Open Tech Calendar

Date Monday 9th December 2013
Time 6:00 for 6:30 pm
Location Room M404 (4th Floor), George Moore Building, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BE
Speaker Tim Storer (University of Glasgow)
Convenor Tejinder Singh Lota
Abstract: In November 2009, a large amount of research material was leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The material consisted of emails, academic papers, research proposals, data and a substantial collection of source codes (over 75,000 lines across more than 1000 files) and program binaries.
Much of the material in the archive (particularly the email correspondence) has already been subject to substantial analysis discussion and controversy concerning the integrity of the data and results contained. This debate is clearly significant given the conclusions that have been drawn from the results and the implications for wider climate change policy. However, relatively little attention has been given to quality of the software source code and accompanying documentation.
This talk will present an analysis of the leaked source code to highlight the challenge of applying software engineering methods to the development of high quality scientific software. The results of these analyses are then discussed in the broader context of the use of computer programs for producing scientific results.