6 ms·

The number and "tone" of the requests is irrelevant. If they want to ignore or not "fully comply" with FOI requests - they shouldn't take public funds.

tome 16y ago
If you're a university researcher in the UK it's impossible not to take public funds. All universities (bar one) are publically funded.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Then don't be a university researcher. In fact, if you don't want to reveal your top secret source code/data, don't publish in science journals. It's utterly ridiculous that journals still exist which don't require source/data to be released.
  - ant5 16y ago
    The data was available. If you want to independently verify it, the best way is to write your own code and see if it spits out the same/similar results.
- roboneal 16y ago
  "All universities (bar one) are publically funded." That's a problem isn't it. Maybe the UK should fix that.
moxiemk1 16y ago
If only that logic worked on the DHS...
ant5 16y ago
In theory, yes. In practice, people are only human, and tend to not react well when faced with a vitriolic "tone". The police may be required to protect and serve, but try berating a police officer and see how well he serves you when your house gets robbed. He shouldn't treat you any differently, but he probably will.
MichaelSalib 16y ago
So, if each climate scientist had to field 5000 FOI requests per year, that would be no problem, right? Are you saying it would serve the public interests to spend money paying scientists to research while also requiring them to spend 99% of their time responding to FOI requests? It seems to me that we all agree that the number and tone of requests is relevant. I think that everyone here will accept that once the number of requests prevents scientists from doing any research, than we have a serious problem. So the question is not "is the number or tone relevant?" but "what fraction of scientist time should we expect researchers to spend responding to FOI requests before we consider them unduly burdensome?"; given this question, tone seems very relevant. If researchers are responding to questions from professionals who have a good understanding of the fundamentals and are scientifically literate, then we should expect them to be more willing to respond to inquiries. But if they're responding to scientifically illiterate people who don't understand the basics of climate modelling, then I don't think we should expect them spend any time at all. I mean, the FOI process can be abused. I think it is important that we differentiate between using the FOI process as a way of harassing researchers and serious questions from people who understand enough to actually deal with the data. In that sense, requiring people to write their own code (which is better for finding errors anyway) serves as a way to tax the harassers without unduly burdening real scientists. Real scientists will probably have planned on writing their own code anyway, but people abusing the FOI process for harassment probably don't have the capability to do so. In my own neighborhood, I've watched crazy citizens groups use demands for data as a way to harass experts. They go to town meetings and yell and scream about data. When experts give them the answers they need (which costs time and money), they start poring through the data looking for inconsistencies. Inevitably they find something that looks suspicious if you're completely ignorant of math and science and then they pounce on it at the next town meeting. "Gotcha!" they say. But they're ignorant people who don't understand basic math and they inevitably turn out to be completely wrong. Most of the time, the truth is exactly opposite what they've claimed. Meanwhile, an expert has to explain in great detail why exactly they're wrong. The whole thing is just a huge waste of time and taxpayer money. It doesn't cost them anything to demand data and when any expert fails to give them everything (including the kitchen sink) because they're worried that these ignorant people will misunderstand things, they only scream all the louder. Public policy is hard. Even very simple questions like "will this development make traffic on this side street worse" is actually fairly tough to answer. The vast majority of people don't have anything close to the skillset needed to intelligently review an analysis of these questions. But many think they do.

tome 16y ago

If you're a university researcher in the UK it's impossible not to take public funds. All universities (bar one) are publically funded.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Then don't be a university researcher. In fact, if you don't want to reveal your top secret source code/data, don't publish in science journals. It's utterly ridiculous that journals still exist which don't require source/data to be released.
- ant5 16y ago
  The data was available. If you want to independently verify it, the best way is to write your own code and see if it spits out the same/similar results.
roboneal 16y ago
"All universities (bar one) are publically funded." That's a problem isn't it. Maybe the UK should fix that.

moxiemk1 16y ago

If only that logic worked on the DHS...

ant5 16y ago

In theory, yes. In practice, people are only human, and tend to not react well when faced with a vitriolic "tone". The police may be required to protect and serve, but try berating a police officer and see how well he serves you when your house gets robbed. He shouldn't treat you any differently, but he probably will.

MichaelSalib 16y ago

So, if each climate scientist had to field 5000 FOI requests per year, that would be no problem, right? Are you saying it would serve the public interests to spend money paying scientists to research while also requiring them to spend 99% of their time responding to FOI requests? It seems to me that we all agree that the number and tone of requests is relevant. I think that everyone here will accept that once the number of requests prevents scientists from doing any research, than we have a serious problem. So the question is not "is the number or tone relevant?" but "what fraction of scientist time should we expect researchers to spend responding to FOI requests before we consider them unduly burdensome?"; given this question, tone seems very relevant. If researchers are responding to questions from professionals who have a good understanding of the fundamentals and are scientifically literate, then we should expect them to be more willing to respond to inquiries. But if they're responding to scientifically illiterate people who don't understand the basics of climate modelling, then I don't think we should expect them spend any time at all. I mean, the FOI process can be abused. I think it is important that we differentiate between using the FOI process as a way of harassing researchers and serious questions from people who understand enough to actually deal with the data. In that sense, requiring people to write their own code (which is better for finding errors anyway) serves as a way to tax the harassers without unduly burdening real scientists. Real scientists will probably have planned on writing their own code anyway, but people abusing the FOI process for harassment probably don't have the capability to do so. In my own neighborhood, I've watched crazy citizens groups use demands for data as a way to harass experts. They go to town meetings and yell and scream about data. When experts give them the answers they need (which costs time and money), they start poring through the data looking for inconsistencies. Inevitably they find something that looks suspicious if you're completely ignorant of math and science and then they pounce on it at the next town meeting. "Gotcha!" they say. But they're ignorant people who don't understand basic math and they inevitably turn out to be completely wrong. Most of the time, the truth is exactly opposite what they've claimed. Meanwhile, an expert has to explain in great detail why exactly they're wrong. The whole thing is just a huge waste of time and taxpayer money. It doesn't cost them anything to demand data and when any expert fails to give them everything (including the kitchen sink) because they're worried that these ignorant people will misunderstand things, they only scream all the louder. Public policy is hard. Even very simple questions like "will this development make traffic on this side street worse" is actually fairly tough to answer. The vast majority of people don't have anything close to the skillset needed to intelligently review an analysis of these questions. But many think they do.