Why would they give the data to Palo Alto but they won't give it to Mountain View?

I can imagine all the property owners of these "soft story" buildings evicting their current residents to do the seismic upgrades and passing on the new higher costs to new tenants, further exasperating the problems we have in the gentrification of Mountain View.

I think any further funding of San Jose State research projects needs to be put on hold until an audit determine if such projects actually took place.

@Uh Oh: I live in an apartment that's probably soft story, and I'd rather get evicted than die.

@the city researchers: I hope you crowdsource things! Set up a website where people can flag buildings for you to look at. My apartment building from the steet looks fine, but once you get into the complex you see that apartments are built over car ports. I'd hate for it to be missed.

SJ State may be a horribly-administrated and 3rd rate college, but maybe there are proper legal reasons for its decision not to release these data (not "this data", data is plural for you English challenged public school teachers and journalists)! Specifically, releasing data for specific addresses could expose SJ State to liability from civil lawsuits challenging its data. There are lots of cheap and starving lawyers out there willing to work for contingency fees in hope of striking it rich. If I were their legal counsel, I'd advise them most strongly only to release data that do not identify properties by address but only by neighborhood.

I disagree with the "healthy tension" argument. Isn't SJSU a public
institution? Shouldn't data produced with public money be public? Even
if there *is* some sort of privacy argument (I think the Courts have
shown, with NSA-related rulings, that we entitled to none), I think the
data could/should be disclosed to City Staff, so that additional delay
can be avoided.

@OldMV

While the word "data" is often treated as a plural noun, it is most frequently used and widely accepted in the English language as a mass noun which can take the singular usage of words like "is" or "this". This usage is also supported by several dictionaries and style guides.

People in the hard sciences like Physics and Chemistry still tend to treat "data" as plural. Since I'm a hard scientist and I analyze a lot of data, I consider it plural. People in the press who treat it as singular really bother me. To me, that's almost as bad a sin as splitting infinitives. It's all a matter of preference and what we were taught.

@OldMV
In this case, either usage would be correct. I hope you'd concede that English (or linguistics for that matter) is very flexible and evolves more quickly than some scientific disciplines. Since this isn't a "hard" science discussion or journal, I would suggest accepting this alternate (and valid) treatment of "data". It's not worth letting it get to you and distracts from the argument about the data.

mr_b, what my Old-MV neighbor tried to bring out above is a deeper language principle that many people don't seem to "get," though it be second-nature to serious writers and fans of language.

This isn't about one usage being "correct," but about cues that the usage choice reveals, implicitly, about the writer's sensibilities. I bet you can find dictionary defenses for people to write "a news media" (when they mean medium) or "a data" (when they mean datum), or even "in regards to" -- yet those _choices_ raise flags to readers who really know the words. In the story context here, "this data" actually is milder (less exceptionable) than "a data" (thanks to a potential sense of the full data set in question being a single entity); neither is as unexceptionable as "these data." It's about connotations.

PS to OldMV: Your point on SJ State's decision is solid. OTOH, and although some conservatively edited media (e.g. WSJ) discourage it from their writers, the notion of a "split infinitive rule" in English is famously spurious -- it was an assumption some people once carelessly extended from other tongues (especially Latin) whose infinitive verb form is different. Strunk & White discredited it definitively and wittily, generations ago -- consult that standard source for more.

@Common sense
Fans of language also "get" that the context of audience may give you a reason to choose one acceptable form over another in order to make things more readable to that audience (in this case a local newspaper vs. a scholarly, scientific journal). If there is some specific connotation to be derived from the usage in this article allowing for additional insight or criticism, it has yet to be presented by either you or OldMV.

Fans of English (not just those who are fans of its usage in scientific or academic contexts) know that both plural and mass noun forms of "data" are considered standard usage. Jabbing at journalists and teachers while using a limited understanding of how the term can be used earned a response.

What's especially sad is this argument is taking place over an article where a university has taken public funds to perform a public safety study, and has refused to release the newly-categorized-as-destroyed data after releasing the data to a neighboring city that is using it in a similar way MV would. Is SJSU trying to 'protect' future researchers from receiving public funding? Just who are they protecting?

"People in the hard sciences like Physics and Chemistry "

People that capitalize common nouns really bother me.

And people that hi-jack the comments of a meaningful article with petty (and incorrect) pedantry bother me even more.

mr_b, I'm also in accord about what seems the core issue, the Big Deal Here: SJSU (as you succinctly wrote) "refused to release the newly-categorized-as-destroyed data after releasing the data to a neighboring city that is using it in a similar way MV would." The stronger the school's arguments for withholding, the more this inconsistency equals impropriety.

My comment on usage connotations was an effort precisely to break out of the "considered-standard-usage" thinking box. English abounds in almost-equivalent ways to say something, all "considered standard usage" by linguists and dictionaries (because, uh, people use them) -- but unequal in their effect on readers. "The above example" sounds literate enough to many people, but "the example above" sounds that way to even more (including, again, experienced writers and editors who know the words better). Sure, it's a small point to recognize that "share these data" will likely bother fewer people than "share this data" (and whether fewer or not, they'll be different people, and for different reasons) -- but just such nuances are what wordsmiths learn in their trade.