This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.
这里是《科学美国人》的60秒科学,我是凯伦·霍普金。只需要一分钟。
Data are the lifeblood of science. But all those carefully recorded observations may be in danger. Because a new study shows that data from the recent past are being lost at an alarming rate. The journal Current Biology has the data to prove it.
数据是科学研究的命脉。但所有曾被细致记录下来的发现，或许都已危在旦夕。一项研究表明，研究数据正在以惊人的速度消失不见，相关数据发表于《当代生物学》(Current Biology)杂志。
Scientific studies build on research that came before. And scientists turn to the facts and figures from previous work to aid in their own analyses or confirm that the earlier results still hold up. But how often can they access the older data they need?
科学研究通常建立在已经获得的研究结果之上，科学家会引用先前研究中的事实与数据，来支持自己的分析或证实先前的结果仍然成立。但他们是否每次都能找到自己需要的原始数据呢?
To find out, researchers selected 500 studies published between 1991 and 2011. And they sent the authors a request for the studies’ raw data. Twenty years after publication, 80 percent of the data was unavailable.
为了找出结果，研究人员选择了500项发表于1991-2011年间的研究成果，并向作者索取研究的原始数据。在文章发表20年后，80%的数据已无处可寻。
In some cases, the authors couldn’t be reached. When they did respond, many reported that the data were simply not accessible, buried in an attic or saved on a now unreadable floppy disk.
有时候，研究人员甚至联系不到论文的作者，而就算联系上了作者，很多人却说他们早已将数据束之高阁，或储存在了现今无法读取的软盘上，所以无法提供。
This loss of information is an impediment to ongoing research and a waste of funding. Perhaps scientific data should be recognized as an endangered species, and efforts made to keep data around for future generations.
这种信息丢失会阻碍后来的研究，同时也是对科研资金的一种浪费。科学数据或许该归为“濒危物种”，为后来者考虑我们应采取相应的保护措施。
Thanks for the minute for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin.
感谢收听《科学美国人》的60秒科学。凯伦·霍普金报道。
This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.
Data are the lifeblood of science. But all those carefully recorded observations may be in danger. Because a new study shows that data from the recent past are being lost at an alarming rate. The journal Current Biology has the data to prove it.
Scientific studies build on research that came before. And scientists turn to the facts and figures from previous work to aid in their own analyses or confirm that the earlier results still hold up. But how often can they access the older data they need?
To find out, researchers selected 500 studies published between 1991 and 2011. And they sent the authors a request for the studies’ raw data. Twenty years after publication, 80 percent of the data was unavailable.
In some cases, the authors couldn’t be reached. When they did respond, many reported that the data were simply not accessible, buried in an attic or saved on a now unreadable floppy disk.
This loss of information is an impediment to ongoing research and a waste of funding. Perhaps scientific data should be recognized as an endangered species, and efforts made to keep data around for future generations.
Thanks for the minute for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin.
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