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Your criticism of current scientific practice does not go far enough. Recent issues like the refusal to grant access to climate data cannot be so easily brushed
by ahk 17y ago
Your criticism of current scientific practice does not go far enough. Recent issues like the refusal to grant access to climate data cannot be so easily brushed off with a "not enough bandwidth" complaint.
We have the internet now. There is no reason to not put up a site with data & code when you publish your paper and just point all requests to go to the site. Scientists need to start using these tools like the rest of us and stop hiding behind such false excuses.
- glymor 17y agoIt's easy to be so strident. I agree freedom of information requests should always be respected (if nothing else it's the law). That doesn't mean it's useful on it's own. Unintelligible source code isn't much more useful than none. See CRU's own source code for example: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/11/about-that-cru-hack.html http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/11/about-that-cru-hack.html It's nice that some spend the time to clean up code and format data. But scientists progress on their career track by total number of papers; so they're being somewhat asked choose between the greater good and their own. Most research is publicly funded. If open access is important to you then write to your government representative and ask them to require it.
- hga 17y agoHis disclaimer that starts with "The heavily politicized branches might not be egalitarian..." since he has no experience with them covers the particular exception you point out.