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Valuable Naval Research Lab Records Destroyed
The February 7th issue of The New York Times reports that a huge trove of scientific records from the U.S. Navy's Naval Research Labs was mistakenly destroyed last year. Most of the records predated the 1950's and were prized as historical documents, though they had little value as scientific research. The Times reported that the destroyed records included 42,000 scientific notebooks and 600 cubic feet of letters and other correspondence. The destroyed documents were stored at the Federal Records Center in Suitland, Maryland.
Among the lost documents were many of the records covering the laboratory's role in launching the Vanguard satellite in March, 1958. Some of the Project Vanguard records may be recovered from the personal correspondence of Vanguard scientists and their families. The National Archives and Records Administration, which runs the records center admitted that its "fail safe" system for protecting valuable Federal documents had apparently failed. It appears the Naval Research Laboratory never received warning from NARS that the records were about to be shredded. The article was written by Malcolm Browne and appears on page A12.
Land Mine 'Statistics': Major Data Quality Issue
According to a report in the February 8th issue of The Washington Post, the number of land mines that have been planted throughout the world has become a major data quality issue. The Post reports that a total of 110 million planted mines has been repeated so often that it now regarded as fact. Often-repeated statistics state that countries like Mozambique and Bosnia have 2 million or more mines still in place, and that Angola has somewhere between 10 million and 15 million.
The Post reports that the imprecise nature of mine warfare in the late 20th Century has made it almost impossible for either side in a conflict to determine how many mines were planted, where they are planted, and the types of mines planted. Although mine clearance is expensive, often mine fields are located in areas that can be fenced-off, areas that are economically unimportant, or in areas that are economically important where mines can be removed expeditiously.
Mine-clearance technology is also rapidly advancing. And Third World nations sometimes find it to their advantage if the number of existing mines is exaggerated. More mines can mean more money from industrialized nations to clear mines. The Post reports that the United Nations is developing new ways of gathering data to redirect attention away from numbers of mines to focus on the socioeconomic costs of mined land that might otherwise be used productively. The article was written by Post reporter Laurie Boulden, and appears on page C1.
Home Builder Surveys: Data Quality at Last
A report in the February 11th issue of The Wall Street Journal relates the experiences of a prominent national home builder, Kaufman & Broad Home Corp., before and after using consumer surveys for marketing. According to the Journal, while surveying consumer preferences may be fundamental in most industries, home builders are late in catching on. K&B's former policy was to build first and hope for the best. Builders filled developments with a handful of cookie-cutter designs that could be mass-produced economically. If a given model didn't sell, the builders simply reduced the price.
That changed in 1996, when K&B acquired a small San Antonio homebuilder that was doing things differently. The builder attributed it's 40% share of the local market to its strategy of building to suit customer tastes, which were gleaned through expensive customer surveys. That insight led K&B undertake a survey of over 600,000 recent home buyers around the nation. The surveys' findings have changed many preconceived notions about what people really want in a home.
For example, K&B found that half the survey respondents in Denver would willingly forgo a fireplace. But in the San Francisco area fireplaces are popular. The firm's current marketing strategy is to design basic models that home buyers can customize to their tastes with "add ons." The article was written by Journal staff reporter Stacey Kravetz and appears on page B1.