[okfn-discuss] Businesses unwilling to share data, but keen on government doing it

Wed Jun 30 23:15:55 UTC 2010

I've discovered that in the oil and gas sector, essentially all the
data is open and public.  No one conceals that they have found a
productive well or how much was there.  Have a look round the data
available from Norway
    http://www.npd.no/en/news/Exploration-drilling-results/

There's equivalent UK data, but it's much less structured.  Drilling
holes is expensive enough that the industry cannot afford to waste
time not using the very best data -- even if it does mean larger
companies can't dump on smaller companies by withholding useful data
from them.

I'd draw a very close analogy between oil exploration and
pharmaceuticals -- no one knows exactly where all the oil fields are,
just as no one knows which chemicals work as effective drugs.  There's
a large element of detective work, derived from the experimental data
(the more the better).  They bid for the rights to exploit the fields.

The reason why the pharmaceutical industry can get away with their
structure of waste is they can afford it and defend it.  No one can
challenge it, because there is no common space.  Every pharmaceutical
company could be assigning its 100 research scientists into the same
dry area while avoiding completely wide open untapped sectors, but you
can't make it visible in the way you can with oil rigs on a map.

BTW, for map of on-shore oil drills go here:
   http://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/show/uk-land-oil-wells/map/

The UK drilling data is available from this webpage.  Perhaps some
open data keenies can check it out as an example that closed data is
not always the default.
   https://www.og.decc.gov.uk/information/

Julian.

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Mr. Puneet Kishor <punkish at eidesis.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Jun 30, 2010, at 9:47 AM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>>
>> > "A survey of 1,000 businesses finds that they're keen on open data
>> > initiatives from the government - but unwilling to follow suit"
>> >
>> >
>> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/29/business-data-sharing-unwilling
>> >
>>
>> Makes sense. Speaking for myself, public's data should be public. Private
>> users and creators of data should have the freedom to make their private
>> data public or keep it private without any censure or judgment from others.
>
> I take a different view.  I've worked in the pharma industry trying to
> design drugs and it's desperately ineffective. Much of the problem is that
> we do not have the appropriate knowledge on which to take decisions. But
> much of that knowledge resides - fragmented - within the industry. And it
> occurs multiple times.
>
> The first consequence is that the whole industry is  less effective that it
> could be (this is a personal judgment but I can defend it). I believe that
> by raising the pre-competitive level and publishgin basic data that benefits
> everyone, then everyone benefits. It's almsot a classic prisoner's dilemma
> but with an added act of faith and a less clear benefit for defecting.
>
> If it were simply that the industry is less profitable that's a pity for the
> shareholders. But it's worse than that because it leads to bad drugs. Most
> drugs have serious problems - they don't work for some people, they are
> toxic to others, etc. And the culture of secrecy inevitable leads to suspect
> practices (some may even be unconscious).
>
> So IMO there is a public interest in pharma companies being more Open. To
> their credit Merck started this my making their ESTs public
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressed_sequence_tag, ) - see
> http://www.abrf.org/abrfnews/1997/june1997/jun97mining.html . ...
>
> The initial success of the NIH group spawned additional large scale EST
> projects, both in industry and academia. Biotechnology companies, such as
> Human Genome Sciences and Incyte, were founded on the power of large scale
> EST sequencing and its potential value for drug discovery. Many of these
> large industrial efforts took a proprietary approach to EST data, eventually
> leading to the Merck-sponsored EST project at Washington University
> described below (3). The Merck and other academic EST projects have produced
> an excellent public database of short cDNA tags which currently represent
> approximately 55,000 unique human genes (4). This database is a powerful
> resource for the identification and study of human disease genes. It further
> provides effective tools for mapping, complete sequencing and comprehensive
> analysis of the human genome.
>
> Historians will argue what would have happened to the genome projects if the
> companies had kept it all to themselves. I've copied in Tim Hubbard who will
> be able to give chapter and verse.
>
> There is now a movement within the pharma industry to start raising the
> pre-competitive level. They recognise the prisoner's dilemma. It's early
> days and mechanisms are yet to be worked out but I hope we will start to see
> a freer and therefore more innovative approach to knowledge-driven drug
> discovery.
>
> And it's certain that to be effective that knowledge must be Open.
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
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