Communications of the ACM
Can Bitcoin Technology Improve Research Data Integrity? This Clemson Professor Thinks So
Richard Brooks (left), postdoctoral researcher Lu Yu (right), and other researchers from Clemson University and three other universities won first place in the White Board Challenge at the Blockchain for Clinical Trials Forum.
Credit: Ashley Jones / Greenville News
Researchers at Clemson University have developed a technique to secure raw data using blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin. "The chain is built by everyone signing their own data, using cryptography, to prove the data comes from them," says Clemson professor Richard Brooks. "Then all this information is interweaved together into blocks and connected . . . so that to modify one of the things becomes very difficult and infeasible. This provides an audit trail so it can be verified that nobody's modified the data."
Brooks' team worked with drug trial data, based on an earlier project that used blockchain to guarantee academic integrity by making data forgery tougher. Brooks believes in addition to providing the data trail, the new system could potentially provide other researchers with access to all trial data.
Another potential advantage is helping scientists reproduce study results, which Brooks says "would be one way, if it's registered, to have a fuller record of what was done."
From Greenville News
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