Where Have All the Data Gone?
数据都去哪儿了?
Twenty years after publication in 1991, 80 percent of the data behind scientific papers was no longer available. Karen Hopkin reports
在1991年发表的科学论文里,有80%的原始数据已经找不到了。
撰文/播音 凯伦•霍普金(Karen Hopkin)
翻译 李轩
Data are the lifeblood of science. But all those carefully recorded observations may be in danger. Because a new study shows that data from the recent past are being lost at an alarming rate. The journal Current Biology has the data to prove it. [Timothy H. Vines et al., The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age]
数据是科学研究的生命。但所有这些精心记录下来的发现或许都已危在旦夕。因为一项新研究表明,近年来的科研数据正在以惊人的速度丢失。《当代生物学》(Current Biology)上的一篇文章反映了这一现象。
Scientific studies build on research that came before. And scientists turn to the facts and figures from previous work to aid in their own analyses or confirm that the earlier results still hold up. But how often can they access the older data they need?
一项科学研究,通常都建立在以前的研究结果之上,科学家会引用先前研究中的事实与数据,来支持他们自己的分析,或者证实先前的结果确实成立。但他们是否每次都能找到自己需要的原始数据呢?
To find out, researchers selected 500 studies published between 1991 and 2011. And they sent the authors a request for the studies’ raw data. Twenty years after publication, 80 percent of the data was unavailable.
为了找出结果,研究人员选择了500项在1991年和2011年发表的研究成果,并且向作者索取研究的原始数据。在文章发表20年后,80%的数据都丢失了。
In some cases, the authors couldn’t be reached. When they did respond, many reported that the data were simply not accessible, buried in an attic or saved on a now unreadable floppy disk.
有时候,研究人员甚至无法联系论文的作者,而就算联系上了作者,很多人却说他们早已将数据束之高阁,或储存在了现今无法读取的软盘上,所以无法提供。
This loss of information is an impediment to ongoing research and a waste of funding. Perhaps scientific data should be recognized as an endangered species, and efforts made to keep data around for future generations.
这种信息丢失会阻碍后来的研究,并且是对科研资金的浪费。也许,科学数据应该划分到濒危物种之中,我们应该采取措施,让后来人可以利用他们。