People's movements are highly predictable, researchers say, making it easy to identify most individuals from supposedly anonymized location datasets. As these datasets have valid uses, this is yet another reason why we need better regulation.

“Because of the widespread publicity surrounding this study and that its findings may be used by states and state consortia in implementing the Common Core State Standards Initiative, the authors should make the test dataset publicly available for analysis,”

“Then they have this tempting thought: If only the data points would line up . . . ”

How did a star researcher into the medical mystery of chronic fatigue syndrome end up in jail and unemployed. For the first time, Judy Mikovits tells Casey Schwartz her story.

Big pharma screwing with data.

This one's amusing! But it shows how bad science can be rooted out by reanalyzing data.

By James Kwak I spent the past two days at a financial regulation conference in Washington (where I saw more BlackBerries than I have seen in years—can’t lawyers and lobbyists afford decent p…

Another angle on the Yankaskas case.

HORROR STORY WAITING TO HAPPEN. Zero consent! Where the hell was the IRB?

Data fraud hits close to home...

The first gives us some alarming statistics. In a survey of nearly 1000 web services published in the Nucleic Acids Web Server Issue between 2003 and 2009: Only 72% were still available at the published address. The authors could not test the functionality for 33% because there was no example data, and 13% no longer worked as expected. The authors could only confirm positive functionality for 45%. Only 274 of the 872 corresponding authors answered an email. Of these 78% said a service was developed by a student or temporary researcher, and many had no plan for maintenance after the researcher had moved on to a permanent position.

Eyebeam's media archive weathers the storm, but backing up is hard to do

The week between Christmas and New Years is mostly time off for me– I’ve added no new listings to The Online Books Page this past week, for instance– but even on vacation, as long…

What often happens when you ask a researcher for his/her data.

Students aren’t the only ones cheating—some professors are, too. Uri Simonsohn is out to bust them.