OK, I'm confused. I thought that the data were recorded in the lab notebooks as the fitness assays, etc. were performed and then fed into some data analysis program such as SigmaPlot which produced the graphs published in the PNAS article. Now, I'm not exactly sire of the procedure for releasing such documents, but it does seem that they could be produced witout much incovenience to Lenski.
Ah, I see.
I don't see how that would be any different from the same data being presented in the article. Of course, I also don't think this would be useful to any significant degree. I mean, if, as the crank claims, this is all fabriacated data and a hoax, why in the world wouldn't the lab books be faked too?
As to inconvenience, I'd have to say this could be a pain. You wouldn't want to give up your originals, because you'll need to go back and look over data, etc. Which means they'd have to 1. Find all the relevent materials, 2. make copies of them all, 3. Properly bind and/or label the copies to prevent mix-ups (at least putting seperate documents in seperate folders/dividers) and 4. Mail them. Now, imagine if this guy gets them to do all that, they have no real excuse for not doing it for the next crank that comes along, and the next, etc. I could see it as being annoying enough the first time, and setting a precedent that could prevent a lot of future work. At best, I might see him offering to let crank make his own copies if he got transport to Lenski's location, anything more seems unreasonable to me.
Not to mention that I doubt the existence of log books would make any difference to said crank. Heck, they could probably send copies of 24 hour video surveillance of the lab for the last 20 years and the crank would probably still claim it wasn't enough
They've presented the data they collected, they've offered to make the various strains avaialble for anyone else who is qualified to research, so I don't see a problem. All crank needs to do is hire or otehrwise convince a qualified expert to request the samples, and he can re-create the work.
ETA: HE did also state that they'd post any additional data on the website (the data that wasn't mentioned in the paper because it didn't pertain to the citrate). From the crank's own request:
Submission guidelines for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science state that "(viii) Materials and Data Availability. To allow others to replicate and build on work published in PNAS, authors must make materials, data, and associated protocols available to readers. Authors must disclose upon submission of the manuscript any restrictions on the availability of materials or information."
From the paper and the offer of bacterial strains to anyone qualified to examine them, I think Lenski has met this burden. I don't think the lab notes (the relevent data from which are in the papers) are needed, nor would they be useful to reproducing the work.
