Scientists Have a Sharing Problem - The Atlantic

" ... A study published in October in BioScience revealed that sharing is a tricky topic in science as well. Michigan State University ecology professor Patricia Soranno and colleagues found that while many environmental-science researchers believe data sharing is beneficial—for the replication of analyses, the ability to confirm data integrity, and the overall advancement of science—few actually take the steps to make their own materials publicly available after their research is published. Save for a few sentences in the “Methods and Analysis” sections, the data used to produce published manuscripts is often kept private—sometimes purposefully. When a scientist does make a request to obtain another researcher’s materials, their inquiries might be unanswered or denied, forcing them to delay or put on hold their own projects. And ecology isn’t the only branch of science grappling with too much secrecy: The same thing is happening in genetics, biology, chemistry, and engineering, too ... The question, then, is why so many scientists are so stingy with their information. Because scientific progress relies so heavily on the process of validating and building upon prior material, it might seem counterproductive to withhold information from other researchers. But even science, a discipline grounded in reason, isn’t immune to the influence of ego and emotion. The culture of innovation breeds fierce competition, and those on the brink of making a groundbreaking discovery want to be the first to publish their results and receive credit for their ideas. There’s more at stake than just the acknowledgement of being first and a metaphorical blue ribbon; being first to publish can mean invitations to national meetings, academic promotions, industry appointments, and research awards, including the Nobel Prize ... One could pin the problem entirely on the competitive culture, but it’s only one of many reasons why scientists choose not to share their data, even after their studies are published. Among them, of course, is the lack of funding. Transferring data can be expensive: A 2002 study published in the Journal of American Medical Association by Blumenthal and colleagues found that among geneticists, 45 percent withheld data because it cost too much to send the materials to the scientists who had requested them. 'This was something that we did not anticipate, but when data is a physical thing such as a reagent, an antibody, a chemical, a mouse, or a reengineered organism, the cost and administrative difficulties are an important obstacle,' he said.  In the same study, 80 percent of respondents also reported that the effort required to produce their data prevented them from sending it to other researchers who asked for it. The underlying cause is most likely something more than sheer laziness: According to a 2012 study in the Journal of Computational Science Education that conducted in-depth interviews of researchers in 11 fields, including biology, ecology, and physics, some disciplines don’t even have formal digital repositories for data storage, and others don’t yet have standardized methods of interpreting and annotating it.  The consequences here are twofold: First, the lack of a centralized digital storage space means that data might only be kept on a personal computer or exist solely in paper form, so digging it up and sending it to a requesting party can be time-consuming, especially for scientists who have hundreds of studies under their belts. And second, the absence of uniform methods to record or describe data creates its own challenges ..."