“Responsibility for Raw Data”, 1962-09 (; backlinks; similar):
Comments on an Iowa State University graduate student’s endeavor of acquiring data of a particular kind in order to carry out a study for his master’s thesis. This student wrote to 37 authors whose journal articles appeared in APA journals 1959–2196163ya. Of these authors, 32 replied. 21 of those reported the data misplaced, lost, or inadvertently destroyed. 2 of the remaining 11 offered their data on the conditions that they be notified of our intended use of their data, and stated that they have control of anything that we would publish involving these data.
Errors were found in some of the raw data that was obtained which caused a dilemma of either reporting the errors or not. The commentator states that if it were clearly set forth by the APA that the responsibility for retaining raw data and submitting them for scrutiny upon request lies with the author, this dilemma would not exist.
The commentator suggests that a possibly more effective means of controlling quality of publication would be to institute a system of quality control whereby random samples of raw data from submitted journal articles would be requested by editors and scrutinized for accuracy and the appropriateness of the analysis performed.
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