[Chris Morris]

HI,
Realistically, public database providers, and academics who deposit data in them, are not in a position to accept significant liabilities. This is especially the case if the data is provided and curated freely, with no contribution from the users. No liability means no quality guarantee. Some databases provide “best effort” curation, and some provide no curation at all.
Legally, there is no contract between the depositor of the bad data, and the user who downloads it and relies on it. There just two legal relationships here, one between the user and the database provider, and one between the database provider and the depositor. In order to operate, the database must limit its liability to users, and indemnify depositors against claims by users.
I think that there is an exception for this in the case of deliberate deception: it is reasonable that the terms of deposition require the depositor to be acting in good faith as a condition of any indemnity.
There are examples of this in the Protein Data Bank. The vast majority of entries are honest, and fairly sound. Some are erroneous. And a very few are so erroneous that there seems to be deliberate scientific misconduct. This is a risk for any scientific database – as we electronically enable research, we also enable research misconduct.
Regards,
Chris
– Show quoted text -From: jbminster=***@***.***-groups.org [mailto:***@***.***-groups.org] On Behalf Of jbminster
Sent: 13 November 2015 19:03
To: Jean-Bernard Minster; RDA/CODATA Legal Interoperability IG
Subject: Re: [rda-legalinterop-ig] Food of thought
I think my concern was misinterpreted in a very narrow way. It had little to do with taxonomy, and a lot to do with the correctness of a database and the mechanisms to preserve its integrity.
If erroneous information makes its way into a popular database because of poor protection, and is not detected quickly, then that erroneous information gets propagated to the extent that control becomes nearly impossible.
This is certainly true of demographic databases, where someone may be declared deceased, and then have to spend years trying to convince the rest of the world that “the news of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.
I fear that poor protection could be exploited deliberately by parties who would have an axe to grind. They could not lose!! Either the wrong information is used unknowingly by subsequent users, or the database itself is discredited and any use of it, honest or not, becomes suspect. This impacts any use of the database for legal purposes.
Consider the NOAA National Climate Data Center (NCDC): One of the common uses of that center is by lawyers in various criminal or civil cases. A trivial example is “what was the weather at that location at the data and time when the crime was committed”. The notion of modifying a poorly protected database to affect application of the law could be the basis for a (rather bad, I should say) TV episode.
Bernard=
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