is if the corporation pays the entire court cost including that of the employee (will never happen). Likewise, the employee should have taken pains to demonstrate that their product was produced independent of corporate resources. Finally, if the employee wins, he keeps his job, keeps his invention, and keeps his money (having no court costs).
Sorry if I'm a bit discombobulated... I keep restarting my typing due to a certain two year old...
It is a laptop... On many of my laptops, setting jumpers is only possible by taking the whole dang thing apart, and laptops are much harder to disassemble (correctly) than are desktops. On my old Toshiba Satellite, I have to strip it to the frame to get to the CMOS battery (which, in theory, will never go bad).
I just hope Samsung can figure this out. I was starting to like their products.
He was crucified on the cross.
He died.
He descended into hell.
On the third day, he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of god.
So... if you believe that sort of thing, it worked out pretty well.:-)
And the people using said guns to defend our rights are in our military. In fact, in this age of our country, they have chosen to go into our military voluntarily so that our pacifist friends don't have to. This is a very important point in that it means that not every member of our society needs to take on the moral burden of killing others, even if it is for a justified purpose. If there isn't a moral burden, then why are many firing squads mostly issued blanks? The members of our military are in an honorable profession and are certainly needed with many of the nuts (Bin Laden) out there. But please don't denigrate people who chose not to bring violence into their lives. Jesus was, after all, a pacifist, and a great many of the gun users I know are also Christian.
It seems this poor fellow was modded "troll" for expressing a legitimate opinion that is contrary to that of many of the gun proponents on this site. People are entitled to their opinions. If this guy was rude, it would be a different story.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association founded in 1943 to "fight socialized medicine and to fight the government takeover of medicine."[1][2] The group was reported to have approximately 4,000 members in 2005, and 3,000 in 2011.[1][3] Many of the political and scientific viewpoints advocated by AAPS are considered extreme or dubious by other medical groups.[1] Notable members include Ron Paul and John Cooksey;[4] the executive director is Jane Orient, a member of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
AAPS publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (formerly known as the Medical Sentinel). The Journal is not indexed by mainstream scientific databases such as the Web of Science or MEDLINE.[5] The quality and scientific validity of articles published in the Journal has been criticized by others.
Does this answer your question about her opinion vis-a-vis the medical establishment?
Many of us got into academia because in addition to enjoying teaching we thought:
There would be more vacation
There would be more schedule flexibility
There would be more job security
All of these have since gone down the tubes. Even in non-tenure track jobs, one has to do advising and committee work (at least at our school). The next big thing is to teach evenings and weekends because that's more convenient for students. I'm already doing that, and it means that one can't actually go anywhere or do anything. My wife, who is an adjunct, is a facing a 35% pay cut plus a 30% increase in course load in a Pennsylvania State school. Generally, I always have overload and can't say no, or they'll get someone else. And that 12 hour a day thing, that's peanuts. Around here, I get home from work and fire up the laptop to grade papers and respond to emails until about 11pm. I've been working over X-mas "break" almost constantly, writing reference letters, doing two new preps for next term, and dealing with last minute grade changes from last term. The only day I actually got to take off was X-mas day when we went to see the Hobbit. Most of my colleagues are basically in the same boat.
One of my buddies with a Ph.D. got hired out of his adjunct job by a chemical engineering company. He says he's now making about twice as much, can't take his work home (yea!), sees his family in the evenings and on weekends, and gets more true vacation.
Almost nobody I talk to outside of academia has any idea of what life is really like. The Forbes journalist comes off as being completely out of touch.
His behaviors are _similar_ to those of a spammer in number only. Having visited his site: http://www.peacefire.org/ it seems that he gets his email list from people subscribing to it on his site. If I understand it correctly, people who sign up for this list are looking for regular updates to proxies so that they can avoid censorship. As proxies are discovered by governments or certain companies , they are blacklisted, and new proxies must be created and sent out to the interested masses:
"Of course, employees of blocking software companies have gotten on this list as well, so they add our sites to their blocked-site database as soon as we mail them out, but in most places it takes 3-4 days for the blocked-site list to be updated. So the latest one that we mail out, should usually still work. "
Now it could be that there is a better way of doing this, but it seems to me that no matter how this game is played, constant updates to users should be the norm...
Now that I think of it, perhaps a Firefox extension could do the trick. Signed extensions can be updated automatically. The extension could have obfuscated URLs that are decrypted with something like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/domcrypt/ and then wired in to automatically select an available proxy from the current batch. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it solves the "spam" problem. Also, it maybe easier for users and harder for censors? Crap... now I'm not going to get any work done...
Bingo. Good summary. I gave up using my own server to send email a couple of years ago for precisely these reasons. It wasn't worth trying to get de-blacklisted every few weeks because my server had an obscure domain name. If I recall, when I sent out more than 10 emails in a batch (we're talking maybe as many as 30) to members of a class, this triggered the anti-spam bots. When I did it from gmail or from other major providers, things worked beautifully. I had too many irons in the fire to deal with this, and while I would love to use my own server's email capability, it's not worth it anymore.
"He is a very eccentric person; there is no question. He is a very complex person. In fact, in one instance in August, I had heard a rumor that he had in fact killed somebody, and I asked him about that. And he says, “That he actively encouraged the rumors about him.” And I said, “Why would you do that?” He said, “Because I wanted people to be scared of me.” He said, “Remember I am living here, in a place where I feel very threatened. Where I think people are trying to harm me, and I want them to be afraid of me, and if they think that I am capable of some brutality, then all the better” So clearly he is living a life that most people would never choose, never even dream of. And yet, I asked him, point blank, “Why don’t you leave? If you think people are trying to kill you, why don’t you leave?” He says, “I love it here! What do you mean?” That’s why I said he is complex; it is very hard to figure him out."
There are some other interviews with or stories by Josh Davis who has interviewed him for over 100 hours over 6 months.
From Publishers Weekly:
"Oreskes and Conway tell an important story about the misuse of science to mislead the public on matters ranging from the risks of smoking to the reality of global warming. The people the authors accuse in this carefully documented book are themselves scientists—mostly physicists, former cold warriors who now serve a conservative agenda, and vested interests like the tobacco industry. The authors name these scientists—all with powerful connections in government and the media—including Robert Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, and S. Fred Singer. Seven compelling chapters detail seven issues (acid rain, the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the banning of DDT) in which this group aimed to sow seeds of public doubt on matters of settled science. They did so by casting aspersions on the science and the scientists who produce it. Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at UC–San Diego, and science writer Conway also emphasize how journalists and Internet bloggers uncritically repeat these charges. This book deserves serious attention for the lessons it provides about the misuse of science for political and commercial ends. "
Mod up... As usual, we in the US seem to think we are above the law....
Don't you guys watch any Steven Seagal? Wait...he's not from Texas...nevermind...
I couldn't agree more. At my school we use ANGEL which (IMHO) is head and shoulders above much of the competition for course management. Many of us take large amounts of time putting up functionality that is similar to what the textbook publishers have: online quizzes, screencasts and the like so that students don't have to pay twice. If such content is on ANGEL, they can access it without paying extra. Although in many schools, profs go with the costly textbooks because 1) they are familiar and therefore take up less time to plan a class around and 2) they get promoted based on their research so why bother putting more than the minimum effort into teaching? I have an ethical issue with professors who don't "profess" but let the publishers do most of the work. Often such folks get graders and grad students to actually do all the interactions with students. The bottom line is that you reap what you sow. If you as the instructor put time into the students and are willing to work with them to help understand the material even outside of class, the textbook matters little. If, on the other hand, you have a sink or swim mentality, and aren't willing to put in any effort in teaching your subject, then you might actually need the textbook publishers. When do the students benefit most?
Yeah... I did this too, but then got brought onto the carpet by an administrator for undermining bookstore profits. The book cost $140 new and $8.99 used and was for a class of non-majors.
Considering the huge costs of education these days, especially at big schools, it is unconscionable to require students to spend this amount of money. I've started switching students in my calc level physics classes over to MIT's Open Course Ware and students in my algebra level classes to the OpenStax College Physics textbook. I've found that much of what is in the price of commercially available physics books is name recognition and high quality photos. I have yet to find a good high quality, basic open source astronomy book for my gen-ed class.
If you follow that site, then you must know that the data is all publically available and has been for a long time. Here's the link where they summarize data sources.
It is everybody's job to get involved in politics in a democracy, whether they be scientists or no. And whereas we are all qualified to evaluate the merits of our politicians, there are very few of us who can evaluate the merits of science. In fact, it is often quite difficult to evaluate the merits of science outside of one's discipline.
Interestingly, the latest research shows that people who use cell phones more are less likely to suffer from Altzheimer's disease. It sounds like this is a non-issue.
So I was flying to Turkey last year for a conference. To do so, I had to fly a 737 Delta from Philly to NYC (about an hour), then catch a 767 to Istanbul, and finally catch a 737 to Antalya (also about an hour). On the Delta flight, we were told that due to the short duration of the flight, no refreshments would be served. On the flight from Istanbul to Antalya on Turkish Air, we were served a jumbo breakfast. The Turkish Air planes (both the 767 and the 737) were in much better condition than any American airplane I've been on in the last decade, regardless of carrier. The staff was more friendly, and the food was better. There was an unlimited selection of movies and the like for no extra charge on the overseas flight. Most American carriers that I have flown overseas were much more limited in the multimedia area either in selection (not so much) or cost (not free). I was shocked to find that Istanbul's airport was in much better condition than JFK's international terminal. My great experience with Turkish Air and poor experience with Delta was repeated on the far side of the trip.
The bottom line is two fold: 1) American carriers are terrible (at least compared to Turkish Air) and 2) All evidence I've seen lately points to the fact that America is falling out of the first world fast and has no idea.
Let me further state that I'm not happy about this at all - I'm just stating one of several examples I can come up with from personal experience. I fly overseas at least once a year, and domestically 3-4 times per year.
My favorite "data-based" proof of AGW skeptics is the "now that I've found the data sources finally I've done a simple graph of temperature vs. CO2 in excel which disproves AGW." The subtext to such comments is essentially that an outside analyst who only knows numbers (and not the field, or how the data were collected, or anything else other than computers and very basic statistics) is doing a correct analysis of the data whereas people who do understand the provenance of such data must be either hiding such findings as a community, or too incompetent to do a basic graph in excel. Furthermore such simple exercises ignore techniques like multiple linear regression (among others) which can account for the influence of multiple variables at the same time.
Knowing the method of data collection is crucial to correct analysis. In my previous life as an astronomer, we would typically image objects by taking four pictures: 1) an on wavelength on target image, 2) an on wavelength off target image, 3) an off wavelength on target image, and 4) an off wavelength off target image. Proper data reduction meant that you first found intensity on band due to the target (diff12): image 1)- image 2, then the blackbody offset for being on target (diff34): image 3) - image 4), and then the true intensity of the object in that wavelength diff12-diff34. It helps if you draw a picture. It also helps if you know what blackbody radiation is, the bandwidth of your filter, and a hundred other small things that you won't see if you are just presented with a cache of images. The point being that there are usually good reasons for collecting the data in a certain manner, and if you don't know what these are, you probably won't be able to reduce it correctly.
Does that mean that if you don't have an advanced degree in physics or climatology you shouldn't be able to come to the table and express your opinion? No. But many of the AGW skeptics seem unwilling to listen to the reasoning and experience of those who have been in the game for a while. It's almost as if I felt that my prior experience with a.22 rifle qualified me to tell General Petraeus how to run operations having not ever been on the ground in the Middle East. I am able to differentiate my opinion about the war from my ability to prosecute it. In the same way AWG critics need to understand that while they may bring some fresh ideas to the table, it is likely that much of their reasoning has already been rigorously examined and discarded by people with far more experience than them.
While personally I agree that in an ideal world journals should archive data used in publications, there are several real world issues:
Journals have a small circulation. This means that they already charge an arm and a leg per issue.
Journals have a small staff. In fact most reviews are sent out to unpaid 3rd parties because the journals don't have the in-house staff to do the reviews themselves.
Journals have very limited resources even when supported by publication giants such as Elsevier. Adding the burden of holding the raw and processed data along with source code for every one of the 20x articles per issue would require an increase in staff to maintain the additional server space, an increase in cost to support the additional IT geeks and servers, and would ultimately result in the journals NOT getting distributed due to cost-related issues.
Bottom line is that the journals would only do this under duress because it would hurt their bottom line and probably make the publication process even more forbidding than it currently is.
Now that said, there is an attempt to create open-access journals which I am all for, but this is still a bit of an experiment. Many faculty are evaluated for tenure based on the reputations of the journals which have accepted their articles. If I publish all my research to an unknown journal which is experimental and hasn't established either readership or gravitas, I'm not likely to be taken seriously by the community nor my peers when I am up for tenure. It's sad, but true.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the real issue is that Anonymous Coward has dissociative identity disorder. He/She/It keeps making statements and then disagreeing with him/her/itself.
At my university, this is already the policy, more or less. If you develop software and release it GPL, they'll let you be. But otherwise, they own everything you produce. This is also true for most companies. Interestingly, if a history prof writes a book, he gets to keep all the profit. But if you as an engineer or programmer develop something and try to sell it without the university, even if done on your own time, the university will claim a conflict of interest and claim ownership. Many corporations do this as well. In some cases this may have some merit in that you have additional resources that you wouldn't otherwise have, and therefore couldn't have done this without corporate help. But in many cases the individual truly is developing this on their own - and the corporate entity still claims it. My thinking is that if corporations want to raid the fruits of their employees' off hours activity, they ought to be forced to take it to court. Of course, the only way this can be fair is if the corporation pays the entire court cost including that of the employee (will never happen). Likewise, the employee should have taken pains to demonstrate that their product was produced independent of corporate resources. Finally, if the employee wins, he keeps his job, keeps his invention, and keeps his money (having no court costs).
Sorry if I'm a bit discombobulated... I keep restarting my typing due to a certain two year old...
I agree with you only...
It is a laptop... On many of my laptops, setting jumpers is only possible by taking the whole dang thing apart, and laptops are much harder to disassemble (correctly) than are desktops. On my old Toshiba Satellite, I have to strip it to the frame to get to the CMOS battery (which, in theory, will never go bad).
I just hope Samsung can figure this out. I was starting to like their products.
So... if you believe that sort of thing, it worked out pretty well. :-)
And the people using said guns to defend our rights are in our military. In fact, in this age of our country, they have chosen to go into our military voluntarily so that our pacifist friends don't have to. This is a very important point in that it means that not every member of our society needs to take on the moral burden of killing others, even if it is for a justified purpose. If there isn't a moral burden, then why are many firing squads mostly issued blanks? The members of our military are in an honorable profession and are certainly needed with many of the nuts (Bin Laden) out there. But please don't denigrate people who chose not to bring violence into their lives. Jesus was, after all, a pacifist, and a great many of the gun users I know are also Christian.
It seems this poor fellow was modded "troll" for expressing a legitimate opinion that is contrary to that of many of the gun proponents on this site. People are entitled to their opinions. If this guy was rude, it would be a different story.
Does this answer your question about her opinion vis-a-vis the medical establishment?
Many of us got into academia because in addition to enjoying teaching we thought:
All of these have since gone down the tubes. Even in non-tenure track jobs, one has to do advising and committee work (at least at our school). The next big thing is to teach evenings and weekends because that's more convenient for students. I'm already doing that, and it means that one can't actually go anywhere or do anything. My wife, who is an adjunct, is a facing a 35% pay cut plus a 30% increase in course load in a Pennsylvania State school. Generally, I always have overload and can't say no, or they'll get someone else. And that 12 hour a day thing, that's peanuts. Around here, I get home from work and fire up the laptop to grade papers and respond to emails until about 11pm. I've been working over X-mas "break" almost constantly, writing reference letters, doing two new preps for next term, and dealing with last minute grade changes from last term. The only day I actually got to take off was X-mas day when we went to see the Hobbit. Most of my colleagues are basically in the same boat.
One of my buddies with a Ph.D. got hired out of his adjunct job by a chemical engineering company. He says he's now making about twice as much, can't take his work home (yea!), sees his family in the evenings and on weekends, and gets more true vacation.
Almost nobody I talk to outside of academia has any idea of what life is really like. The Forbes journalist comes off as being completely out of touch.
His behaviors are _similar_ to those of a spammer in number only. Having visited his site: http://www.peacefire.org/ it seems that he gets his email list from people subscribing to it on his site. If I understand it correctly, people who sign up for this list are looking for regular updates to proxies so that they can avoid censorship. As proxies are discovered by governments or certain companies , they are blacklisted, and new proxies must be created and sent out to the interested masses:
Now it could be that there is a better way of doing this, but it seems to me that no matter how this game is played, constant updates to users should be the norm...
Now that I think of it, perhaps a Firefox extension could do the trick. Signed extensions can be updated automatically. The extension could have obfuscated URLs that are decrypted with something like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/domcrypt/ and then wired in to automatically select an available proxy from the current batch. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it solves the "spam" problem. Also, it maybe easier for users and harder for censors? Crap... now I'm not going to get any work done...
Mod up. This is a very good point. Closed systems like Facebook seem to work.
Bingo. Good summary. I gave up using my own server to send email a couple of years ago for precisely these reasons. It wasn't worth trying to get de-blacklisted every few weeks because my server had an obscure domain name. If I recall, when I sent out more than 10 emails in a batch (we're talking maybe as many as 30) to members of a class, this triggered the anti-spam bots. When I did it from gmail or from other major providers, things worked beautifully. I had too many irons in the fire to deal with this, and while I would love to use my own server's email capability, it's not worth it anymore.
"He is a very eccentric person; there is no question. He is a very complex person. In fact, in one instance in August, I had heard a rumor that he had in fact killed somebody, and I asked him about that. And he says, “That he actively encouraged the rumors about him.” And I said, “Why would you do that?” He said, “Because I wanted people to be scared of me.” He said, “Remember I am living here, in a place where I feel very threatened. Where I think people are trying to harm me, and I want them to be afraid of me, and if they think that I am capable of some brutality, then all the better” So clearly he is living a life that most people would never choose, never even dream of. And yet, I asked him, point blank, “Why don’t you leave? If you think people are trying to kill you, why don’t you leave?” He says, “I love it here! What do you mean?” That’s why I said he is complex; it is very hard to figure him out."
There are some other interviews with or stories by Josh Davis who has interviewed him for over 100 hours over 6 months.
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/14/165160275/anti-virus-software-pioneer-on-the-run-in-belize
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/threatlevel_1112_mcafee/
McAfee sounds crazy and paranoid, but that doesn't mean that people aren't out to get him.
From Publishers Weekly:
"Oreskes and Conway tell an important story about the misuse of science to mislead the public on matters ranging from the risks of smoking to the reality of global warming. The people the authors accuse in this carefully documented book are themselves scientists—mostly physicists, former cold warriors who now serve a conservative agenda, and vested interests like the tobacco industry. The authors name these scientists—all with powerful connections in government and the media—including Robert Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, and S. Fred Singer. Seven compelling chapters detail seven issues (acid rain, the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the banning of DDT) in which this group aimed to sow seeds of public doubt on matters of settled science. They did so by casting aspersions on the science and the scientists who produce it. Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at UC–San Diego, and science writer Conway also emphasize how journalists and Internet bloggers uncritically repeat these charges. This book deserves serious attention for the lessons it provides about the misuse of science for political and commercial ends. "
Mod up... As usual, we in the US seem to think we are above the law.... Don't you guys watch any Steven Seagal? Wait...he's not from Texas...nevermind...
At first I thought you meant "proof of concept" anti-virus for Linux. :-P
I couldn't agree more. At my school we use ANGEL which (IMHO) is head and shoulders above much of the competition for course management. Many of us take large amounts of time putting up functionality that is similar to what the textbook publishers have: online quizzes, screencasts and the like so that students don't have to pay twice. If such content is on ANGEL, they can access it without paying extra. Although in many schools, profs go with the costly textbooks because 1) they are familiar and therefore take up less time to plan a class around and 2) they get promoted based on their research so why bother putting more than the minimum effort into teaching? I have an ethical issue with professors who don't "profess" but let the publishers do most of the work. Often such folks get graders and grad students to actually do all the interactions with students. The bottom line is that you reap what you sow. If you as the instructor put time into the students and are willing to work with them to help understand the material even outside of class, the textbook matters little. If, on the other hand, you have a sink or swim mentality, and aren't willing to put in any effort in teaching your subject, then you might actually need the textbook publishers. When do the students benefit most?
Yeah... I did this too, but then got brought onto the carpet by an administrator for undermining bookstore profits. The book cost $140 new and $8.99 used and was for a class of non-majors. Considering the huge costs of education these days, especially at big schools, it is unconscionable to require students to spend this amount of money. I've started switching students in my calc level physics classes over to MIT's Open Course Ware and students in my algebra level classes to the OpenStax College Physics textbook. I've found that much of what is in the price of commercially available physics books is name recognition and high quality photos. I have yet to find a good high quality, basic open source astronomy book for my gen-ed class.
If you follow that site, then you must know that the data is all publically available and has been for a long time. Here's the link where they summarize data sources.
It is everybody's job to get involved in politics in a democracy, whether they be scientists or no. And whereas we are all qualified to evaluate the merits of our politicians, there are very few of us who can evaluate the merits of science. In fact, it is often quite difficult to evaluate the merits of science outside of one's discipline.
Patient: Help me! I've overdosed.
Homeopathist: What did you take?
Patient: Nothing.
badum bum...
(Well somebody had to say it.)
Interestingly, the latest research shows that people who use cell phones more are less likely to suffer from Altzheimer's disease. It sounds like this is a non-issue.
So I was flying to Turkey last year for a conference. To do so, I had to fly a 737 Delta from Philly to NYC (about an hour), then catch a 767 to Istanbul, and finally catch a 737 to Antalya (also about an hour). On the Delta flight, we were told that due to the short duration of the flight, no refreshments would be served. On the flight from Istanbul to Antalya on Turkish Air, we were served a jumbo breakfast. The Turkish Air planes (both the 767 and the 737) were in much better condition than any American airplane I've been on in the last decade, regardless of carrier. The staff was more friendly, and the food was better. There was an unlimited selection of movies and the like for no extra charge on the overseas flight. Most American carriers that I have flown overseas were much more limited in the multimedia area either in selection (not so much) or cost (not free). I was shocked to find that Istanbul's airport was in much better condition than JFK's international terminal. My great experience with Turkish Air and poor experience with Delta was repeated on the far side of the trip.
The bottom line is two fold: 1) American carriers are terrible (at least compared to Turkish Air) and 2) All evidence I've seen lately points to the fact that America is falling out of the first world fast and has no idea.
Let me further state that I'm not happy about this at all - I'm just stating one of several examples I can come up with from personal experience. I fly overseas at least once a year, and domestically 3-4 times per year.
My favorite "data-based" proof of AGW skeptics is the "now that I've found the data sources finally I've done a simple graph of temperature vs. CO2 in excel which disproves AGW." The subtext to such comments is essentially that an outside analyst who only knows numbers (and not the field, or how the data were collected, or anything else other than computers and very basic statistics) is doing a correct analysis of the data whereas people who do understand the provenance of such data must be either hiding such findings as a community, or too incompetent to do a basic graph in excel. Furthermore such simple exercises ignore techniques like multiple linear regression (among others) which can account for the influence of multiple variables at the same time.
Knowing the method of data collection is crucial to correct analysis. In my previous life as an astronomer, we would typically image objects by taking four pictures: 1) an on wavelength on target image, 2) an on wavelength off target image, 3) an off wavelength on target image, and 4) an off wavelength off target image. Proper data reduction meant that you first found intensity on band due to the target (diff12): image 1)- image 2, then the blackbody offset for being on target (diff34): image 3) - image 4), and then the true intensity of the object in that wavelength diff12-diff34. It helps if you draw a picture. It also helps if you know what blackbody radiation is, the bandwidth of your filter, and a hundred other small things that you won't see if you are just presented with a cache of images. The point being that there are usually good reasons for collecting the data in a certain manner, and if you don't know what these are, you probably won't be able to reduce it correctly.
Does that mean that if you don't have an advanced degree in physics or climatology you shouldn't be able to come to the table and express your opinion? No. But many of the AGW skeptics seem unwilling to listen to the reasoning and experience of those who have been in the game for a while. It's almost as if I felt that my prior experience with a .22 rifle qualified me to tell General Petraeus how to run operations having not ever been on the ground in the Middle East. I am able to differentiate my opinion about the war from my ability to prosecute it. In the same way AWG critics need to understand that while they may bring some fresh ideas to the table, it is likely that much of their reasoning has already been rigorously examined and discarded by people with far more experience than them.
While personally I agree that in an ideal world journals should archive data used in publications, there are several real world issues:
Bottom line is that the journals would only do this under duress because it would hurt their bottom line and probably make the publication process even more forbidding than it currently is.
Now that said, there is an attempt to create open-access journals which I am all for, but this is still a bit of an experiment. Many faculty are evaluated for tenure based on the reputations of the journals which have accepted their articles. If I publish all my research to an unknown journal which is experimental and hasn't established either readership or gravitas, I'm not likely to be taken seriously by the community nor my peers when I am up for tenure. It's sad, but true.