I've listened to the show (highly enjoyable) and it ticked a lot of boxes for me. However, like Chris, I have some concerns and there may be some contradictions with what has been said by the guests and what is said on the ufodata.net site.
Specifically, it is concerning the data, and release thereof. Leslie and Mark both stated that the data would be released for public consumption. To be fair, Mark did mention that peer-reviewed data would be pre-processed, but on the following page (
UFODATA Project - Frequently Asked Questions) it appears that they'll be looking to monetise the data:
What will you do if the system detects UAP, and how will the data be shared?
The first step will be to thoroughly analyze the data ourselves in an effort to rule out conventional explanations. If we think that we can rule out such explanations then the data will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. In addition, the data will be made available to public scrutiny more generally. Having said that, we reserve the right to place reasonable restrictions on dissemination and sharing of data pending appropriate cost sharing agreements, as we do not have funding or staffing available to compile and distribute data to other agencies at our own cost. Any such arrangements will accord with standard protocols used by non-profit scientific or governmental agencies. Policies on data management and distribution, such as that used the European Space Agency, or GEIPAN in France, will serve as a guide.
A few observations here:
1. By filtering the raw data, there is a danger that other patterns may be missed that could be of use to other researchers;
2. By submitting to peer-reviewed journals, they should really supply the raw data and then detail the methodologies and algorithms applied to the data, such that other independent researchers can apply the same and hopefully get the same results, or be able to identify any divergences in their own result-sets and report back;
3. By placing a cost to access the data, they are excluding the very people and volunteers that could assist in finding patterns at the bottom level. There is an opportunity to take advantage of citizen science _as_well_as citizen funding which they are seeking.
There was also talk of varying types of stations - currently they are working on deploying a high end observation one. Well, there's an opportunity to again go for breadth, rather than depth, by creating a cheap cut down version i.e. no high-end camera and such using something like a RaspberryPi, an Arduino or Particle for less than $100 that can monitor things such as weather, magnetism and so on. The software is free to use and develop and anyone could download and flash onto their kit, connect to the Internet and then be part of the network - anywhere in the world.
Loved the idea of a data conference centred on UAP - hopefully it would be streamed for those of us not in the US? Or even have a live webinar so questions can be asked and theories tested?
I've long wished that entities like MUFON and NUFORC would release the data in a standard format so that people can mine the data for value. NUFORC has hardly anyone to do this, MUFON don't have the people with the knowledge at the moment. The time is ripe to start extracting patterns and indicators from these datasets, but the politics always seem to get in the way. The 'value' in these datasets are not going to be monetary - certainly not an amount that would be significant to the holders - instead, its in the dissemination and combining it with other datasets and insight.
Bb
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