[10548] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Debating the NII "Truisms"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sat Feb 26 20:39:50 1994
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 16:45:31 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: sob@tmc.edu
Cc: tenney@netcom.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: "Stan Barber"'s message of Sun, 13 Feb 1994 15:16:16 -0600 <9402131516.ZM5914@TMC.EDU>
Here's an ambition I dreamt up back around 1978 winding down a medical
research project:
Something I think that would be useful would be if on-line raw data
from research projects was made available. For example, back then I
worked at Harvard with epidemiological data, primarily pulmonary. It
occurred to me that lots hypotheses could be tested against the same
db we had tested ours. Typically we had medical history, occupational
history and some specific tests like blood pressure and spirometry
(pulmonary function) on thousands of individuals. The questions we
were being paid to ask is always necessarily limited. Someone else
could take the same data and probably squeeze another dozen good
papers out of it. In some cases analytic methods on the data (e.g. we
had real-time sampling, typically 12-bits @ around 60hz, of lung
function) was bound to change.
Even we changed mathematical models over just the few years I worked
there and tested some new models. To test new models you need data
like this. That's one reason we were often asked to try out new
models, for example see if some proposed analysis of raw pulmonary
data would pick out the 5+ year smokers blind, we could hundreds of
tries and then compare back with what we actually knew about the
individuals.
I'm sure all that particular data is gone gone gone, stored on 8 1/2"
floppies and 1/2 mag tapes and RK05 packs and thrown out when the 7
year limit passed (or even if they might exist probably unreadable.)
Ok, that was then, this is now.
I dunno, it seems like an interesting idea and something the granting
agencies might consider. The Raw Data Initiative (RDI).
-Barry Shein
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