When Science and Privacy Collide
A New York Times article published May 22, 2012, addressed the increasing tussle between privacy concerns and the scientific verification of data-driven social science research.
Quoting from that article:
In February, Dr. Huberman had published a letter in the journal Nature warning that privately held data was threatening the very basis of scientific research. “If another set of data does not validate results obtained with private data,” he asked, “how do we know if it is because they are not universal or the authors made a mistake?”
He added that corporate control of data could give preferential access to an elite group of scientists at the largest corporations. “If this trend continues,” he wrote, “we’ll see a small group of scientists with access to private data repositories enjoy an unfair amount of attention in the community at the expense of equally talented researchers whose only flaw is the lack of right ‘connections’ to private data.”