This actually illustrates the point nicely. Surveys are NOT just a collection of anecdotes. Since each person who fills out the survey has to answer the same questions, you get (roughly) the same information from each person. In a collection of anecdotes, who knows what each person is choosing to include in his/her story and what the person is leaving out. By putting a carefully selected structure onto the information collection, you are making a "collection of anecdotes" into useful data that can be used for scientific reasoning.

I am not a lawyer. However, I am a graduate student at a major university. I went and asked the university's IP lawyer at the University that I work for about this issue.

He told me that for anything I produce as a student, including software, I retain copyright. My question was specifically in the context of software I produce as part of my dissertation. The university asks to be involved in any patents, but leaves copyright to the students / researchers involved. Technically, I'm told this is a legal grey area, so most universities explictly assign any copyright claims they have to students & professors.

However, if you were employed explicitly as a programmer -- i.e. it is part of your job description / job duties in the official call that you were hired under -- then the programming is work-for-hire, and the university owns copyright. This primarily applies to full-time programmers hired by the university, and part-time technical staff. My university gives permission for people to apply open-source BSD-like licences to software that is developed for hire, but the university retains the official copyright.

That said, I agree that you should ask a lawyer. However, you are probably able to ask one of the university's lawyers in this area, as it is his job to know such answers.

That's true. Let me give you one more number:

Total NSF budget, FY 2008 - $6.065 billion

If you cut back NASA's budget by ~1/3, you could DOUBLE the total federal spending on basic research in this country. 0.568% of the federal budget might not sound like much, but it really is.