Lay Science: Setting free the Data April 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: science , trackback
The Guardian published a story earlier this week about a Belfast climate scientist Prof Mike Baillie, who is disgruntled at having to make his department’s decades’ worth of tree ring data available to a known climate sceptic as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. This story prompted the editor of this blog to post the above tweet. Also: “I don’t see the point of curating data for the public”, and “any nutter can attempt to disrupt my research”.
I wrote a post on Lay Science today about data sharing in science. Go read it here.
Comments»
Sarah – great post, and spot on.
The sad impression I get is that NASA goes out of its way to allow easy and rapid access to its data, but other astronomical agencies do not. Either the information is password protected, behind undocumented and obscure interfaces, or both.
Partly I think that this is a funding issue (scientists are not encouraged or funded to properly archive their data). But I also think that this is an attitude issue (it’s my data – why should someone else get to use it?).
I hope that the NASA attitude wins out.
Kevin – actually I think that Europe has a good track record too. ESO have a good archive, as do the Isaac Newton Group telescope in La Palma and the ESA space missions. While NASA and Gemini are excellent with data sharing, I think US observatories on the whole are much less open than here in Europe. But then many of the smaller telescopes (+Keck of course) are privately funded….
Kevin – actually I think that Europe has a good track record too. ESO have a good archive, as do the Isaac Newton Group telescope in La Palma and the ESA space missions. While NASA and Gemini are excellent with data sharing, I think US observatories on the whole are much less open than here in Europe. But then many of the smaller telescopes (+Keck of course) are privately funded….