Everybody's picking on me. Picking I tell you...
Bunch of asshats. From the
UK Guardian:
Freedom of information laws are used to harass scientists, says Nobel laureate
Freedom of information laws are being misused to harass scientists and should be re-examined by the government, according to the president of the Royal Society.
Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse told the Guardian that some climate scientists were being targeted by organised campaigns of requests for data and other research materials, aimed at intimidating them and slowing down research. He said the behaviour was turning freedom of information laws into a way to intimidate some scientists.
Nurse's comments follow the launch of a major Royal Society study into how scientists' work can be made more open and better used to inform policy in society. The review � expected to be published next year � will examine ways of improving access to scientific data and research papers and how "digital media offer a powerful means for the public to interrogate, question and re-analyse scientific priorities, evidence and conclusions".
Nurse said that, in principle, scientific information should be made available as widely as possible as a matter of course, a practice common in biological research where gene sequences are routinely published in public databases. But he said freedom of information had "opened a Pandora's box. It's released something that we hadn't imagined ... there have been cases of it being misused in the climate change debate to intimidate scientists.
What a whiny little crybaby. A couple of things about science.
First of all, most "big" science is funded at the public trough either through public schools or government agencies and is, defacto in the public domain. If I went to Eli Lilly and asked for their research notes on a new drug they were developing, we would both have a good laugh and I would be shown the door.
If I apply to CERN or the National Science Foundation or the University of East Anglia, they would be obligated to comply with a reasonable request for information.
Second, the data that is being asked for is the specific scientists bread and butter. If they do not have it at their fingertips, they are not working efficiently. If the request was for some original field notes or data collected via an automated machine (weather stations, oceanographic buoys, satellite records, etc...) that data should have already been transcribed to a data file on a computer and regardless, if the source data was asked for, it should be a simple matter to retrieve it from the storage facility. This is exactly why Graduate Students are here on this planet.
Thirdly and finally, Sir Nurse complains that these requests are intimidating.
They are only intimidating if there is something to hide.
If the data was collected properly (no urban heat bias), analyzed properly and presented accurately, there should be no sense of intimidation. In fact, it should be liberating for the scientist because if someone questions their hypothesis, they can hand over the entire block of data, mathematical models and say here -- my argument can not be broken. Who would not relish an opportunity like that.
Instead, these rent-seeking hacks do nothing else but pursue their own gravy train with no consideration of the unintended consequences of their actions. A baby with a loud noise on one end and zero responsibility on the other...
Posted by DaveH at May 25, 2011 7:58 PM