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Characterizing it as a small problem, and "fixable" seems to minimize the very obvious fact that a few lines of Perl caught problems that should have been caugh
by patrickgzill 17y ago
Characterizing it as a small problem, and "fixable" seems to minimize the very obvious fact that a few lines of Perl caught problems that should have been caught well before the data was released.
- shaddi 17y agoFirst, it's easy to tease out a previously unseen characteristic of a data set if you tickle it in the right way. Second, you may be underestimating the power of "a few lines of Perl." :)
- Tichy 17y agoThe data is public, so anybody could have double checked it and found that error. Somebody now did. This is how it should work - it is the only way it can work. Errors can always happen, but scientists are supposed to double check. If the error was deliberate, it would have made no sense to publish the data in such a way that the error could be caught easily.