Open v. Closed Source-Climate Change Research 443
theidocles writes "The ongoing debate over the 'hockey stick' climate graph has an interesting side note.
McKitrick & McIntyre (M&M), the critics, have published their complete source code and it's written using the well-known R statistics package (covered by the GPL). Mann, Bradley & Hughes, the defenders, described their algorithm but have only released part of their source code, and refuse to divulge the rest, which really makes it look like they have some errors/omissions to hide (they did publish the data they used). There's an issue of open source vs closed source as well as how much publicly-funded researchers should be required to disclose - should they be allowed to generate 'closed-source' solutions at the taxpayers' expense?"
Taxpayer funded whitewashes (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because it's code it should be open? (Score:3, Interesting)
complicated...
Arguments for & against open-source (Score:5, Interesting)
Arguments against open-source science:
I'm sure there are arguments on both sides.
You are not entitled (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:How much is enough? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, often you will only be paying for part of it. It is common for research to come out of a combination of `projects' funded from different sources.
What should happen if, for instance, a drug company funds a project into developing statistical theory and signal analysis and so on to improve analysis of early candidate drug screening data, and then the researchers use the prototype implementation in a publicly funded project they are involved in on climate data and find something significant?
Or what happens for part-state, part-commercially funded projects?
I think one thing which could be done is to give companies a (bigger) tax break on money put into research (internal or when they give grants) if they sign up to give out not only all the data, but things like source of programs and detailed design of prototypes and experimental setups.
Another thing would be to set up some kind of peer review process and then treat published source as a publication for the researcher. If your peers sign off to say that you have produced and documented the code to the level where it is a useful resource for other researchers, then it should count towards departmental and personal evaluations just as a journal article would. The formalised review process is important -- the average bit of lashed-together-to-get-the-data research code is more equivalent to a scribbled note on a whiteboard than to a journal article.
Perhaps all that is needed is an online journal set up and run as a properly organised accademic journal, but specialising in publishing code. Imagine an infrastructure not a million miles away from sourceforge, but with a peer review process to decide what gets counted as a release.
Re:No brainer... (Score:4, Interesting)
I run quite a selection of software on my machines, and to be honest, I've never done a security review of ANY of it. To be equally honest, I'm not really competent to do a security review of the code, though with effort I could well become so. But by and large, I pay attention to OSS community discussions, and know that others who appear to be competent have review that software. Note that I use the term "appear to be competent," since I have no personal knowledge of their qualifications. However, when enough people who "appear to be competent" reach a concensus, either:
1: They're all incompetent in the same way.
2: They're all email aliases of the same guy hunched over the keyboard in his parents' basement.
3: They're the techno-incarnation of the Club of Rome, bent on World Dominatino.
4: They're a variety of informed backgrounds and opinions who have come to a rough concensus.
I submit that 4 is most likely. 1 is possible, given that there are common misconceptions, but the larger the group, the less likely 1 becomes. 2 and 3 are just plain for the tin-foil hat club.
I argue that the work needs to be open for the self-selection of reviewers. If the reviewers are selected by the authors, no matter how hard they try to find 'fair and neutral' parties or even antagonists, something will be missed.
It's not science (Score:1, Interesting)
1. Observe and describe a phenomena
2. Formulate an hypothesis
3. Use hypothesis to predict something
4. Independently verify those predictions
Step four requires, of course, that experiments can be corroborated, which implies that they can be duplicated. That is of course impossible if the tools employed are not shared.
The only scientific result that should be given any regard is that produced by real scientists doing real science. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Re:Voodoo, not science (Score:2, Interesting)
Pew Charitable Trust = McCain Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill AND a whole Supreme Court decision. http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110006449
Pew+Ford+Tides+couple more liberal foundations = gun control lobby = assault weapon ban
Sadly, public policy decisions get made based on pure voodoo all the time. The hockey stick is just the latest, greatest example. The whole gun control "debate" is based on some of the worst examples of junk science you'll ever see, 90% of it paid for by five or six large liberal leaning foundations, the other 10% being government money from the Clinton era CDC. Those guys don't release their raw data either.
This type of shenanigans by "scientists" is the main reason Republicans doubt the existence of global warming in the first place. Too many people with shaky data making huge claims = scam. Doesn't take a genius to know BS when you step in it.
Re:How much is enough? (Score:2, Interesting)
Universities and similar public institutions are chartered and funded by public money in order to carry out public, not private, research. Outside of such institutions, a researcher of course can contract with anyone to perform any lawful work, ownership of which is established by the terms of the contract, provided that doing so is not in conflict with preexisting contractual obligations.
A researcher supported by public funding or using the facilities of a public institution receives a benefit thereby. The researcher is bound by whatever contracts are entered into as a condition of that funding. Usually this process starts early in a research career, though much depends on the individual situation.
Taking all of this together, any researcher may be subject to multiple contracts, and is individually responsible for assuring that they are not in conflict. Since public funding usually establishes a primary obligation to publish research results, we normally expect that organizations which contribute private funding are choosing to do so because they expect to receive an indirect benefit from those published results. However, such a benefit cannot generally be guaranteed, contractually or otherwise.
As a matter of principle, private institutions cannot expect that their partial contribution to a public research program will give them exclusive access to the research results, since those results are already contractually committed to another party. In practice it comes down to specific contract wording, and to some degree the sequence of events.
Re:If you were wondering what real scientists thin (Score:4, Interesting)
However there was a link to McIntyre and McKitrick's website [uoguelph.ca] in the topic summary. Why was it relevant for Timothy to include that link, but not include a link to the matching item on RealClimate.org [realclimate.org]? Is it just non-scientists who are allowed to have weblogs about this stuff?
Regards
Luke