EDITORIAL: The nastiness of data.

Purpose--The purpose of this editorial is to discuss problems in gathering and evaluating data in library and information science. Increasingly I find that I advocate an empirical approach to research in our field of library and information science. Others appear to agree and are writing more works based on explicit empirical sources. Design/methodology/approach--The method uses standard social science techniques for examining the reliability and representativeness of data. Findings--The editorial looks at two specific examples, one an experiment with an outlier and another a published source whose data are potentially incomplete. Sometimes the obvious problems are not really problems at all and sometimes completely unexpected issues invalidate results. This is not a reason for avoiding empirical research or for doubting empirical results every time they appear. But it is a reason for authors to engage in a thorough discussion of their data as a part of any scholarly work. Originality/value--The editorial argues for a broader and more explicit discussion of data issues in journal articles. Some data is quite usable despite its apparent nastiness and some is just hopelessly bad. But a majority of data in our field lie somewhere between these extremes and need to be discussed as part of the analysis process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]