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id21 News
Release
13 March,
2003
Global poor lose out whilst
researchers scramble to top of career ladder
Researchers at European
and North American-based universities and organisations such as the
World Bank stand accused of ‘stealing’ data from the poor in developing
countries. David Hulme, Professor of Development Studies at the University
of Manchester, makes the accusation in the latest issue of id21 Insights
which focuses on chronic poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In depth and systematic surveys
of poor households in developing countries are vital to developing effective
poverty-reduction policies. Data from these surveys needs to be analysed
by as wide a group of researchers, non-governmental organisations, policy
makers and advocacy groups as possible. However, researchers and organisations
that carry out such surveys are increasingly retaining the data for
their own exclusive use, enabling them to enhance their own reputations
and careers as they publish research papers and books based on the findings.
Such practices are anti-developmental,
Hulme argues, in that they slow down the advancement of useful knowledge
and innovation about poverty-alleviating policies in developing countries.
‘By the time these sets of data are made available to the public’ Hulme
remarks, ‘they are often so out of date they have become largely irrelevant
to the development of pro-poor policies’. The practice also weakens
the ‘scientific base of development research’ he continues, which ‘demands
that results are replicated by other researchers to confirm findings’.
Hulme also raises the issue
of who owns this data. ‘The main ‘input’ in such data sets is the unpaid
time of poor people’ he writes. Further, these sets ‘are almost always
collected with the aid of public funds but they are converted into private
property by elite researchers’.
Collecting such data is expensive
and time-consuming, and Hulme recognises that researchers and organisations
need to be given incentives to do so. However, a balance needs to be
struck, and Hulme calls for research funders - typically government
agencies and international organisations - to set dates for the public
release of the full data. He also calls for researchers to follow an
ethical code with regard to such surveying, and for non-governmental
organisations and advocacy groups to ‘name and shame’ researchers who
delay data from getting into the public domain.
Hulme comments that this
is just one of the reasons chronically poor people are neglected by
development policies. Other reasons, which are also highlighted in this
latest edition of id21 Insights ‘Escaping Poverty: Can Policy Reach
the Chronically Poor?’ http://www.id21.org/insights/insights46/index.html
include social discrimination because of gender, age, race, ethnicity,
and disability and spatial poverty traps such as those found in remote,
arid or mountainous regions.
Notes to
Editors
For more information contact
Sally Gainsbury, id21 Research Editor, on +44 (0) 1273 877305 or s.gainsbury@ids.ac.uk
David Hulme's article features
in id21 Insights 46 ‘Escaping Poverty: Can Policy Reach the Chronically
Poor?’ which highlights the latest research on chronic poverty in Africa,
Asia and Latin America can be found online at http://www.id21.org/insights/insights46/index.html
Go
straight to David Hulme's article Whose data?
'Stealing' from the poor on line here (click)
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Views expressed on these pages are not necessarily
those of DFID, IDS, id21 or other contributing institutions. Unless
stated otherwise articles featured on the id21 web-site may be
copied or quoted without restriction, provided id21 and originating
author(s) and institution(s) are acknowledged.
Copyright
© 2003 id21. All rights reserved.
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