I've found I'm exceptional in being at all concerned about privacy. I think that if you asked, most people would only want minimal effort put towards confidentiality, especially since the trade-off is that other researchers won't be able to double check the analysis.

I've worked as a journalist in which my (and many other data journalists') modus operandi was to publish the data. Often because the data was public record anyway. I now work in academia and the mentality is significantly different. Some of it is logistics -- I would say most traditional news organizations do not have the internal incentive or habit to figure out a way to publish data. Whereas with newer organizations, such as 538 [0] and Buzzfeed News [1], the data teams have editors to whom open-source and digital publishing is more the natural way of things.

But in academia, there are also set rules and precautions governing every study. I haven't proposed any research yet but my understanding is that if your study requires collecting data from participants, the Institutional Review Board requires you to be very clear to participants about privacy and confidentiality and that you follow the guidelines to the letter.

Additionally, there are datasets only available to academics that aren't available to non-academics (i.e. journalists), which speaks to the expectation that academics be very mindful about confidentiality promises.

[0] https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data

[1] https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews/everything

To add a bit more for people who haven't been involved in an IRB:

The strictness varies by university. Ultimately the IRB is there to ensure safety of the participants and minimize the chance of negative consequences. A couple examples I've heard from around my university include...

A study was taking place outside. There was a chance of a bee sting occurring to the participant. The IRB required that the researcher have an epi-pen ready just in case along with any required training.

A paper used in a study had the wrong stamp on it (not the most recent IRB stamp). The document had not changed from the last time, but the rule was simple. Every document presented to the participant had to have the most recent stamp.

On a study in which it was expected that 1/2 of the participants would feel nauseous, they had to provide a place to sit, water, and small snacks.

And perhaps most importantly, you can quit any study you're participating in at any time, for any reason. Compensation is figured out ahead of time, and you're going to get lots of questions from IRB if you want to do anything to reduce the compensation for leaving part way through the experiment.

> I've found I'm exceptional in being at all concerned about privacy. I think that if you asked, most people would only want minimal effort put towards confidentiality, especially since the trade-off is that other researchers won't be able to double check the analysis.

Like I said, that's not how laws work.

There is also the question of how honest people will be when they are anonymous versus not. If you were studying cocaine use in America, publishing your identified data (to enable double-checking the analysis) would give the cops a list of people who admitted to illegal drug usage.

The current system with IRB allows for the collection of identified data. It also allows the data to be released, in full, as long as there is no way for an individual to be identified specifically. In some cases you can simply swap names for a participant ID (after randomly sorting the list). In other cases you have no choice but to publish some summary statistics because the data you collected is only applicable to a very small number of people in a small region, or there is enough data people could reverse-engineer likely participants of the study.

Science is about self-correcting when errors are made. There are plenty of reasons to criticize the current incentive structure for academics, such as there being little funding to replicate other studies, but doing away with confidentiality is absolutely not the way to go about it.

Even when studying STDs, or the effect of child sexual abuse, or how couples deal with infidelity in a marriage, or.....?