Bishop Hill More data libertarianism
May 12, 2011 Journals Times Higher Ed is once again hot on the trail of academics who fail to disclose their data.
Academics have been accused of failing to make use of new technology to improve research because they are "selfish" and bogged down in the peer review system.
Speaking at a British Library debate, organised by Times Higher Education, academics and students agreed that researchers had not embraced new technology to share their data and findings.
Addressing the question "What is the future of research?", Matthew Gamble, a PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Manchester, said that despite projects such as Galaxy Zoo, which shares academic data with the general public, the culture of the "selfish scientist" was holding back British research.
"Altruism is quickly beaten out of young academics in favour of retaining data and making sure you can produce as many publications as possible," he said.
Reader Comments (9)
Pity they did not present their opinion to the HOP Science Tech Committee.
It was probably ever thus, but I can't help feeling that there as an increased pressure these days and I think if we go back and take note of Eisenhower's warning we can see the reasons why.
There is a parallel with the old German princelings and their sponsorship of composers but I don't recall much in the way of interference with the creativity of Bach and others. As long as he turned in the requisite number of Brandenburg Concertos the Duke wasn't fussed what they sounded like.
Now it's politically directed to the point where if you throw up an answer that your funder doesn't like your career is in danger of coming to a quick and sticky end.
Shout it from the roof tops: That is not science and any scientific progress under that sort of system comes about purely by accident.
Sorry for O/T, but something quite remarkable has happened. I have just been watching the BBC news and they ran a small piece against more windfarms and peoples concern in Wales that these monstrocities are a blight on the landscape.
richard verney OT
Don't forget "Wind farm wars" starts tomorrow evening on BBC2. We'll see how biased the series is.
Just been watching "The end of the world" on bbc4. It took a look back at scientific scares over the past few decades (asteroids, volocanoes etc. and inevitably ended with climate change where instead of casting a cynical eye over AGW as it did with the previous scares it merely towed the bbc line that it was indeed a major threat to the world. Lower salinity in the sea disrupting the gulf stream and all that stuff and towards the end of the show the show warned of floods, pestilence, 100 year freeze in Europe, lush forests of the Amazon withering and dying, blah blah blah and stated:
"It could be the end of the world as we know it. Right now many scientists regard climate change as the single biggest threat to our survival.......but the concequences of climate change could be just as apocolyptic"
I don't think the bbc do irony.
Richard - I assume it was related to this story by Roger Harrabin:
Wind expansion divides community
(12 May 2011 Last updated at 18:36)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13380536
This is also current: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13373962
BBC Scotland rarely if ever has an anti-wind farm story, which is a disgrace considering the number of schemes we have had imposed upon us and the number of people who know they are a waste of time when it comes to generating electricity. But we all know where most of the BBC's pension fund is invested don't we...
Interesting quotation, “What is really bad in science is if you start being authoritarian,” he concluded. “Then you get in the same narrow territory that creationists occupy.”
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/science/10paleo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Lapogus
"BBC Scotland rarely if ever has an anti-wind farm story, which is a disgrace ...... "
But Wee Eck has ordained that Scotland is THE leader in renewables ....
Both climatologists and economists stray into areas once claimed by soothsayers. Popperian science requires something more than those disciplines offer: is it any wonder they have become bedfellows? Consensus economists have recently failed spectacularly when measured against their predictions and consensus climatologists are getting ever closer to being tested by theirs. For future medium to long-term predictions of complex systems, I suspect data, released or not, is immaterial.