Contribute in large, meaningful ways to open source projects. Write your own software and release it. There are plenty of ways to show programming competence that don't require a degree.

Except for that IQ tests are largely crap, I mostly agree with your point. They are measuring something that seems to be correlated with intelligence, but do not measure intelligence directly, thus there are going to outliers of people who just aren't good at whatever the IQ test is measuring, but excellent at other things (Savants might be an example here).

Also, throwing numbers around is largely meaningless, as the numbers are only valid when compared to others numbers in relatively small cultural groups. Things like primary language, the school's curriculum, interactions with objects, etc. will all change one's IQ score.

That being said, I think you are correct that some people just can't hack some of the higher level stuff, but I disagree with how black and white you make it seem.

Do you live on the moon?

Generally you want the other pair of eyes to also be an expert in your field, so they can criticize your work. If bad data is released into the wild, it is very hard to get back and make sure nothing gets published or released with it.

Also, if money was what researchers were after there are plenty of other fields where you can make tons more money for much less work.

You would be removing the main incentive for researchers; prestige amongst their peers and a feeling of having contributed to the furthering of human knowledge by not allowing them to publish their own data sets. You would also be removing many of the checks and balances internal to the system that help weed out a lot of crap.

Also, I don't get why "release when published" is so crazy. Do you go down to Washington and demand that your Senate rep opens up Word on his computer to show you the half completed/fleshed out draft of the bill he was working on? Do you want to go into the police station and demand to know their list of informants and undercover cops because they are paid with public money? Anything with the military?

Your position is unreasonable and counterproductive.

I call at least slightly bogus on that "report". I'm not trying to be an apologist for some of the bone headed mistakes in the IPCC (the WWF references are pretty inexcusable), but "Working Paper" doesn't mean that it hasn't been published. An alternative (and very European) definition is synonymous with "technical report", usually by some government institution.

While these may not be peer reviewed, despite what the IPCC originally said, they aren't "papers in progress" or "drafts".

Just a little nitpick in her article. I would also like her to publish a full list of the 1/3 of the the claims for others to check her work, until then, I see a handful of things she has posted on the web that I agree that many are dubious.

However, most of them are from the smaller sections of the report that were more addendums than anything else. The main information is still solid. Working group 1, by far the largest section of the report and containing almost all of the important information and findings, scored As and Bs on her "report card" for every chapter.

Generally by the time publication comes around, you've already prepared your data for presentation because you have a good idea whether or not the reviewers are going to ask for your raw data/processing code/whatnot. That varies depending on the data set and the reviewers.

The biggest part that is the problem of releasing the data right away is because you don't know if the data is crap without a lot of vetting. Once and a while, it doesn't get caught until a fresh pair of eyes (reviewers) take a look at it and pick up on something maybe your team hasn't thought of.

The other problem is then you would create a whole industry of research snipers who would poach papers from researchers, thus eliminating the benefits of gathering huge, difficult to collect data sets. There would be no incentive to spend 10 years gathering data, only to have your research sniped as you are writing up your papers.

Sure, the data belongs to the people (and rightfully so, information should be free), but you have to give some incentive to researchers who are already severely underpaid and overworked to painstakingly collect data. Pretty much the only thing they have is recognition.

Again, releasing data is fine. I am all for it. I think data should absolutely be released once the lab that generated is finished with it, and that that should be shortly after the initial batch of papers is published. This also gives the scientists time to fully understand and test the data, and understand the limitations of how it was collected.

Data should be released, yes. And like I said, you can always pay more taxes so labs can hire a grad student or someone to release data for them as soon as it is generated.

But then you'll just complain about the data you can't get because of privacy constraints or NDAs. Labs that generate data should have first dibs on that data, but I absolutely agree with you that is should be released on a reasonable time scale after their publications from it were made. However your demands of releasing it immediately are unreasonable and counter-productive to science.

It would probably be a dump of a large, fully annotated and understood database system. Or there are plenty of files I have that are several hundred megabytes where the columns are x y z and are motion tracking files, which are fully annotated in perfect order as far as protocol is concerned, but if I simply handed you that file with no preparation of what any of it actual is, then you have no idea what the hell to do with it.

When we analyze that data, we know exactly what the limitations of the system that collected it are, what parts of the data are good and which parts are bad, what went wrong during that study, etc. But do to privacy issues, we cannot turn over videos of the subjects performing the tasks (this is an IRB rule, not ours) without consent of the subjects. Handing you a text file without the video is worthless. Data without context, understanding of exactly how every piece of it was collected, or understanding of its limitations is meaningless at best. At worst, it is dangerous in the hands of someone with a larger megaphone who does not understand the data (as the AGW deniers love to do).

Like I said though, I think that data should be released, but releasing data as soon as it is generated rather than after the relevant papers have been published is an undue burden on the already heavily time constrained researchers.

I think he meant "indistinguishable to the layperson". That is a real issue. Jenny McCarthy can say all she wants, and to Joe Blow, it is all the same as what scientists say. Scientists know she is full of shit, but people not trained in science might not be able to tell.

Hire people to get the data to you then. I would imagine that most researchers would be fine releasing data if the time and money burden of doing so was lifted from them.

Nope. Plenty of classified research goes on in university research labs.

As per FoI requests, data needs to be prepared in some form. I couldn't just send you a 60GB .txt file full of numbers and no information about it. Compiling that information into a useable form takes time and money that could be much better spent on doing research. Data can be incredibly complex and require years of focused background in the subject to understand.

And if you want to bitch about how we're using YOUR money to do work, then you should fucking pay us more. Shit wages. Especially for anyone who isn't tenure track. Academic research amounts to slave labor already. If you want to get the information, pay someone to come down to the lab and prepare it for you.

There are many genetic diseases that remain repressed for generations. And even if there is no history of it, it is still possible for them to be caused by random mutation. It is possible to carry the recessive trait but not be afflicted yourself.

Using your logic there should be no genetic disorders whatsoever, as all of the mothers would have died out long ago.

Color is actually used as a motif in many films, giving you hints of what objects are related to each other. For example, the color red in Sixth Sense (there are tons of others, dating all the way back to when color was first used, such as red/yellow in The Wizard of Oz). This is actually a very common thing, using color as a means of providing subtle cues to the plot and focusing attention at certain, otherwise unnoticeable, objects.

If a 3D movie can use 3D in that same way, then I'll welcome the use of 3D. Until then, it is a useless gimmick that costs me $3 more when I go to the theater.

This was my initial reaction to it also. Currently, people with total paralysis or "locked in syndrome" may be lucky enough to blink to communicate. In fact, that is how the absolutely wonderful book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby was written.

He suffered from locked in syndrome after a car crash and wrote the book by blinking character by character to a nurse. Technology like this could really help people like that, and researchers who want to communicate with people otherwise unable to communicate.