Bay Scientists Fight Over Fish Data

Remember the other day, that article about how scientists were planting bugs on fish and tracked them? A new article came out about how scientists are fighting over possession and use of the data: 

Ownership, sharing of fish tracking data raises issues

Acoustic technology has allowed scientists along the Atlantic Coast to work together to track the movements of thousands of fish in ways unimaginable only a decade ago.

But it has also created some sticky questions: Who “owns” the data — the researcher who inserted the tag in the fish, or the researcher who operated the receiver that detected the fish? How public should that information be? And how should it be archived?

“There is a scientific ethics question of who has the right to use or publish data captured by Joe’s receiver from transmitters Frank paid for,” said Greg Garman, director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. “And there have been a few instances along the coast where people behaved badly.”

Although researchers around the Bay say they typically work well together, there are examples of problems from other places, such as people publishing data gleaned from fish they never handled.

In the Bay, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chesapeake Bay Office, which operates six “real time” receivers on buoys in the Bay, has been funding the creation of a data-sharing system within the Bay, the Mid-Atlantic Acoustic Telemetry Observation System, or MATOS.

“There is some initial hesitance among researchers to hand over and completely share their data,” said Doug Wilson, who is developing MATOS.

Wilson said he went into the project thinking, “everybody would be overjoyed to share their data. It hasn’t worked out that way.”

In places along the coast, biologists have ruffled feathers by tagging and releasing fish — a relatively inexpensive procedure — without undertaking the more costly, and time-consuming, effort of operating receivers of their own to collect and share data. In other instances, some receiver operators have been slow to share data — if they do so at all. . . 

If the receivers are paid for in part, or in total (as is more likely) by the tax payers, the data should become public as soon as possible. In this day and age, it's entirely possible for that job to be automated and done in real time.  If we can track Mary Lee (the Great White Shark) out in the Atlantic Ocean in real time, surely we can track a few hundred Striped Bass as well.

I have a little sympathy for the scientist who wants to hold the data back for publication, but I think the case for open data is stronger. If you're really concerned that an uncredentialed civilian is going to take the data you lobbied hard to obtain, do a better job working it up, and correctly interpret it before you, then your not doing your job right.