Right, so i agree with the author on this front, but it's not to say that there are no tools with which to do analysis, but many of them are pretty rudimentary.

I'd love to see more people pitch in and help develop tools that would make scientific analysis easier.

I did a presentation at RubyKaigi on this general subject actually: http://www.slideshare.net/knowtheory/mapping-the-world-with-...

(and a video: http://rubykaigi.tdiary.net/20100829.html#p09 )