This sentence in pretty staggering: "... people who had nothing to do with the design and execution of the study but use another group’s data for their own ends ... or even use the data to try to disprove what the original investigators had posited." As in, science.
As a non-scientist who's seen that quote tossed around in a few different places in the past couple days... Is there a non-awful way to read that? It sounds almost like a parody of a tone-deaf status-obsessed researcher; is there some kind of context that makes it ok?
You could translate it as "how dare you trying to sabotage my career by attacking my research", something like this. It is fairly common that researchers build their careers on single results/breakthroughs and those have to be fiercely defended against everyone. For example, by rejecting/delaying research grants/papers that are competing with your own opinion/results, thanks to anonymous peer review. Sounds crazy, but I have seen this more than once.
If you put the omitted "..." back in to the quote, it makes it clearer that the "for their own ends" is about appropriating credit rather than testing alternate hypotheses.
More importantly, the full paragraph starts "A second concern held by some is that...", signaling that this characterization is a not-universal opinion about what might be bad about data sharing. The very next paragraph argues that it doesn't have to be this way, which is the whole (missed?) point of the text.
It's almost like the posts here are trying to make the authors' case about the hazards of data sharing for them.
The "second concern held by some" is clearly a rhetorical figure of speech to make it sound as if they are not really sharing it, although the rest of what the authors say only deals with this exclusively. The first concern complete disappears. They are also using the term parasite or parasitically throughout the paper, which is not really helpful in this context.
The real concern of the authors, as it appears to me, is that you "own" the data that you produce and should have the exclusive right to use it - they call it "obvious extension of the reported work".
How would data sharing work best? We think it should happen symbiotically, not parasitically. Start with a novel idea, one that is not an obvious extension of the reported work
On the other hand, if you have a novel idea, you are supposed to work "symbiotically" with the authors with relevant coauthorship:
Third, work together to test the new hypothesis. Fourth, report the new findings with relevant coauthorship to acknowledge both the group that proposed the new idea and the investigative group that accrued the data that allowed it to be tested
The problem is that science does not work this way. You cannot own the facts, as someone famously said. Imagine people in computer science or mathematics held the same attitude, especially in artificial intelligence/machine learning.
"However, many of us who have actually conducted clinical
research, managed clinical studies and data collection and
analysis, and curated data sets have concerns about the
details."
There is concern among some front-line researchers that the system will be taken over by what some researchers have characterized as “research parasites.”
So we should consider Francis Collins & James Watson "research parasites"?
Without their own analysis of other researcher's data the double helix would not have been discovered.
You cannot control information/data just because you gathered it. Pick up your marbles because you do not like what your pears concluded?
Science is based on reproducibility and peer review.
Peer review without full access to data is a fallacy.
Before being appointed director of the NIH, Collins led the Human Genome Project and other genomics research initiatives as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
I think this paper summarises everything that is wrong with academia and why a lot of people have enough and are looking for ways out.
A second concern held by some is that a new class of research person will emerge — people who had nothing to do with the design and execution of the study but use another group’s data for their own ends, possibly stealing from the research productivity planned by the data gatherers, or even use the data to try to disprove what the original investigators had posited.
According to the authors, trying to reproduce results or possibly disproving them is worse then theft. That already says it all. Especially in medicine, where reproducibility is severely lacking and research fraud is certainly far from uncommon.
There is concern among some front-line researchers that the system will be taken over by what some researchers have characterized as “research parasites".
Wow, strong language here. Imagine everyone who used someone else's results to advance science would be called a research parasite. The authors have an extremely cynical view on science and are simply equating it to business and career.
To be honest, I am not surprised that this is coming out of NEJM or another medicine/molecular biology journal as this is a fairly common attitude once you rise in the academic ranks in those areas.
The authors have chosen an unfortunate way of expressing themselves, to say the least.
The evident fact is that published data is there for anyone to re-examine as they wish, however I believe that the authors are referring to unpublished data and archived materials.
In the latter case, I would agree that potential users of these resources should not be able to demand access without acknowledging and explicitly collaborating with the "owners" of said resources. A free-for-all access to unpublished data and archived materials would be a recipe for chaos and certainly would result in wasting rare samples and increased pollution of the literature with poorly performed studies. On the other hand, the guardians of these resources should not be able to deny access to said resources by qualified researchers.
It is disappointing to see this kind of mentality in science, which is built on a foundation of the primacy and public availability of measurement.
To see an oncologist from Harvard / Dana Farber get something so wrong is really sad.
Self interest is an incredibly strong and insidious influence on our opinions, and I suspect it comes into play when senior academics stake out positions like this. Would they have agreed 20 years earlier in their careers? I doubt it.
I think we are seeing the infectious effects of capitalism spreading throughout what was once the free domain of knowledge. Until the internet, the stuff that cost money was usually 'stuff'. Ideas, algorithms and even software was free, Then Bill Gates showed how something ephemeral as code (arrangements of electrons?) code could build a business colossus. Then Google showed advertising could be used to monetize not just information, but the desire to find information. Then Facebook showed how to monetize our identities. In all of this, the staid academics saw the efforts of their lives (theses, research, papers, etc.) reprinted, disseminated and reused by others and they got NOTHING. Of course a few people were lucky, Wally Gilbert had his insulin gene sequenced, cloned into a bacterium and made billions with Biogen. But most purveyors of knowledge have been left out in the cold. All the searches that led to the knowledge they farmed has been monetized by others. And they get nothing. So now we are in the era of flourishing paywalls, content restriction and even browsers that subvert advertisements. And the academic administrators have gotten so jealous, they have raised tuition beyond the reach of most people. They want their piece of the pie, civilization be damned. And the cannon fodder of the education machine, the teachers, are the ones getting shafted as well. It's not just the New England Journal. It's all of education.
15 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] threadMore importantly, the full paragraph starts "A second concern held by some is that...", signaling that this characterization is a not-universal opinion about what might be bad about data sharing. The very next paragraph argues that it doesn't have to be this way, which is the whole (missed?) point of the text.
It's almost like the posts here are trying to make the authors' case about the hazards of data sharing for them.
The real concern of the authors, as it appears to me, is that you "own" the data that you produce and should have the exclusive right to use it - they call it "obvious extension of the reported work".
How would data sharing work best? We think it should happen symbiotically, not parasitically. Start with a novel idea, one that is not an obvious extension of the reported work
On the other hand, if you have a novel idea, you are supposed to work "symbiotically" with the authors with relevant coauthorship:
Third, work together to test the new hypothesis. Fourth, report the new findings with relevant coauthorship to acknowledge both the group that proposed the new idea and the investigative group that accrued the data that allowed it to be tested
The problem is that science does not work this way. You cannot own the facts, as someone famously said. Imagine people in computer science or mathematics held the same attitude, especially in artificial intelligence/machine learning.
"Hi, I'm a patent attorney. What's going on in this thread?"
So we should consider Francis Collins & James Watson "research parasites"?
Without their own analysis of other researcher's data the double helix would not have been discovered.
You cannot control information/data just because you gathered it. Pick up your marbles because you do not like what your pears concluded?
Science is based on reproducibility and peer review.
Peer review without full access to data is a fallacy.
Before being appointed director of the NIH, Collins led the Human Genome Project and other genomics research initiatives as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins
A second concern held by some is that a new class of research person will emerge — people who had nothing to do with the design and execution of the study but use another group’s data for their own ends, possibly stealing from the research productivity planned by the data gatherers, or even use the data to try to disprove what the original investigators had posited.
According to the authors, trying to reproduce results or possibly disproving them is worse then theft. That already says it all. Especially in medicine, where reproducibility is severely lacking and research fraud is certainly far from uncommon.
There is concern among some front-line researchers that the system will be taken over by what some researchers have characterized as “research parasites".
Wow, strong language here. Imagine everyone who used someone else's results to advance science would be called a research parasite. The authors have an extremely cynical view on science and are simply equating it to business and career.
To be honest, I am not surprised that this is coming out of NEJM or another medicine/molecular biology journal as this is a fairly common attitude once you rise in the academic ranks in those areas.
- isn't that the whole point of peer reviewed research?!
The evident fact is that published data is there for anyone to re-examine as they wish, however I believe that the authors are referring to unpublished data and archived materials.
In the latter case, I would agree that potential users of these resources should not be able to demand access without acknowledging and explicitly collaborating with the "owners" of said resources. A free-for-all access to unpublished data and archived materials would be a recipe for chaos and certainly would result in wasting rare samples and increased pollution of the literature with poorly performed studies. On the other hand, the guardians of these resources should not be able to deny access to said resources by qualified researchers.
To see an oncologist from Harvard / Dana Farber get something so wrong is really sad.
Self interest is an incredibly strong and insidious influence on our opinions, and I suspect it comes into play when senior academics stake out positions like this. Would they have agreed 20 years earlier in their careers? I doubt it.