[School-of-data] A cautionary tail... A case for open data

Sun Jul 13 10:14:19 UTC 2014

And a good example of "closed access can lead to bad science". Not the
whole story, but part of it.

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 10:36 AM, Simon Cropper <
simoncropper at fossworkflowguides.com> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> This is a story I thought that Data Scientists would appreciate, despite
> being predominately skewed to the biological sciences.
>
> Quick background: Males of Drosophila melanogaster (Fruit Fly) 'sing' to
> their mates by vibrating their wings.
>
> In 1980, researchers identified rhythms in the 'wing songs' that could be
> related back to particular alleles.
>
>     Kyriacou, C.P. & Hall, J.C., 1980. Circadian rhythm mutations in
>     Drosophila melanogaster affect short-term fluctuations in the
>     male’s courtship song. Proceedings of the National Academy of
>     Sciences, 77(11), pp.6729–6733.
>
> The paper and its research findings enter scientific legend and are
> reiterated and cited over and over, despite only a few being able to
> reproduce their results.
>
> Recent work has verified that the rhythms reported were actually artifacts
> of the way the data was analyzed.
>
>     Stern, D.L., 2014. Reported Drosophila courtship song rhythms are
>     artifacts of data analysis. BMC Biology, 12(1), p.38.
>
> A cautionary tail or a case for the release of raw data so everyone can
> draw their own conclusions?
>
> --
> Cheers Simon
>
>    Simon Cropper - Open Content Creator
>
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-- 
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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