Re: Accuracy vs. Relevance
- From: "Jonathan Thornburg -- remove -animal to reply" <jthorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:23:21 +0000 (UTC)
I.Vecchi <vecchi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Just try to get raw data for some important experiment, like Gravity
> Probe B.
> According to my understanding of the scientific paradigm, the
> data-processing protocol should be made available beforehand and the
> raw data should ideally be posted on the net in real time, so as to
> maximise falsicability and openness to public scrutiny (as well as
> provide a field day to critical outsiders). Since this just does not
> happen (not even close), I'll balance my admiration with some
> skepticism, the basic question being "Why should I necessarily believe
> something that I cannot check by myself?".
I'm sorry, but this proposal simply doesn't fit with how science
-- particularly "big science" -- is done by actual living-and-breathing
human scientists. The GP-B project got started in 1961 (!), and
many of the current team members have spent (plural) *decades* of
work on it, i.e. much or all of their professional careers.
What do you think motivates talented people to put in that work?
The answer, in significant part, is the promise of being (co)author
on the *first* papers presenting the results. Putting the raw data
out before those papers are published would expose them to the risk
(near certainty) of being scooped by others, and indeed quite likely
result in a Gresham's-law ("the bad drives out the good") where the
quickest and sloppiest analyses would appear first. Quite rightly,
the GP-B team, their funding agencies (= mostly NSF, NASA, and DOE),
and the scientific community as a whole, reject that.
Instead, the way space science -- and particle physics, and
observational astronomy, and most other "big science" -- generally
works, is that the original team (in this case the GP-B team) gets
exclusive access to the data for some period, *then* the data goes
into a public archive. A good example of this is the Hubble Space
Telescope. Observations are generally private to the observers who
requested them for a period of 1 year; after that the data goes into
the HST public archive and may be accessed by anyone. For special
cases (eg data which has to be collected over decade-long periods
before it can be analyzed), observers can request a longer "private
period".
There's another key point here, what do we mean by the "data"?
HST provides a good illustration: there are a number of rather
sophisticated data-processing steps between the raw data ("pixel
123,456 of CCD#5 had 12345 counts in this exposure") and something
of scientific interest ("star HD123-456789 had V magnitude 19.28
+/- 0.02 on JD 2456789.123"). A major job for the HST instrument
teams and the Space Telescope Science Institute is to maintain the
"pipeline" of calibration data and software which does this processing.
Doing this requires detailed knowledge about the engineering design
and construction of the individual HST instruments.
So, if you really want to see the raw GP-B data, you can
(a) join the GP-B team, or
(b) wait a year or two.
ciao,
--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg -- remove -animal to reply" <jthorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut),
Golm, Germany, "Old Europe" http://www.aei.mpg.de/~jthorn/home.html
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam
.
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