7 ms·

What's significant is this: > Over 20 journals turned down her paper on the Weld study ... And this: > A decade ago, funding sources refused to fund re-ident

What's significant is this: > Over 20 journals turned down her paper on the Weld study ... And this: > A decade ago, funding sources refused to fund re-identification experiments unless there was a promise that results would likely show that no risk existed or that all problems could be solved by some promising new theoretical technology under development. And she didn't just do a "back-of-the-envelope calculation". She re-identified an actual public dataset, including the then governor of Massachusetts :)

new299 8y ago
In order to publish in a scientific journal the work needs to be novel. Based on this article, the work doesn’t seem novel... I’d like to see the rejections, my guess is they mostly said “this is not novel or unexpected”. To make the work novel you might suggest a new approach to anonymizing data for example...
- mcguire 8y ago
  Not novel or unexpected, or "would disrupt everyone's research and make it impossible to publish data"?
- extra88 8y ago
  I think it was only trivial in hindsight. Scientific publishing is rife with articles the reveal a problem without offering a solution; to expect one seems outright weird.
- mirimir 8y ago
  > my guess is they mostly said “this is not novel or unexpected”. Well, given how widely vulnerable de-identification was being implemented, that seems unlikely.
asciident 8y ago
I agree that 20 rejections is significant. But I think it's a bit naive to think that 20 journals (about 60 peers reviewers) were fools who rejected because they were uncomfortable with the results. Are we really to believe these scientific experts were bumbling, "gee, this shows that it's easy to deidentify someone! better reject since I'm feeling uncomfortable now." And yes, showing this with a real dataset is nice, since it validates the estimation. But it still doesn't explain why it's worthy to fund. Funding is very competitive, and generally goes towards prospective research that can lead to innovation in the field. The article suggests that funding should go towards already-finished descriptive dataset analytics confirming back-of-envelope estimations, with no clear plan to find a solution. It's also possible that this article is not expressing the nuance behind the actual work and reasons behind the rejections, so I'm not judging the researcher's work, but rather judging the claims in this article.
- Illniyar 8y ago
  Isn't there a preliminary step before peer reviewers review an article for publication (otherwise they'll be flooded). My impression from the post was that it stopped at some point in the marketing/editorial pipeline - I.E. it wasn't adequate enough (for business reasons) to send to peer review. Though even so, your comment still stands (since I'm assuming whomever is in an editorial position has some kind of science background, at least at some of those journals).
- dash2 8y ago
  > But I think it's a bit naive to think that 20 journals (about 60 peers reviewers) were fools who rejected because they were uncomfortable with the results. As a social scientist, I'm not so sure...
  - XCabbage 8y ago
    Have you encountered concrete examples of such rejections in your field? Care to share some tales?
    - extra88 8y ago
      Peer reviewers are humans, there are many examples humans denying, avoiding, turning away “uncomfortable” evidence.
      - asciident 8y ago
        Do you not think that people who are doing this professionally as their career, spending their entire lives working, reviewing, and discussing this type of research, do not realize that there is a potential bias and do everything they can to address it? It seems like some of the people here believe that we've discovered something that the researchers don't already realize, and aren't already trying to address. It's kind of strange to me that you're attributing a simplemindedness to the experts doing peer review panels that is unrealistic. It reminds me of the times when people who aren't programmers seem to make this discovery that there is such thing as technical debt, and that programmers should be focused on programming in a way that avoids technical debt ("these programmers should focus on writing maintainable code! Not just short term hacks"). It's an oversimplication of the situation that is not helpful.

new299 8y ago

In order to publish in a scientific journal the work needs to be novel. Based on this article, the work doesn’t seem novel... I’d like to see the rejections, my guess is they mostly said “this is not novel or unexpected”. To make the work novel you might suggest a new approach to anonymizing data for example...

mcguire 8y ago
Not novel or unexpected, or "would disrupt everyone's research and make it impossible to publish data"?
extra88 8y ago
I think it was only trivial in hindsight. Scientific publishing is rife with articles the reveal a problem without offering a solution; to expect one seems outright weird.
mirimir 8y ago
> my guess is they mostly said “this is not novel or unexpected”. Well, given how widely vulnerable de-identification was being implemented, that seems unlikely.

asciident 8y ago

I agree that 20 rejections is significant. But I think it's a bit naive to think that 20 journals (about 60 peers reviewers) were fools who rejected because they were uncomfortable with the results. Are we really to believe these scientific experts were bumbling, "gee, this shows that it's easy to deidentify someone! better reject since I'm feeling uncomfortable now." And yes, showing this with a real dataset is nice, since it validates the estimation. But it still doesn't explain why it's worthy to fund. Funding is very competitive, and generally goes towards prospective research that can lead to innovation in the field. The article suggests that funding should go towards already-finished descriptive dataset analytics confirming back-of-envelope estimations, with no clear plan to find a solution. It's also possible that this article is not expressing the nuance behind the actual work and reasons behind the rejections, so I'm not judging the researcher's work, but rather judging the claims in this article.

Illniyar 8y ago
Isn't there a preliminary step before peer reviewers review an article for publication (otherwise they'll be flooded). My impression from the post was that it stopped at some point in the marketing/editorial pipeline - I.E. it wasn't adequate enough (for business reasons) to send to peer review. Though even so, your comment still stands (since I'm assuming whomever is in an editorial position has some kind of science background, at least at some of those journals).
dash2 8y ago
> But I think it's a bit naive to think that 20 journals (about 60 peers reviewers) were fools who rejected because they were uncomfortable with the results. As a social scientist, I'm not so sure...
- XCabbage 8y ago
  Have you encountered concrete examples of such rejections in your field? Care to share some tales?
  - extra88 8y ago
    Peer reviewers are humans, there are many examples humans denying, avoiding, turning away “uncomfortable” evidence.
    - asciident 8y ago
      Do you not think that people who are doing this professionally as their career, spending their entire lives working, reviewing, and discussing this type of research, do not realize that there is a potential bias and do everything they can to address it? It seems like some of the people here believe that we've discovered something that the researchers don't already realize, and aren't already trying to address. It's kind of strange to me that you're attributing a simplemindedness to the experts doing peer review panels that is unrealistic. It reminds me of the times when people who aren't programmers seem to make this discovery that there is such thing as technical debt, and that programmers should be focused on programming in a way that avoids technical debt ("these programmers should focus on writing maintainable code! Not just short term hacks"). It's an oversimplication of the situation that is not helpful.