Not my comment but I think they mean that it is a relatively small part of the overall process and thus not "The Biggest Data Science Breakthrough". Maybe not a

Not my comment but I think they mean that it is a relatively small part of the overall process and thus not "The Biggest Data Science Breakthrough". Maybe not a fair criticism but they have a point. I would love to see a breakthrough in data cleansing or how about just standardized coding, labeling and formatting. Unfortunately I've used lots of 3rd party data sources and wasted more time on these brainless activities than I want to think about. Consider yourself lucky if you only work on web logs where you control what they look like.