Wired broke the news that Google will soon store and present enormous amounts of scientific data at the address http://research.google.com/.
The site will let scientists store their data for free and it will provide free access to anyone who wants to see it. Better still, Google will offer new tools to help people find and annotate relevant material.
The storage would fill a major need for scientists who want to openly share their data, and would allow citizen scientists access to an unprecedented amount of data to explore. For example, two planned datasets are all 120 terabytes of Hubble Space Telescope data and the images from the Archimedes Palimpsest, the 10th century manuscript that inspired the Google dataset storage project.
But before you think we’re on a sure path toward maximizing the value of experiments by opening the data for all, read this horrifying piece from the NY Times.
It’s written by a statistician who analyzes cancer studies. He reports that researchers regularly refuse to share raw data with him — even when he can make a good case that doing so will save lives.
Why? In some cases the researchers don’t want anyone embarrassing them by finding patterns they missed. In other cases, they probably fear that outsiders will find errors.
Whatever the reason, people are dying because researchers refuse to share. Fortunately, there seems to be some pressure on researchers to open up, as another Wired reporter explains in this interesting piece.
But it’s not moving fast enough. If you really want to put your weight behind reform that will save lives, here’s a principle you should campaign for: data generated by any endeavor that receives a nickle of public money, should be open to the public.
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