Trying to persuade us of transparency’s menace to the public, the Nature comment uses a type of language that really does not belong in the discussion about data sharing (but provides for an entertaining read):
- Orchestrated and well-funded harassment campaigns against researchers
- risk making science more vulnerable to attacks
- masquerade as scientific inquiry
- Increasingly … calls for retraction are coming from people who do not like a paper’s conclusions
It may be true that some researchers, e.g. in climate change (apparently a good example for all of science), are subject to attacks by opponents. But that has
nothing to do with data sharing and openness. Bringing such language and examples into the openness debate is a distortion of the discussion. Anyone working on climate change who does
not share their data is automatically subject to criticism, because opponent can claim the author is ‘hiding something’. Being transparent on how conclusions were reached is exactly the right way to protect yourself from criticism. Holding back your data won’t make opponents go away. And if you really did some mistakes in the analysis, then why should that remain undiscovered? Or wait, I’m not sure I understand science anymore. What was the goal again?
The comment goes on to provide a list of
red flags about researchers and red flags about the so-called critics, pretending to provide a balanced view of benefits of transparency versus withholding your data. Again, the list suggests that anyone asking for replication materials could potentially be an amateur, have a financial interest in publishing a failed replication, might plan personal attacks, hack p-values, or insist on access to confidential data.
The list is absurd, and almost comical.
If it weren’t published in Nature, and if it didn’t have the potential to lend harmful arguments to opponents of transparency, I would not have taken it seriously.