So the author thinks that scientific data is non-sensitive data. He's an astronomer.

Perhaps he's not familiar with the story of another astronomer, Galileo, and what people thought of his data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

It's not always about what you think about your own data. It's also about what others think of your data... which is something beyond your control and sometimes beyond imagining.