Most scientific research data from the 1990s is lost forever

Too_Many_Tools

(I wonder how much internal data from the 90s Parallax (or any tech company) could find if it had to. My experience is that many times the critical data has been lost to recreate a product due to a number of reasons.)

FYI...

http://news.msn.com/science-technology/most-scientific-research-data-from-the-1990s-is-lost-forever
[h=1]Most scientific research data from the 1990s is lost forever[/h] 7 days ago By Danielle Wiener-Bronner of The Wire [EMAIL="?subject=Most%20scientific%20research%20data%20from%20the%201990s%20is%20lost%20forever&body=I%20thought%20you%20would%20be%20interested%20in%20this%20story%20I%20found%20on%20news.msn.com%3a%20Most%20scientific%20research%20data%20from%20the%201990s%20is%20lost%20forever%20(http%3a%2f%2fnews.msn.com%2fscience-technology%2fmost-scientific-research-data-from-the-1990s-is-lost-forever%23tscptme)"]


[/EMAIL]
The loss of data makes it impossible to do broad, decades-long studies.
A new study has found that as much as 80 percent of the raw scientific data collected by researchers in the early 1990s is gone forever, mostly because no one knows where to find it.
According to a study by Timothy H. Vines, et al. titled "The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age," published last week in Current Biology, most raw data from scientific papers published twenty years ago is unobtainable - either because authors have since changed their contact information and can't be reached or because the data was stored using outdated technology, like floppy disks.
A post on Smithsonian.com's Surprising Science blog explains the researchers' methodology:

To make their estimate, [Vine's] group chose a type of data that’s been relatively consistent over time - anatomical measurements of plants and animals - and dug up between 25 and 40 papers for each odd year during the period that used this sort of data, to see if they could hunt down the raw numbers. A surprising amount of their inquiries were halted at the very first step: for 25 percent of the studies, active email addresses couldn’t be found, with defunct addresses listed on the paper itself and web searches not turning up any current ones.

According to Surprising Science, 38 percent of the researchers data queries yielded no response. The scientists report that the likelihood of finding an existing data set falls by 17 percent each year, starting the third year after a paper's publication.
Related: Scientific Journals Are Bad for Science
Obviously, the finding is problematic. First, scientific findings are validated by their reproducibility, making access to raw data an essential way to test and retest outcomes. Vines notes that "much of the data is unique to time and place, and are thus irreplaceable, and many other data sets are expensive to regenerate." Second, as the Smithsonian points out, most of this data is funded by federal grants stipulating that all data must be available to the public, presumably for longer than a few years. And finally, the loss of data makes it impossible to do broad, decades-long studies.
Vines and his team recommend that scientists be required to turn over their raw data to publications, that can systematically archive the information.

JLocke

Slightly different, as the stuff wasn't stored digitally, but I remember reading an article several years ago about the Apollo program. It said that all the technical documentation for building the Saturn V rocket had been thrown out, and that NASA couldn't build another one even if they so desired. Kind of startling.

potatohead

And now we have scanning and point cloud alignment software that can reverse engineer many of the components quickly.

To be perfectly fair, it's likely easier to go from the physical model, if we have one. With the state of the art in analysis and simulation software advancing as rapidly as it is, they can take that design and very likely improve it significantly on the way through.

Not to say the data loss isn't a big deal. It is. But we do have many options today. For a study, it's a loss. For manufacturing, etc... maybe not. Just depends.

Mark_T

Perhaps someone at Google read that and will take on the challenge of fixing it (for the future at least). Its part and
parcel of the culture of not publishing raw data alongside papers, which is a major problem in some areas (medicine).

jazzed

So if the research is lost, then now we can file patents on the stuff we can remember?

Buck Rogers

JLocke wrote: »

Slightly different, as the stuff wasn't stored digitally, but I remember reading an article several years ago about the Apollo program. It said that all the technical documentation for building the Saturn V rocket had been thrown out, and that NASA couldn't build another one even if they so desired. Kind of startling.

Hello!
Was it? I can provide a link for the hardware the bird wore. And for her payload, the command and service modules, and the LEM as well. And that's computer hardware.

It is possible to learn how they did build the birds from studying the two (or three) surviving ones.

Gadgetman

Not necessarily...

In the decades since the big cans were put together, lubricants will have deteriorated, or have been washed off completely by preservatives or rain.

And very few parts comes with tolerances or or torque settings stamped on them.

JLocke

Here's an interesting article about the Saturn V... The Lost Art of the Saturn V

And a little clip from the article:

But on the other hand, building the rocket at such a rate and with so many subcontractors means the people who oversaw and understood the actual assembly and overall working of the Saturn V were few. Each contractor recorded the workings of their stage and records survive about the engines used, but only a handful of engineers from the MSC knew how Saturn V puzzle fit together.

It is possible to work backwards to recreate individual aspects of the technology, but the men who knew how the whole vehicle worked are gone. No one alive today is able to recreate the Saturn V as it was.

Worse is the lack of records. Without a planned used for the Saturn V after Apollo, most of the comprehensive records of the rockets inner workings stayed with the engineers. Any plans or documents explaining the inner workings of the completed rocket that remain are possibly living in someone’s basement, unknown and lost in a pile of a relative’s old work papers.

Peter KG6LSE

JLocke wrote: »

Slightly different, as the stuff wasn't stored digitally, but I remember reading an article several years ago about the Apollo program. It said that all the technical documentation for building the Saturn V rocket had been thrown out, and that NASA couldn't build another one even if they so desired. Kind of startling.

now I know why I have had a hard time finding Sat5 stuff yesterday ......... I had no clue so much was lost

EDIT . JLocke In the link you posted . I have the same photo of the Saturn C-5 !! I used the plotter to print at 24X 32 or so .

http://vintagespace.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/saturn-v-apollo-4-prelaunch.jpg



I hope we dont have this problem any more with data today .

Too_Many_Tools

JLocke wrote: »

Here's an interesting article about the Saturn V... The Lost Art of the Saturn V

And a little clip from the article:

But on the other hand, building the rocket at such a rate and with so many subcontractors means the people who oversaw and understood the actual assembly and overall working of the Saturn V were few. Each contractor recorded the workings of their stage and records survive about the engines used, but only a handful of engineers from the MSC knew how Saturn V puzzle fit together.

It is possible to work backwards to recreate individual aspects of the technology, but the men who knew how the whole vehicle worked are gone. No one alive today is able to recreate the Saturn V as it was.

Worse is the lack of records. Without a planned used for the Saturn V after Apollo, most of the comprehensive records of the rockets inner workings stayed with the engineers. Any plans or documents explaining the inner workings of the completed rocket that remain are possibly living in someone’s basement, unknown and lost in a pile of a relative’s old work papers.

I remember visiting with a number of Apollo engineers from the major companies in the 80's...the recipe was already lost...no records, people retire/die, tooling destroyed.

When the design for Orion (NASA latest effort to return men to the moon) was going on last decade, many engineers visited junkyards that specialize in space hardware looking for old equipment seeking to relearn the old secrets.

NASA shops on Ebay regularly for old hardware to retrofit active programs...the brain trust is long gone and no one knows how to redesign/reengineer to support existing programs. If you take note of the personnel who support current unmanned missions, it is university based talent.

The United States is terrible at supporting long term projects...the Nation has the attention span of a toddler.