COOL: Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment Database Goes Public.

Charles Murray was actually kind enough to email me the HA database a couple of months ago, so this public release is mostly redundant for my own project. But it is a very good thing nonetheless that many more people will now be able to run their own historical and social “experiments” using his data, including those who might earlier have shied at openly requesting it.

It is also part of a general process now underway in which there is growing demand for scientists to make their data publically available as opposed to just on request. To a significant extent I think the reason more scientists don’t yet do this is that the technical means for doing so – especially for older scientists who tend to be less computer savvy – are still few and far between.