OT: Yee! Haa!

I think you are reading text that isn't there. Where does it say the researchers have to provide it??? Given that researchers are working under contract with the goal of having a balanced budget to be able to continue working, it would make sense that something as ill-defined as making "available to the public" would present them with a lot of extra work.

As I said before, if you want the info, ask your government. If you want to cry in your beer, then go ahead and cry.

Which agency sponsored the research? That would be a good place to start.

How about a rational understanding that to a researcher you are just noise and an impediment to their work. How would you feel if every customer of your clients contacted you to ask questions about their products safety? Try looking at it from their perspective. Then contact the agency that sponsored their work if you really want the data.

Yeah, but I don't see where there is likely to be any more accountability either. The practice of handing off your investments to an impartial manager is just a custom, not a rule. It will be very hard to prove any undue influence on actions on either side of the Chinese wall.

I find it interesting that you choose to blame the DNC rather than the Russians. If a burglar picked the lock on your door and stole a bunch of your lab equipment, how would you feel if the police said it was your own fault for not having a state of the art lockset on your doors?

Logic isn't your strong suit, either. I bet you love Snowden, though.

QED. Physician heal thyself.

Customs are as important as rules. For example, the UK isn't run based on constitutional rules, merely on customs. Swings and roundabouts.

But who cares; all that matters is whether/how he screws the world, and why. Currently it looks like he will screw eastern Europe so that Putin will help try and screw China.

But in the case of the DNC, it would be more like they left the door open.

Dan

Wooosssshhhh!

...just bringing out the idiots.

No, it does not. You place it all on a publicly accessible server, done.

Instead of the blah-blah of why I "do not need" this information he could have just written "Ask Mr.So-and-so and the XYZ agency and here is phone and email".

But this whole secrecy will most likely have an end very soon. Depending on how fast the new administration gets into the saddle maybe a rather abrupt one.

In such cases a canned email notice with the appropriate contact information is the correct way to respond. I would never let of a rude response like this researcher did.

Then they must _publish_ the name _and_ contact info for that agency. If a one-time investment of 30 seconds to write that onto a web site is asking too much then that researcher should not get any grant money.

Not only that, but they're excepting public money. Responding to legitimate requests is part of the deal.

We can hope that a lot of "scientists" are looking for productive work.

They *are* working for the public.

Exactly. Those who do not understand the obligations that come with this should get their public funding pulled.

They will likely realize that a much harsher breeze will be felt out where the more productive work happens. No kidding, I personally knew someone in a government job who admired us folks out in the world of free enterprise, with travel and all that. Until that person tagged along. "Man, is it always this stressful? Do you guys ever get enough rest and sleep?".

If they don't because only part of their work is for the public (was IIRC not the case here) then that does not relieve them of the obligation to at least provide a path for the public to see rsearch results. Anything else is rude, suspicious, or both.

making shit up, again..

Jamie

I am having difficulties determining what strong points he has?

Naive comes to mine.

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Uh, hate to point it out, but ALL government agencies work "For the public" but try getting secrets out of the FBI, the military, various police forces, CIA, NSA,...so just because an organization is working for the public doesn't mean they have to share everything with said publi c.

Mind you I agree completely that scientific research data acquired on the public dime should be freely available on public FTP sites so other scientists and laymen can check it over and make sure the results match the data.

John

Get a clue. There are government secrets that aren't subject to FOIA but scientific research certainly doesn't qualify as classified information.

Then exactly what was your point?

Unlikely. Trump is looking more and more like a text-book right-winger, and they are always unwilling to open the books to the public.

He may want to be unkind to the environmental protection and climate change crowd by forcing them to put every last bit of observational data on on a publicly accessible web site - which takes a lot of work, particularly in s tructuring the data so that dumb newbies can find what they want, and make sense of it when they find it.

Anything that somebody can make money out of will stay hidden.

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When the researcher gets the grant money, there are no research results to display to the public. Only after the research results have been collected, analysed and organised into some kind of comprehensible package would ther e be any point in putting them on a web-site.

If they don't finish of the job properly, you can prevent them from applyin g for new grants, and you could write the grant payment schedule to include a completion bonus, but I've never heard of anybody doing that.

Working for an administration that doesn't take science seriously isn't muc h fun. Dubbya's crew tried to change the content of science reports to make them more politically convenient.

Trump seems to be at least as bad. His biographer describes hm as a serial liar, and he will want to be able to adjust the story being peddled to matc h the audience it is aimed at.

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The public is paying them. The public is also paying for the military. You wouldn't expect to get open access to military secrets.

The public doesn't pay enough for most of the date being collected to cover the extra expense of getting into a form where it could be usefully access ed by the public. You can up the budget to cover that extra work, or learn to live with getting less data - but more accessible data - for the same mo ney, but providing total access to everything isn't in the existing contrac t.

Responding to harassing requests is another matter.

The obligations never explicitly covered coping with pestering by the climate change denial propaganda machine.

If the public funding is expanded to pay for a public relations department that is trained to respond politely to the most hare-brained request, and well-enough staffed to cope with all of them, then you can have your wish.

The people collecting that data weren't hired to keep nutters happy, and they are under no obligation to put up with the change of job description.

Not all employees in the world of free enterprise are willing to tolerate being over-stressed, and some employers have enough sense not to try to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Jeorg is a consultant, and can say no, or charge more.

Regular jobs are less flexible.

If their contract didn't explicitly cover provision for making the research results available to the general public on request, the work involved won't have been paid for.

A negative reaction to a request for unfunded work isn't so much rude as obligatory, and it certainly isn't suspicious. If researchers hasn't got a budget to pay for that kind of work, they aren't going to look kindly on requests that they do it.

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Making the data available and accessible on a public FTP site takes work a nd costs money, neither of which seem to have been in the budget for the or iginal work. If you want publicly accessible research results you have to p ay out the extra money required to make the data intelligible and accessibl e to non-experts.

Declaring that it should happen, after the event, is a trifle unrealistic.