'NASA's Plan To Make JWST Data Immediately Available Will Hurt Astronomy' 135
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an opinion piece in Scientific American, written by Jason Wright. Wright is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University, where he is director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. From the piece: In August the White House announced (PDF) that the results of all federally funded research should be freely accessible by the end of 2025. This will be a big change for scientists in many fields but ultimately a good move for the democratization of research. Under this new guidance, many peer-reviewed papers would be free for the world to read immediately upon publication rather than stuck behind expensive paywalls, and the data that underlay these papers would be fully available and properly archived for anyone who wanted to analyze them. As an astronomer, I'm pleased that our profession has been ahead of the curve on this, and most of the White House's recommendations are already standard in our field.
NASA, as a federal agency that funds and conducts research, is onboard with the idea of freely accessible data. But it has a plan that goes much further than the White House's and that is highly problematic. The agency currently gives a proprietary period to some scientists who use particular facilities, such as a 12-month period for the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), so that those scientists can gather and analyze data carefully without fear of their work being poached. NASA is looking to end this policy in its effort to make science more open-access. Losing this exclusivity would be really bad for astronomy and planetary science. Without a proprietary period, an astronomer with a brilliant insight might spend years developing it, months crafting a successful proposal to execute it, and precious hours of highly competitive JWST time to actually perform the observations -- only to have someone else scoop up the data from a public archive and publish the result. This is a reasonable concern -- such scooping has happened before.
Without a proprietary period during which the astronomers who proposed given observations have exclusive access to the data, those researchers will have to work very quickly in order to avoid being scooped. Receiving credit for discoveries is especially important for early-career astronomers looking to establish their credentials as they search for a permanent job. Under such time pressure, researchers will need to cut corners, such as skipping the checks and tests that define careful work. Such a sloppy approach will lead to hasty results and incorrect conclusions to the detriment of the entire field. It also can lead to the erosion of work-life boundaries, with astronomers working long hours, sacrificing their health and family time so their result gets out before the competition's. This is bad for the culture of science and disproportionately affects those with children or other time-consuming personal circumstances (such as being a student, a caretaker or a full-time college instructor while also performing research). Allowing researchers to properly benefit from their work is critical for making astronomy as fair and equitable as possible. [...] "One potential alternative is to create a professional requirement that those who proposed an observation but have not published from it should be offered co-authorship on any paper that uses the data," suggests Wright, noting that it's "not currently the cultural norm in astronomy" and "comes with a whole host of complications."
"Another option is to change the standard for how credit is assigned for any observational work," adds Wright. "Astronomers could, for example, demand that any paper citing a result also cite the proposal that generated the enabling data. In this way, the proposal team could still accrue credit for its work, even if it wasn't the first to publish."
"In the end, though, such adjustments are secondary to the heart of the matter, which is that NASA's plan to eliminate the proprietary period for JWST data is bad for astronomy."
NASA, as a federal agency that funds and conducts research, is onboard with the idea of freely accessible data. But it has a plan that goes much further than the White House's and that is highly problematic. The agency currently gives a proprietary period to some scientists who use particular facilities, such as a 12-month period for the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), so that those scientists can gather and analyze data carefully without fear of their work being poached. NASA is looking to end this policy in its effort to make science more open-access. Losing this exclusivity would be really bad for astronomy and planetary science. Without a proprietary period, an astronomer with a brilliant insight might spend years developing it, months crafting a successful proposal to execute it, and precious hours of highly competitive JWST time to actually perform the observations -- only to have someone else scoop up the data from a public archive and publish the result. This is a reasonable concern -- such scooping has happened before.
Without a proprietary period during which the astronomers who proposed given observations have exclusive access to the data, those researchers will have to work very quickly in order to avoid being scooped. Receiving credit for discoveries is especially important for early-career astronomers looking to establish their credentials as they search for a permanent job. Under such time pressure, researchers will need to cut corners, such as skipping the checks and tests that define careful work. Such a sloppy approach will lead to hasty results and incorrect conclusions to the detriment of the entire field. It also can lead to the erosion of work-life boundaries, with astronomers working long hours, sacrificing their health and family time so their result gets out before the competition's. This is bad for the culture of science and disproportionately affects those with children or other time-consuming personal circumstances (such as being a student, a caretaker or a full-time college instructor while also performing research). Allowing researchers to properly benefit from their work is critical for making astronomy as fair and equitable as possible. [...] "One potential alternative is to create a professional requirement that those who proposed an observation but have not published from it should be offered co-authorship on any paper that uses the data," suggests Wright, noting that it's "not currently the cultural norm in astronomy" and "comes with a whole host of complications."
"Another option is to change the standard for how credit is assigned for any observational work," adds Wright. "Astronomers could, for example, demand that any paper citing a result also cite the proposal that generated the enabling data. In this way, the proposal team could still accrue credit for its work, even if it wasn't the first to publish."
"In the end, though, such adjustments are secondary to the heart of the matter, which is that NASA's plan to eliminate the proprietary period for JWST data is bad for astronomy."
Hypotheses (Score:5, Interesting)
1. It provides justification for collecting the data.
2. Currently science works in a way that perhaps 20 hypothesis are tested, and only the experiment that best demonstrates the desired outcomes is published after the fact. We therefore do not get to see the failures. This may not seem too bad, until you realise that the data from failed experiments are often more valuable than that from a successful result. This is because looking at it from another perspective may raise new possibilities. Quite often when trying to prove A, you reject information that does not fit your purpose, but that actually proves B.
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Not how Science Works (Score:5, Informative)
Currently science works in a way that perhaps 20 hypothesis are tested, and only the experiment that best demonstrates the desired outcomes is published after the fact.
No, that is absolutely NOT how science currently works. Go look up searches for Supersymmetry, Dark Matter or any other beyond the Standard Model physics model and you'll find thousands of papers stretching back over decades - a few will even have my name on them! We do publish our results when the hypothesis fails because it is important to record what hypotheses were tested so that others do not waste their time looking for the same idea in the same place.
These results are also useful to theorists coming up with new ideas since the results can sometimes be repurposed to put limits on new theories and ideas. The reason you may not be aware of this happening is that "Scientists fail to see New Physics" is not exactly an attention-grabbing headline for the media.
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Re: Hypotheses (Score:3)
Re: Hypotheses (Score:2)
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This is already an existing practice, called "pre-registration" (e.g., https://osf.io/prereg [osf.io]). The idea is that you register in advance what your hypothesis and methods are, so you can't go fishing around in collected data looking for something that's significant.
This is definitely a good way to give people credit for designing and planning an astronomy data collection plan.
All that said, this post seems like a pretty biased anti-open-science screed to me. It's really amazing how every time we try to peel a
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so you can't go fishing around in collected data looking for something that's significant.
Hmmm. I understand your purpose and intent; however, I feel very uncomfortable delaying the discovery of anything significant for any reasons. I think we should spend more time protecting the work people are doing rather than the data they are working from.
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They do. Here they are: https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/sci... [stsci.edu]
The exclusive period is also listed. I don't know, but I suspect the exclusive period is probably part of the grant application and it's assessed for reasonableness.
The detailed proposal is not public. This is because people absolutely do poach things like this. I applied for a job one place and mentioned something I was working on to the hiring committee. A couple months later one of them submitted a quick and dirty paper on the same topic.
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That sort of post hoc hypothesis development is not kosher unless it is specifically spelled out in a paper. (It's not post hoc as you've framed it, but it's equivalent to not developing a hypothesis until you have the data in hand).
What I think you might be trying to get at is a study planned to investigate A & B generates data that leads one to think about some completely unforeseen W. But even then, that should still be explicit in the paper.
publish or perish (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not different from open source software. We programmers have long valued open source software, and many of us contribute huge amounts of time and effort developing it. When we do that, we're not trying to "beat the other guy" to the punch, we just want great code that everyone can use.
Scientists need to learn to think this way too. If they are relying on hiding behind a proprietary shield to "protect" their research, that secrecy nearly always cloaks a commercial interest that distorts the true aim of
Re: publish or perish (Score:3)
This would be a valid argument if programmers discovered code.
If Taylor Swift shared rough demos of her songs, months before the final version and accompanying film clip appeared on YouTube, would her fans still be suing Ticketmaster?
Raw information has less value than information that has been channelled and curated by an expert.
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Taylor Swift isn't making music for the betterment of humanity, nor is she publicly funded. She is absolutely in the business of selling her music. You're kind of making my point. If you're in it for commercial gain, then you'd better hide the process from view. If you're publicly funded, your work belongs to *everybody.*
You speak as if Taylor Swift somehow came up with magical inspirations. That's a romantic notion not unlike the idea that genius inventors have a brilliant flash of inspiration, and come up
Re:publish or perish (Score:5, Interesting)
It's much different from open source software. Science and open source are in some ways similar: people do both because they love it, believe in it, and want to move us forward. But there are also major differences.
Scientists who pay mind to the competitive aspect of their field very rarely (but not never) have an ulterior commercial motive. They are just trying to survive. A scientist's whole career depends on their publication record. Reputable journals won't publish work that has already been published. Otherwise there would lots of duplicate work and less motivation to do new, harder, groundbreaking science. So, if someone "beats you to the punch," you can't publish. If you can't publish, you can't successfully compete for research funding. If you can't successfully compete for research funding, your career as an active scientist is over.
Another distinction between open source and science is that you can meaningfully contribute to open source software in your free time with a laptop and an internet connection. This is not possible in modern science. To do work that pushes the boundaries, you need expensive things like lasers, supercomputers, graduate students, and space telescopes. Nobody is going to give a weekend warrior with some spare time access to this stuff because it is too precious. If you want access, you need to compete for it. To successfully compete for it, you need a credible publication record. And here we are again where we began.
I will wrap up with the matter of publicly funded stuff being publicly available. I agree that this should be the case. However, it is important to appreciate that science goes nowhere without good questions. It is really hard to come up with good questions, which are generally formatted as a research proposal. I think it is reasonable to give the scientist who came up with the research proposal that motivated data collection of JWST some period of limited exclusivity on the data (6 months? 1 year?) so that they are able to develop publications and get credit for their work. The truth is that much of the scientific work has already been done by the time the telescope is collecting data. What movies like "Don't Look Up" or "Contact" don't show you is that before the astronomers go to the telescope to sit in the dark before screens full of data appear, they (or their PI) spent months carefully developing a plan/proposal for where they were going to point the telescope and what they were going to measure. Without that plan, the telescope is not very useful.
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To the contrary, it is entirely different. You are trying to draw a comparison between volunteer efforts in free time (programmers contributing to open source) and primary occupation (scientists doing science).
Most programmers who contribute to open source do so in their free time. So if their open source project blows up, it definitely sucks but they can still pay rent and put food on the table. This is in part what enables the amazing altruism that characterizes much of open source. For nearly all scienti
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This is just an inane take. You don't understand how science, software or jobs work somehow and you have entirely misunderstood what the scientists are even asking for.
No one is objecting to the work being made public in principle, or even after a not especially long period of time.
What you are asking is that the scientists sacrifice their entire career, because you want them to remove the mechanisms by which they can have a career, because you want the data 12 months faster.
What you are essentially saying
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AS Demand2HaveSumBooze replied, these aren't scientists doing their work for free. They are publicly funded. If they want public funding, the public should benefit. If they want commercial/financial success, they should get commercial funding.
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Are you that dense?
If they don't perform in their job, which means getting papers, then they will rapidly cease to have a job.
You are advocating a system which will essentially destroy their careers given how science fighting works. I'm curious why you want that.
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Yes, I am absolutely that dense.
The purpose of Federal research dollars is NOT to keep desperate scientists employed. It is spent for the good of society, not for the good of the scientists.
If the labor for such work is so cheap that scientists are essentially scrambling to beat each other to the punch, to get that grant money, then it's probably good for everybody to weed out a few who don't know how to get noticed. It's a classic sign of market saturation. Scientists are smart people, they can adapt and f
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he purpose of Federal research dollars is NOT to keep desperate scientists employed.
Ah yes. "desparate" scientists. You clearly hate scientists, no wonder you want them to ruin their careers for your gratification.
It is spent for the good of society,
Do you know what isn't for the good of society? Ruining the careers of those working for the good of society.
If the labor for such work is so cheap that scientists are essentially scrambling to beat each other to the punch, to get that grant money, then it's pr
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Oh, I don't hate scientists. I'm a dues-paying member of the American Scientific Affiliation, and I work in applied science. What I don't like, is low-performing scientists who whine and complain that they don't get a free ride from the government. Just because you have a degree after your name and call yourself a scientist, doesn't make you good at what you do, or your work useful to mankind.
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But Tony Isaac answered this already.
But no he didn't.
The guy in question does not need a day job because he's getting paid. His work is publicly funded.
The guy in question does not want this to be his last job.
Honestly, it sounds like to this Jason Wright, science is all about maximising citations.
Science funding, i.e. the existence of your job in science is about maximising citations. Those are the rules the government sets, and now they're making it impossible even to play by the rules they are setting.
T
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Agreed! I do think most scientists "think this way". They just love what they're doing too much. Just like open source software.
It's the glory seekers and profiteers who complain the loudest. The people getting the data from which their tax dollars paid for is entirely reasonable.
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There are ways to attribute proper credit, that don't require a proprietary shield. This is how the patent system works. In exchange for an inventor publishing (theoretically) full details of their invention, they get the exclusive right to make money from their invention for a period of time. They do NOT have the right to keep their invention _secret_ for that period of time.
And I'm sorry, Federal research money is not granted with the purpose of keeping starving scientists employed. It is granted to furth
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NASA is turning astronomy and cosmology into a 24/7 live blog. This is so stupid as to be farcical. Science takes time.
Science takes time, recording data takes not. NASA isn't blogging science at breakneck pace, they are publishing data. When you learn to understand the difference you may realise how silly your comment looks.
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As far as 24/7 live blogs go, its not the worst one people could consume.
Hidden data isn't hidden for OUR best interest (Score:2)
It's hidden for the scientist's best (commercial) interests. If scientists really want to contribute to human knowledge, they should share all their data, just like open source developers share their code, immediately, pull request by pull request.
Unlike open source developers, these scientists are funded by the government--we the people. There is no reason they should ALSO have proprietary shielding, which helps them turn their research into commercial profit. If they want proprietary shielding, they shoul
Re:Hidden data isn't hidden for OUR best interest (Score:4, Informative)
It's not for commercial benefit, it's for reputational benefit - scientists who don't publish interesting papers don't get to keep working. Making the effort to get data to be gathered and then not being able to write an interesting paper on it (because someone else wrote it first) is bad for the career.
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You make it sound like finding insights in raw data is an easy thing to do.
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Out of a pool of 1,000 people, what are the chances that the scientists who did the research proposal are going to be the fastest ones to analyze it?
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Again, you assume it's just a matter of speed, that it's otherwise not difficult. You clearly haven't been around people who analyze data looking for insights. The first problem is, you've got to know what you're looking for, and whether that thing you're looking for actually means anything.
We saw a lot of this during the height of the COVID pandemic. There were many maps showing infection counts, such as this one from Google: https://news.google.com/covid1... [google.com] The map is (as far as I know) accurate. But wha
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Wouldn't "what are we looking for" be part of the proposal for gathering the data in the first place, and therefore pretty much public?
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Of course. And if we only find "what we are looking for" we aren't doing it right. If the insights are so obvious that we can determine beforehand what results and correlations we expect to find, then any researcher could guess the aims anyway.
So perhaps we should protect scientists like we protect inventors through the patent system. In patent law, a patent filing must include enough detail to allow copycatters to build the "invention" themselves. In return, the inventor gets credit, and the exclusive righ
Re:Hidden data isn't hidden for OUR best interest (Score:4, Interesting)
JWST isn't just spitting out raw data on autopilot like some kind of chart recorder in space. It's being precisely targeted in space and time based on the recommendations and hypotheses of scientists who spend decades developing the experience and reputation they need to make good use of the resource. Without scientists volunteering their time to write proposals about what to measure with JWST, the instrument is useless. So a limited period of exclusivity can be viewed as a way of rewarding the scientists who front-loaded effort into developing plans for how to use the telescope, with the full expectation that the results they produce will be freely accessible to the public.
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One thing that puzzles me about this argument is the claim of commercial benefit. How do you think these astronomers are going to commercialize results from JWST? It is a telescope that peers out into deep space. If we were talking about chemistry or materials science I could see the argument, but there is very little commercial potential for infrared images of deep space.
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One obvious financial incentive is income from published research in the major journals. Also, fame and recognition, at least within their own circles.
Astronomy is one area of research that may be harder to monetize, but this principle covers may types of research, including genetics, medicine, chemistry, and many other where the financial incentives for secrecy are much more obvious, and where Federal funding often helps people launch their own startup businesses, rather than benefitting us all.
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Scientists receive no income from their publications in major journals. Typically, they pay the journal to have their work published after it has been reviewed for rigor by other scientists (who volunteer their time to do the review). So there is no financial incentive to publish research. Publishing is only about communicating new science and getting credit for the work.
I think you are correct that scientists are after recognition, but that does not fall under the commercial incentives this thread is purpo
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Haha this is not commercial incentive at all. In the situation you propose (which is more or less accurate), the scientist is rewarded for using public resources to produce scientific results (papers published) that are useful to other scientists and to the public. Isn't that what we want?
This is much different than using public resources to produce private commercial profits without benefit to the public. The scientist in your case is only rewarded if they publish (make public) their work. This is how it i
Thanks Trump! (Score:2)
This policy was proposed under the Trump administration, and was fought by academia and industry both. Thanks Biden for finalizing the rules and finishing the job.
nope (Score:2, Interesting)
it's not "bad for astronomy"
it's bad for the papers numbers of said researchers and universities in the bullshit that is the Shanghai ranking
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And what happens if you fuck over the careers of the kind of professional astronomers good enough to win time on the JWST? Do you think the result will be good or bad for astronomy if those people can no longer work, or won't work on the best instrument available?
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FWIW, I don't think you can have this both ways. The statement (which I absolutely believe is true) that getting time on the JWST is an "intensely competitive process" is very much at odds with "no one will want to use the instrument, unless." It may be "bad" for Astronomy in the sense that fewer people may want to participate (though the process would still likely be "intensely competitive") but it may also be "good" in the sense that those writing the "point the telescope here" proposals would likely be
Right of First Publication (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, release the data immediately after capture. But give the proposing team the "Right of First Publication" for a period matching the current data exclusive access period.
This will have the beneficial effect of EVERYONE ELSE working independently with the data then trying to become a collaborator on the analysis, to join the publication team. This means better papers will arrive sooner. It also means the team crafting the winning proposals will also be incentivized to collaborate. Some may try to "scoop" the proposal team by dumping their papers on the arXiv, but all will know who the proposing team is, including the publications.
This path has its own problems, but they are administrative rather than scientific.
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Sure, release the data immediately after capture. But give the proposing team the "Right of First Publication" for a period matching the current data exclusive access period.
How do you propose to enforce this?
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We could have a government office where you register an intention to do something that gives you a magic number and exclusive number that provides you the rights to sue anyone who copies you. You can then sell the rights to this magic number to someone else.
Yes I described patents. But you asked how does someone propose it gets enforced, not if it is fundamentally a sane idea ;-)
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Freely accessible data crosses national boundaries and jurisdictions very easily. The U.S. would be powerless to enforce this proposed intellectual property right in countries that don't have agree to it.
Astronomy data isn't much use without astronomers. (Score:2)
The pursuit of truth is not about citations (Score:4, Insightful)
Compare this with, e.g., Grigori Perelman, who declined the Field's Metal - "I'm not interested in money or fame." But we're going to hold up scientific progress for a year and deny the public access to what they spent $10 billion on so that... someone can be absolutely sure they will get to add an extra line to their CV claiming credit for part of the analysis?
And this careerism is equated to the field of astronomical science itself to the extent that anything bad for the former is "bad for astronomy"?
I'm pretty sure we can afford to break the citation system of career advancement without imperiling all of science. It's not that big of deal if the hiring process for astronomers starts to need more interview focus to discriminate quality candidates. In fact there are many other reasons to rethink the overemphasis on number of credited works as a proxy for measuring accomplishment.
I don't mind that people want to piggy-back on scientific advancement for personal gain rather than pursue it for the pure intrinsic value of expanding human knowledge and enabling progress. But they should at least *act like* it's about the latter.
Re:The pursuit of truth is not about citations (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare this with, e.g., Grigori Perelman, who declined the Field's Metal - "I'm not interested in money or fame."
If he wasn't interested in money, then tell me, why did he have a job which paid him money to do maths?
And this careerism is equated to the field of astronomical science itself to the extent that anything bad for the former is "bad for astronomy"?
If Perelman wasn't actually paid to do maths as his day job, he'd have had to so something else, possibly something very time consuming and been unable to do nearly as much maths.
Do you not see how that is bad for maths?
I'm pretty sure we can afford to break the citation system of career advancement without imperiling all of science.
Well let us know how, eh? Breaking it for one sub-sub field isn't going to break the citation system, it's just going to fuck things up for jobbing astronomers.
But they should at least *act like* it's about the latter.
Tell you what, you start acting like they need to be able to eat, then we can talk about how they act, eh?
The summary ignores the argument against (Score:2)
Apart from the principled objections of public access to publicly funded research, the article also points out observations are iterative.
If someone is faster to discover something which spurs a new useful observation, research moves faster as a whole. There is always more in the data than just the observers pet theory and apart from really basic stuff like discrete objects, even knowing the areas of research of competitors gambling that an observation was done by them trying to scoop them on cosmology seem
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If someone is faster to discover something which spurs a new useful observation, research moves faster as a whole.
Unless there's no data at all to examine, because it's no longer worth paying a scientist to spend months generating a research proposal for the telescope time.
Re: The summary ignores the argument against (Score:2)
Meh, I doubt Astronomy pulls any real weight for foreign students, private donations and grants. They are charity cases to begin with and will continue to get their pittance and free time on publicly funded telescopes regardless.
Maybe the quality will decrease if they can get scooped, or maybe it will improve by not having as much research which can be reverse engineered simply from a bunch of observations the competition isn't even certain belongs together. Most of cosmology is so dependent on statistics a
Will hurt astronomers, not so sure about astronomy (Score:5, Interesting)
But surely, if someone could come along and scoop others on a discovery, then that means they have uncovered a way of analyzing the data faster, and/or demonstrated an organizational/bureaucratic failure for the original astronomer(s)' institution. Both are valuable insights to gain. This can be good for astronomy, and indeed for all science.
Also, why not pre-register a study? As I understand it, it's becoming a standard in other fields to pre-register a study in order to stop p-hacking and all that. This practice can be expanded to astronomy, not to mitigate p-hacking, but to prevent scooping by demonstrating priority. Perhaps make the data only downloadable after the downloader signs that they have read all the pre-registered studies associated with the data.
Proprietary periods can turn into eras (Score:2)
This smells like an argument against openness (Score:2)
My guess is that someone is raising these bogus arguments in the hope of creating barriers to publication that can be used to delay the entire openness process.
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I can think of a few ways. They can burn out a batch of postdocs and research assistants by forcing them to work 24/7 for a while. Or they can cut corners and not complete the analysis diligently. They get the credit and the flaw in the research either never gets discovered or gets discovered with little impact on their career. The first of those creates a race to the bottom - which is not good for astronomy. The second means that we might waste a decade or so further developing an idea that was flawed from
What is this was medicine? (Score:3)
Imagine of government funded research into healthcare had this open data mandate. And this hurt the careers of the medical researchers because someone scooped them to saving lives.
Now astronomy is not about saving lives (except, like, killer asteroids). But the principle is similar ... If you paid for it, you get to set access.
The 'cite original researchers' compromise is perfectly adequate
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Yes, medicine, or how about patents. But wait, that's kind of how patents work! You have to supply instructions how to make your invention, in exchange for control of your invention for a few years. Once those years are up, you have to share it with everybody, and you had to tell them how to make it.
So astronomers are saying competition is bad (Score:2)
What a poor argument against Open Data (Score:2)
How did Jason Wright get a PhD with the lame argument skills shown here ?
In the end, though, all his whining is secondary to the heart of the matter, which is that more scientists accessing more data, faster, will produce better science.
Tinfoil hat mode ON (Score:2)
The JWST was paid for from public funds for doing pure science.
When I consider that the JWST was able to determine the composition of a distant gas giant class exoplanet's atmosphere and should also be able to detect high concentrations of free Oxygen (a sign of life) in any smaller rocky worlds in a star's "goldilocks zone" as well.
Makes me wonder what NASA et al want to hide. /Tinfoil hat Mode OFF
Simple solution. (Score:2)
Altogether Baseless Argument on 2 counts (Score:2)
1. OWNERSHIP - The taxpayer owns the data. Therefore the taxpayer should have access to it w/o delay.
2. PROPRIETARY PERIOD IS ALREADY PRESENT - If it takes the originator of an observation 3 months to analyse the data properly, then it will take competitors about the same amount of time. The advantage however is to the originator who knows in advance the data is coming, can prepare to do the analysis in advance, and therefore has the ability to get things out before they get 'scooped'.
So there is no val
This should be expanded (Score:2)
Any organization which receives taxpayer money should be required to open themselves up to public disclosure. Think of the fun people could have if they had access to the trading algorithms of the Wall Street firms or the chemical composition of certain substances.
It's our money. If you get it, we get you.
How you know you've got it wrong (Score:2)
Public science funding is broken and corrupt. The current model leads to cases like this where the interests of scientists are counter to the interests of the public. It's an annoyance in abstract fields like astronomy. In other fields it's deadly. Heck, when you consider that we could have easily done a much better survey of asteroids and comets by now, it's easy to see how to funding model has failed dangerously, even in astronomy.
This is the definition of "disingenuous" (Score:2)
If it turns out they were wrong and you can prove it with the years of research you've been sitting on then GREAT! You get to publish a paper detailing how the idiots that didn't do their due diligence completely botched it. Maybe a public shaming teaches them a lesson so they're not so quick to "scoop" peopl
Mine! (Score:2)
Mine, mine, mine. Not yours. Give it!
They are afraid that (Score:2)
somebody is telling us something. [nasa.gov]
Too focused on the negatives of no propritary (Score:2)
Having a proprietary period delays science getting done. Say one person has a creative idea, gets a proprietary period of 1 year, publishes it. Many others see the data and get a new clever idea from it, one wins a bid for an observation, gets a proprietary period for that... ad infinum.
Worse, is when the researchers realize others can benefit from the data and serve as gatekeepers requiring favors, money, and/or credit for work they didn't contribute anything to, other than just being lucky.
It's really t
Re: Poaching? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, but analysis takes many forms. It's not like analysis has a single outcome at the end of months of crunching. There are early conclusions you can make along the way. Someone could grab the data and publish a quick "flag in the sand" paper that is light on details but heavy on hype. Those do get cited quite a bit. Maybe this system will incentivize that behavior for the proposal-writers as well.
On the other hand this could go the other way, if you start to become known as the scientist that poaches other peoples' data. Maybe reviewers start to be more critical or require more than just flags in the sand.
One solution here is to make a rule (maybe agreed among publishers?) that the proposal writers are required to either be willing coauthors or willingly waive rights to coauthorship for the published data. That doesn't prevent it from entering the public domain, but does prevent it from being published without the proposal writers' permission. Maybe there would be a time limit on that?
Re:Poaching? (Score:5, Insightful)
People like to think that because its all “taxpayer funded” that no upfront effort goes into these things - ahh, such innocence.
To get funding requires significant time, effort and funding - gotta spend money to make money, even in academic circles. Someones still got to eat and live somewhere while putting together the proposal for the observation, then they have to get it reviewed, defend it etc etc.
If theres a free for all on the data, the number of people looking to invest in those proposals is going to thin out - why spend a significant amount of time up front if chances are someone else is going to swoop in and publish before you?
The other aspect is initial analysis are rushed, resulting in poor quality science - also not a good thing, but necessary if you want that credit.
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Re:Poaching? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a record of who requested the telescope time -- so why not require resulting papers to cite who pointed the telescope in the right direction?
That way we both get more eyeballs on the raw data as soon as its available, and those doing all the pre-work can be rewarded.
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Yep. This is not a resource allocation problem, it's a credit allocation problem.
If people who collected the data also wanted to get a certain result by analyzing that data, but someone else manages to do it first, then that just means they're not good enough at analysis. The right thing to do is spend more time gathering data and less time analyzing it, because apparently that's what they're good at. Leave the analysis to someone highly specialized in that. It's a basic division of labor that makes the ent
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So what? There are plenty endeavors that have a bunch of up front risks involved. It is not the tax payers job to mitigate their risks. What universities don't charge enough from their students? They don't sell research on to private companies that then gouge the public for as much can on essential like medicine?
These people are all for profit and free market when it comes them making money, but not only does this person want the information to be free for them, he wants exclusive access, and is doing menta
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TLDR; "Because of my position, I have an inside track to the telescope data, and I don't want to lose that." -- Jason Wright
Basic Fairness (Score:5, Insightful)
The raw data came from the telescope the taxpayers funded. They do not own that.
They do not own the telescope but they had a huge role in creating the data by having a clever idea, and writing a detailed proposal arguing why the telescope should be pointed at X for a period of time Y. These proposals are read by committees that select the best to fill the available observation time in a competitive process.
If the researcher putting in all the work required to ensure that the data are collected is then left to compete with everyone else in a "who can analyse the data fastest" free-for-all then why would they bother to put in all that work? It would be far less effort and risk to wait for someone else to put in all that groundwork and to then just jump on the data and analyse it before them when it is released. This is not a good change.
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Perhaps, the work required to get time should be reduced then. It seems like a waste of time that could be better spent doing things like analysis. I think the world is far too full of large documents.
I don't know much about getting time on telescopes, but I do know my field and its full of time wasting exercises and writing irrelevant documents nobody reads. I can only assume its much worse in academia.
Re: Poaching? (Score:3)
The few hours of telescope use (although extremely valuable) is only a fraction of the work put in. It takes *years* of research and effort to convince NASA to let you use a facility like the JWST. You have to prove to them that youâ(TM)re going to use their enormously valuable asset for something thatâ(TM)s going to produce good science, and thatâ(TM)s absolutely not trivial when everyone else is trying to do the same.
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This is the Disney tactic.
Steal from the Public Domain, then deny^W bribe congress to deny the "Public" the right to also benefit from the public domain.
How long is this data blackout period for? A week? A month? There will always be an experiment that needs "just a little longer" and then the blackout date is up to the date of the author's death and 90 years.
Still waiting for the next round of copyright extensions. I am sure that the lobbying is going on and the pockets are being lined. If copyright was i
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"The other team should have worked faster/harder as they were using the same logs."
If I'm reading the article correctly, the only reason the telescope was pointed at that segment of sky in the first place was due to the "other team" expecting to find what their data/theories expected to find -- validate years of research.
The temporary exclusive access to the data is what encourages the hardcore science. Take that away and allow instant access such that others can take credit for the discovery without doing
Re: Poaching? (Score:2)
Mod this up.
A limited-time exclusive-access system would maintain the incentives that led to collecting that data in the first place. And when new findings are confirmed, it also provides the payoff in prestige and recognition that institutions and scientists rely on to continue that work.
Attracting funding and new scientific talent to the groups that design these experiments depends heavily on being associated with those wins. If that incentive is removed, or made precarious due to instant conpetetion,
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The author seems to be making the case that astronomers don't have any ethics
Exactly what is unethical about analyzing public data and publishing the results? The problem is the data becoming accessible to everyone at the same time so that the person who put in all the work needed to ensure that the data were collected gets no benefit from all that effort.
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The author seems to be making the case that astronomers don't have any ethics
Exactly what is unethical about analyzing public data and publishing the results? The problem is the data becoming accessible to everyone at the same time so that the person who put in all the work needed to ensure that the data were collected gets no benefit from all that effort.
Not being a scientist, can you explain what work has generally been done by said scientist, before the data has been made available? Without understanding this, it is going to be hard for others to understand and thus the suggestions will be out of line.
In addition, is there a suitable compromise point without going back to a 12 month exclusivity?
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Not being a scientist, can you explain what work has generally been done by said scientist, before the data has been made available?
I can only think of one scenario that even remotely makes sense. But I'm not an astronomer, so my imagination on the subject is limited:
If an astronomer has spent a bunch of time analyzing existing data, determines that there is a gap in the data that appears to have been missed by everyone else, spends a lot of time determining where to point the telescope to gather data to potentially fill (or at least lessen) that gap, and then spends a lot more time writing a convincing, private proposal to point the te
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^^This
Just because some other team sees the telescope data doesn't necessarily mean they will have the insight to determine what it is a picture of or what it is supposed to demonstrate. ... Well some other guy probably deserves some credit.
If one has the idea, gets the data, and takes 50x longer to figure it out than some other guy
This is like Toyota/Chevrolet saying they tried out electric cars a few times and that it didn't work out so well; publishing papers saying it didn't work; and expecting Tesla t
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I think there is a misconception here. Your comment seems to suggest that anyone can walk up to JWST and out pops useful data upon request. This is not the case. The scientists who collect data on JWST first have to spend, typically, months developing a specific plan about where to point the telescope and what to record. There is intense competition to use the telescope, so you have to put months of work in to even submit a proposal and there is no guarantee your proposal will be accepted. Without a communi
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Your argument is the government pays company A and then picks between companies
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Ouch, you're really behind on times...
Proprietary IC's are all over the place, with unique serial numbers to prevent them being interchangable. Try buying any of the important ic's in an iphone anywhere, or change them between 2 devices and see what happens...
You won't be able to buy them anywhere, and switching them out bricks both phones...
So your example of IC's... has the exact same issues...
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I think the problem here is that you are making arguments by analogy between two different, very complicated enterprises. There are a few superficial similarities between the two activities, but they are complicated and different enough that any argument by superficial analogy is going to be badly flawed, as is yours. For most government contracting, effort is back-loaded on a project. That is, most of the effort occurs only after a contact is rewarded and money is committed. Also, production costs are larg
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He is getting protected access to free information so he can work at on it at his leisure.
The title of this article is even backwards. Releasing the data in real time will not hurt astronomy in any way. If anything this will accelerate astronomy. How many discoveries are made by amateur astronomers? How many discoveries have been made by amateurs looking over old data? All this will be is more eyeballs on the data at a better rate.
This is a win for astronomy.
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If you take some of the arguments here to the extrem
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All the CS people here are like “info should be immediately available”. Yeah, that’s fine when we’re talking about info about yesterday’s distribution of people who “liked” a certain cat video.
Astronomical data is different. I spend 6 years getting a PhD and then 4 years doing a postdoc before I can even land an entry level research position. I then spend 2