From mathbabe: Big Data is the new phrenology.
Excerpt:
Here’s the thing. What we’ve got is a new kind of awful pseudo-science, which replaces measurements of skulls with big data. There’s no reason to think this stuff is any less biased or discriminatory either: given that there’s no actual science behind it, we might simply be replicating a selection method to get people who we like and who remind us of ourselves. To be sure, it might not be as deliberate as what we saw above, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Kudos.
Big data is, for the most part, anemic and poorly sourced data.