The term big data almost always reflexively makes me think bad data. The latest edition of the Economist has a great feature about the proliferation of fraud in medical research. Among other alarming items, the piece notes that even when fraud is detected (which is rare, given that the method of discovery is almost exclusively limited to observations from diligent researchers in passing): “The goal is to decide whether a researcher should be fired, rather than a desire to protect the integrity of the scientific literature. Until an employment decision is made, the university usually stays mum.” And here you thought littering was something limited to a park picnic.

“There is no risk-free way forward,” writes Timothy Garton Ash from Ukraine, in a thoughtful reflection in the Spectator, on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

I think podcasting has elevated the long-form interview to a major media form. The two most interesting chats that stood out last week for me were between Larry Willmore and Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (on Willmore’s Black on the Air) and Ezra Klein and writer Adrian Tchaikovsky (on Klein’s eponymous New York Times show).