Historical Research Data Management?
In my last post OAC and Historical Ag Data – has the 150 year old mystery been solved? I ended with a couple of highlighted statements made by the Wm. Johnston, who was the rector/president of OAC back in the early years (1874-1879):
- conduct experiments and publish the results
- lay his hands upon our results and follow them if desirable
How many of you saw Research Data Management at play here?? Oh it yelled documentation to me too! Obtain results and follow them if desirable – how do you do this without documentation????
Back in 1876, Wm Johnston had the foresight to set out what he called a code of action for any trials that were conducted on the Experimental Farm. As I read through these I see a number of corollaries to today’s research processes – setting out a research question, ensuring you look at the results in context of the trial, documentation, and the practicality of running trials on a working farm! I find it funny how this code of action was put in place back in 1876 and yet we are still teaching some of these basics today. For reference here is the code of action items that relate to both livestock and field experiments:
- All principles must be laid down by facts of practice and science
- If a principle seems wanting, we may have to establish one
- To ascertain the exact state of information regarding any contemplated experiment – repetition might be useless
- To select the subject of enquiry
- The solving of a definite question, whether affirmative or negative
- Whether the subject is practical or economical, of both combined
- The arrangement of a definite plan of operations – the form in which the enquiry should be prosecuted
- Uniformity of treatment
- Duplicates indispensable
There are 8 more relevant if you are embarking on an experiment where you are feeding animals. These include items such as: previous treatment and present condition, periodical weighing; character of housing and temperature, the greatest result in the least time, at the least cost, and four more… Additional field experiment principles include: uniformity of soil and exposure, analysis of soil and manures, all useless and misleading without minuteness, the result of one experiment suggesting another, and twelve more… It is suggested that all these principles be observed and documented – WOW!!!
As I continue to review the experiments and data available from the initial years of what we now know as OAC – I see that we also have/had a strong history in research management and yes I’m going to extend that to research data management. The information – data at that time – is included in these publications – albeit Annual Reports – but all the information – data – is there!!
In the early years – before any requests came in for specific experiments on farm, feeding trials for the pigs and cattle were predominant – as were cropping/planting trials on the site. There are tables and images of alot of these trials in the Annual Report. I have only read the first 4 years and I am VERY impressed with the “data” and information on these trials.
So now the question that begs to be asked – now what? How much data did I find? What is the value of this data? Is it only valuable to the data geeks? What if I told you there were crude weather reports and data included in some of these reports? Would that change your mind regarding the value of this information?
Something to ponder…. Till the next time,
