Within your first post there Lexi, you may have inadvertently hit the nail on the head with one stroke; In that when you mentioned ; “ SOCIOLOGY “ and that is the reason for Intellectual corruption , stemming back to Germany and form the works of Hegel and others . For his philosophical efforts in Dialectical Materialism; simply put in words simple to understand is the creation of a new Religious verve based on Polly-logism and Pan-physicalism- More to do with Surreal abstracts rather than Scientific abstracts , in that it was an interpretation of what an Individual thought wanted it to be , and not what in fact is.

The true meaning of Conspiracy will explain in much detail for the reasons why such dogma became an Academic study, and further the advancement of Academic Retrogression; Thus the deterioration in Intellect and ability of generations of Individuals, and the near total loss of “Social Power” now to do with” State Power “or the Ruling classes over the peasants; which are us.

All:

I'm a bit wary of the emphasis that some sociologists place on the major components of society because concepts such as "the economy"
or "the state" are, after all, abstractions; they cannot exist or act by themselves. It is people that exist and act, and it is only through their social behaviour that society can come into being at all. Society is ultimately created, maintained, and changed by the social interaction of its members.

Antiseptic wrote 22 November 2010 9:44:39 AM:

>In the Australian today ...
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/radicals-get-rich-while-truth-begs/story-e6frg6zo-1225957983565 ...

The article "Radicals get rich while truth begs" (David Burchell, The Australian, November 22, 2010 12:00AM) appears to be an attack on Professor Jones, University of East Anglia, for the email messages about his unwillingness to release climate data.

My reading of the Parliamentary report into this is that no scientific misconduct by Professor Jones was found, but that there were some institutional procedural problems: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38703.htm

The traditional way academic research has been done is that researchers keep their data to themselves, in part because they are competing with other researchers and, in part, because their may be commercial or privacy restrictions on the data. The researchers only published summaries of the data and only in publications which had to be purchased. If you contact a researchers and ask for a copy of their data, they will therefore more than likely say "no".

There is a movement for open access to research results and to the source data. In 2006 Professor Sale made a submission to the Australian Research Council, proposing that those getting government grants should make their results freely available. I signed the submission on behalf of the Australian Computer Society: http://eprints.utas.edu.au/277/1/ARC_submission_v1.1.pdf

Examples of projects to help implement open access in Australia are:

* Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories: http://www.apsr.edu.au/
* Australian National Data Service: http://ands.org.au/

However, the way Australian researchers are promoted has not been changed to reflect open access. If you publish in a journal which given away freely to the public it will likely get a lower ranking. If you give away your data you will get no credit for this. As a result your institution will get less money from the Australian Government and you will get fewer promotions. This was discussed at a recent ANU seminar: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/10/era-era-of-measuring-research-output-in.html

tomw, as I read the piece and as I understand the situation with Jones, it wasn't the fact that he refused to share, it was the fact that he tried very hard to suppress dissenting data and dissenting views.

The point was also made that Jones was abetted in this by a system that was effectively deaf to any view but the one he put forward. There was no effective review and his advocacy was well-rewarded ith tenure and seniority.

The only justification for publicly funding research is to add to the sum of knowledge in the society. Fraudulent, inadequately analysed, or advocacy pseudo-research does not do that and we should not be funding it. Nor does hindering the free exchange of data. Congratulations to the ACS for supporting the principle of free exchange of data.

The issue of academic weighting is a different one, but also very relevant, since rigorous peer-review is the first bulwark against those who seek to be advocates rather than scholars.

Privately-funded research is a different kettle of fish altogether, unless there is public funding involved. I do not believe that the Govt has any right to claim "commercial-in-confidence" as a justification for the suppression of data obtained using public funds - it is not a commercial entity and can have no commercial interest in the data except insofar as the broader community can benefit.

Allowing the suppression of raw sata merely allows the shonks with a political ear to prosper.

For a stark illustration of fudged figures look at the Sociology Departments of many of our respected universities. Not a sign of raw data anywhere...

Antiseptic:

As you know data can be raw, analysed, experimental or observational.
Most Institutions of Higher Learning have policies on the Managment of Research Data and Records. Most of the data is usually available to other researchers unless there's a confidentiality clause involved with a third party for whatever reason. Anyway, the following website will give you an insight into Melbourne University's policy (click on 8).

http://www.unimelb.edu.au/records/research.html

Lexi, thanks for the link. The Uni of Melbourne is currently reviewing their procedures, apparently.

i would also like to see researchers enjoined from publication (especially in non-reviewed form) of results with significant statistical errors without noting that the standard error of the estimate is greater than x standard deviations. I suggest that a good value for x is 2, meaning a 95% confidence level for a normally- distributed data set. If the data set is skewed, this should also be reported. We are a well-educated society and we have enormous amounts of information trivially available. We are quite able to get our heads around esoterica if properly explained and as the old maxim goes, if you can't explain it to a layman, you don;t understand it.

As it stands at present, a "researcher" can publish a "startling result" with no way for the public to make any kind of critical analysis of the claim. This is especially true of social research.