del-fi • YODA yada yada

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-11-19

Summary:

"Yale University published a draft “Open Data Access policy” on November 15th to make available rhBMP-2 clinical trial data that they created in conjunction with Medtronic. Let me get this out of the way before I go negative: the fact that this policy exists, is on the web, and is open to comment is an unalloyed Good Thing. It’s progress. It’s to be commended. For those who aren’t initiates in the arcane world of open data or pharmaceutical testing, this is data related to a clinical trial of a kind of biological chemical found in our bodies that plays a role in bone development. Most of the time, this kind of data is collected once, then locked away, never to be seen or used again. One of the reasons drugs cost so much is that we never re-use the data from clinical trials, so we never learn anything from failures, or from secondary uses of data. It’s an incredibly inefficient system. This project at Yale is an attempt to address that inefficiency by making the data available. But that’s the extent of my nice words. What follows is a point by point review of the policy. The short version: this is not an “open data” policy. It’s a data access policy, and if they’re not going to fix it, they need to rename it. Because those of us who care about the definition of 'open data' actually meaning something are going to criticize, persistently and loudly,  if there’s any attempt to claim the title for data under this policy. I apologize in advance for the length of this rant, but it’s a long policy. Also, they’re using the name of Yoda in vain..."

Link:

http://del-fi.org/post/35828082548/yoda-yada-yada

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.medicine oa.new oa.data oa.policies oa.comment oa.consultations oa.yale.u oa.biomedicine oa.clinical_trials oa.yoda_project oa.medtronic oa.pharma

Date tagged:

11/19/2012, 12:10

Date published:

11/19/2012, 07:10