
First open-access data from large collider confirm subatomic particle patterns - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-open-access-large-collider-subatomic-particle.html
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eternauta3k
I can't imagine the amount of work that goes into making the data meaningful
to an outsider. Although CERN is so big, maybe they need to have great
documentation even for internal use.

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WhitneyLand
It's totally irrelevant and shameful that data is held back for such reasons.
Put a disclaimer/warning on it if need be.

When scientists play a part in the open access problem it's like having
doctors who smoke cigarettes. There are plenty reasons the cancer is happening
already without the leaders of a field contributing to it.

"In our field of particle physics, there isn't the tradition of making data
public," says Thaler. "To actually get data publicly with no other
restrictions—that's unprecedented."

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usernam
The OP was right, though. Just making the data accessible and documented is a
_huge_ undertaking. It's truly a laudable effort.

From the other side, I cannot imagine using the data without intimate
knowledge of the entire setup. There are very few people that can look
meaningfully at such kind of data, which is why publishing the dataset (and
all the work it involves) is often neglected.

Not to defend the behavior in any way, but remind yourself: in the current
research model, if you can't make a publication with it, it's not worth your
time. For a dataset, I've seen people factor-in the effort to make it public
VS the potential citations you could get out of it.

disclaimer: I work in research

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kobeya
Journals should not accept for publication articles which do not come with
data and analysis source code for full replication of the results reported.

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eternauta3k
Why do you believe journals are the correct place to apply pressure?

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kobeya
Because in principle peer review is the basis of scientific progress. Without
peer review, poor incentives lead to scientific inquiry about as accurate or
useful as Buzzfeed.

Of course modern journals are a disgrace to the enlightenment. But the
solution is to fix them, or if that can't be done, replace them. Not to stop
the system of peer review entirely.

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CoreXtreme
Everyone knows it, no matter how gifted you are chances of your discovering
something important is same as any random guy discovering something equally
important, i.e., mostly random.

You limit access to the data, you limit ability of others to make an important
discovery. Status quo won't offer free access to this data because it
apparently reduces their importance.

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Certhas
I think your comment betrays profound ignorance off what kind of data we are
dealing with here, and how discovering things in this data looks like.

Opening the data (along with the tools made for it) up to other specialists is
definitely the right thing to do.

And it worked: They had a nice new observable they defined and rather than
having to go to LHC people to check the data, they could do it themselves.

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bergberg
Ywm. Y o

