Talk:Release the data

"Copper"???? Wtf? This is a decent Bronze article, how many metals or alloys do we need? I am removing this silly level of recognition now.

Escape hatch?
I'm thinking of adding a link to escape hatch, as I've seen several climate-deniers use it this exact way. "Okay, so you've refuted all my crazypants climate-crank ideas, but we'll never know for sure until they release the data!"

Good idea? Bad idea? No idea? Heywood (talk) 22:53, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Not always bad
I'm a research scientist; I and others (who are proponents of the open access/open data movements) were shocked to read this article on rationalwiki. While some might use "release the data" to attack science, that doesn't make the practice inherently wrong. Others (like myself) believe that sharing data is an important component of science. Research has to be reproducible, and this can only be accomplished by releasing data, code, and methods. &mdash; Unsigned, by: 24.162.246.100 / talk / contribs 03:50, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, we agree. And that's what scientists normally do, right?  They put their experiments up for peer review.  This article is about ignorant fools like Andrew Schlafly demanding an established microbiologist to relinquish expensive, sensitive test samples to non-existent facilities so that Andrew Schlafly can take one glance and start demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect taken to unprecedented heights-- "Shut up, Brx." 04:34, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * "Well, we agree." The article doesn't make that very clear. A link to this page at least would be useful, if not more rewording or additional material. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:06, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * There's a big difference between peer review and code/data sharing. Sharing of code and data is necessary for replication but it's still rare in many scientific fields. Requesting samples is ludicrous, but there's nothing wrong with requesting that methods, code and data be made public.
 * Please sign your comments using four tildes ( ~ ) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. (You can indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line.) Thank you.--ZooGuard (talk) 18:09, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite?
I tend to agree with our anonymous contributor above, and I rewrote the opening accordingly. That being said, what exists in the article as it stands now is a useful and accurate critique of disingenuous requests for release of data, such as what we saw in the climate email hack (most of the data was already available, and the parts that weren't were of little consequence; there was no hidden agenda or evidence against global warming). I started to add a section titled "Distinguishing between honest and disingenuous requests", then realized I simply don't know enough about the topic to write it! I recommend someone with more actual scientific experience (I have only a few years of college education, no real hands-on experience in scientific publications) should either add such a section, or rewrite entirely to remove the implication that this tactic is always deceitful. Wehpudicabok (talk) 00:20, 19 January 2013 (UTC)