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[–]EnnuiOz 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

This is one of those cases that I just don't believe. How did the person get a hold of the dataset in the first place and, why wasn't it stripped of identifying variables that would give them a clue whose gender they were 'amending'?

I have worked in social research and statistics for 25 years and data anonymisation is one of the first steps to securing the confidentiality of respondents. Going to call bullshit on this ever happening.

E: Even if this person was part of the research team, they should never be able to get hold of an unconfidentialised dataset. If what they did really did occur, that's a sackable offence and has just inVALIDated the results of the study

[–]motionlessoracle 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You make a good point about the anonymity of data. Somewhere, for any human study, there is a key that permits connecting real human beings to the ID numbers in the data. Perhaps that was what was being amended?

[–]EnnuiOz 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You are absolutely correct about the 'key' which is always stored separately and securely. However, even the key is in code so noone should be able to amend that either.