Interview
Building the world’s first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data | Max Roser (2021)
- Our World in Data (OWID) is a non-profit online publication founded by Max Rosa at Oxford University, with over 10 million monthly users and used by millions globally for data visualization on global problems.
- Mission: To present research and data on the world's largest problems in an accessible format to help individuals and institutions make progress.
- COVID-19 Impact: OWID became the primary global resource for pandemic data in 2020, providing the clearest visualizations of cases, testing, and vaccination rates used by politicians and health experts.
- Team Size: The organization operated with only six staff members at the start of the pandemic, yet outperformed major institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in data accessibility and clarity.
- Data Challenges: Early pandemic data was fragmented, often published in inconsistent PDFs or screenshots (e.g., from Facebook), requiring manual extraction and often containing contradictory figures within single daily reports.
- European CDC Partnership: OWID initially relied on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) for clean data but eventually created independent, more comprehensive databases for testing and vaccination.
- Vaccination Database: Despite initial hesitation, OWID built a globally critical vaccination dataset starting in December 2020, which became the default data source for media outlets (FT, NYT) and international bodies (WHO, CDC).
- Operational Model: OWID employs a unique hybrid team of researchers and developers to build interactive tools, contrasting with traditional academic models that separate data collection from visualization.
- Funding Structure: The organization relies on unrestricted funding, primarily from reader donations (3,500–4,000 donors annually) and flexible grants, avoiding restricted funding that limits agility.
- Academic Incentives: Max Rosa notes that traditional academia does not reward the production of maintained data infrastructure or public-facing educational tools, creating a systemic underinvestment in these "public goods."
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Organic search, not social media, is the primary driver of OWID's traffic; HTML formats and interactive charts significantly outperform static PDFs in reach.
- Misinformation Risks: Owning a massive audience subjects OWID to scrutiny where minor data update delays can lead to accusations of political bias or agendas from specific countries.
- Future Priorities: Max advises policymakers to prioritize scaling vaccine production and supporting the fully funded COVAX facility to prevent new variants in lower-income countries.
- Energy Data Access: OWID advocates for the public release of data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), arguing that its paywalled statistics hinder public discourse compared to private sector data.
- Wikipedia Limitations: While praising Wikipedia's COVID coverage, OWID highlights its struggles with maintaining long-term, aggregated global statistics on poverty and health due to a lack of centralized databases.
- Upcoming Projects: OWID is developing a long-term historical database on war deaths to improve upon existing datasets (e.g., Peter Breckel's work) and address data reliability in conflict studies.
- Data Interpretation: OWID aims to solve the "museum problem" by integrating technical caveats and metric definitions directly next to data visualizations to prevent user misinterpretation.
- Hiring Needs: OWID seeks "professional dilettantes" with broad interests and strong writing skills, specifically noting a critical need for an Operations Officer to manage administrative and financial infrastructure.
- Growth Trajectory: Monthly users increased five-fold from 2 million pre-pandemic to 10 million during the peak of the crisis, driven by high traffic events like "Reddit hug of death."
- Psychological Impact: Psychologists and psychiatrists report using OWID data in therapy to counter patient anxiety by demonstrating tangible global progress and the feasibility of solving large problems.
- Infrastructure Funding: A significant constraint on OWID's growth is the difficulty in securing funding for software and tool development, which foundations often view as less tangible than specific research projects.
- Incentive Reform: Max advocates for universities to reform tenure and promotion criteria to value the creation and maintenance of public data infrastructure as equivalent to academic papers.
- Donor Engagement: Donors are motivated to contribute because they actively rely on OWID's data for their own research and strategic decision-making processes.
- Global Mental Health: OWID plans to expand into mental health data, aiming to aggregate poor-quality global statistics to raise awareness despite the inherent data limitations.
- Energy Statistics Correction: The organization works to clarify the distinction between "primary energy" and "useful energy," correcting public misunderstandings regarding fossil fuel losses and renewable capacity.