As a member of Generation X who spent his early adult years in New York City, I tend to be pretty cynical. That’s why my reaction to news of some new scam is usually along the lines of “Oh. Of course.” I don’t often get that feeling from science news, but a piece last week in Nature certainly did the job. To be clear, this is not a criticism of the news article by Holly Else, which was well reported and written.

One of the big problems facing whole-genome research efforts these days is archiving. A single experiment can generate a terabyte or more of data, and while it’s all conveniently stored on hard drives in the short term, that’s a poor medium for handing down the scientific heritage of mankind. The problem is twofold: digital data storage changes constantly, and many formats that were sold as “archival” have since turned out to be alarmingly perishable.