NASA’s Plan to Make JWST Data Immediately Available Will Hurt Astronomy | Hacker News Reader

NASA’s Plan to Make JWST Data Immediately Available Will Hurt Astronomy

scientificamerican.com

12 pointsLinuxBender11 comments

From TFA

"Without a proprietary period, an astronomer with a brilliant insight might spend years developing it, months crafting a successful proposal to execute it, and precious hours of highly competitive JWST time to actually perform the observations—only to have someone else scoop up the data from a public archive and publish the result."

and

"Without a proprietary period during which the astronomers who proposed given observations have exclusive access to the data, those researchers will have to work very quickly in order to avoid being scooped. Receiving credit for discoveries is especially important for early-career astronomers looking to establish their credentials as they search for a permanent job."

This is the real issue - it's an incentive that works against what's ultimately best for society. The author of the proposal should be credited for any work that results from their proposal - and that should be counted when considering employing the researcher.

Knowing what to look for is an incredibly valuable skill, in pretty much every career.

My thoughts exactly. The author seems to think a proprietary period is the best option. But honestly, I'd rather have data be immediately openly available and ensure we credit those who played an important role in identifying what observations should be made and obtaining the data. That really seems like the best of both worlds. Promoting open access to data and collaboration among scientists is better than promoting closed access to data and "scooping" of results/limited collaboration.

Exactly. If we give credit to the scientists that design the observation campaigns, we will encourage collaboration at that stage as well.

The problem is really that all the value is put in "publish the result." I don't care so much who wrote the words in the paper vs who came up with the hypothesis and plan on how to collect the data. Certainly analyzing the data can also be significant work. Movie credits don't have one person responsible for its entirety, though the director can sometimes be a close proxy.

Once the new system is in place, after long enuogh, the name of the publisher should have less value than the person who proposed and designed the work.

Isn't this the same argument pharma companies make in support of drug patents? Huge R and D can't be recouped if a third-party takes the formula as soon as it is published and then undercuts on price, without having to worry about recovering the capital investment.

I agree with you, but I think this also makes a great case for any sort of proprietary period for things that require immense upfront costs (be it time, money etc.) which have very low costs of execution.

Pharma companies are not looking for credit - they want money.

There isn't much money to be made in getting academic credit for analysing data collected from a telescope.

But the moral argument is the same. Unless you are saying that monetary interests (which can be used for everything from basic survival to re-investment) are less important than “credit” which can be used by a limited number of people for a…slightly better job? I can see the confusion…

Couldn’t you require someone to cite/add as a coauthor the day collector?

When I was a paid by the hour lab assistant I was added as last author on the papers I assisted with since I sat in on meetings and sometimes flagged protocol design errors so we’d be able to use what we collected.

(But that was HCI, more of a social science akin to psychology , hard sciences seem less collaborative)

The computing world should just freeze while I develop the latest and greatest AI gizmo app that the market has ever seen, Using publicly available learned machine data.

Sorry, astronomers.

Reading the comments so far, I think it's not widely known that an exclusivity period is a fairly common practice in many industries.

For example, a large electronics device company might want a new chip that doesn't exist yet. So they go to a chip company, and get quoted an insane amount of money. To bring the price down, they agree to allow the chip to be sold to the public, but only after an exclusivity period of one year.

This is a good arrangement. Everyone benefits from greater economies of scale, and we get new chips that wouldn't have otherwise existed.

I think the article raises some good points. For sure, it's a paradigm change for the field. People will have to work differently and think differently about funding and risk. It can be difficult to predict what will happen in the long run, so it's worth thinking about.

Personally, I don't get why they're doing this. If everyone is delayed by one year, then no one is delayed relative to each other. This change seems likely to reduce the quality of work life, possible to change the quality of work, and unclear if it will be an overall benefit.

> When we use the $10B satellite that took 25 years to build, we must be secretive about why we point it at a certain part of the sky.

> Then we must gatekeep all data for up to a year, in order to better take personal credit for the findings.

> This will help accelerate scientific progress in the long run.

Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged.

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