On Wed, 2010-06-30 at 11:17 -0700, Bert Gunter wrote: > Just one small additional note below ... > > Bert Gunter > Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics > > > "But a lot of academics are not going to "waste" their time documenting code > > properly, so others can reap the benefits of it. They would rather get on > with > the next project, to get the next paper. " > > > -- Indeed. My personal experience over 3 decades in industrial (private) > research is that data analysis is viewed as relatively > unimportant/straightforward/pedestrian and is left to technicians (or > postdocs) -- often with what is done being largely dictated by the > conventions of a particular journal or discipline. The lab heads and > research directors are responsible for the grand research strategies, > managing resources, etc. and don't want to waste much time on something that > routine. So worrying about reproducibility of data analysis "code" (if there > is any, given the use of GUI software like Excel) falls beneath their radar. > > Clearly there are disciplines (e.g. ecology?) where this may NOT be the > case.
If ecology is anything to go by (and I am an ecologist, sort of, just about), there is a large body of the community doing things because i) that is how they've always been done, or ii) because that's what reviewers/editors expect etc. with a much smaller group of researchers pushing at the boundaries (of their field) to use techniques statisticians and the like have been using for a very long time. Reproducible research is still very much in the (very, very) small minority of the work I come across reviewing papers etc. But I am encouraged by the number of people I know who are starting to use tools like R to conduct their research. > -- Bert G -- %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% Dr. Gavin Simpson [t] +44 (0)20 7679 0522 ECRC, UCL Geography, [f] +44 (0)20 7679 0565 Pearson Building, [e] gavin.simpsonATNOSPAMucl.ac.uk Gower Street, London [w] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/ UK. WC1E 6BT. [w] http://www.freshwaters.org.uk %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
