The new trend goes far beyond the pooling of data.

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Sometimes researchers try to understand what is going on by pooling all this data, but that opens the door to mathematical gymnastics.

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By pooling data about so many people, they hope to detect the relationships among patterns of neural connections, healthy brain behavior and neural disorders.

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The EU watchdogs also objected to Google's current pooling of our data in a single personalized record.

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Stephen Friend, the president of Sage Bionetworks and the former head of cancer research at Merck, has suggested pooling patient reported data about drugs in a similar manner.

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One EU complaint about current Google practice, you'll remember, was about the absence of an opt out button to enable users to say no to Google's pooling of their data.

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Pooling data on 78, 000 women in six different practices, Dr. Weigert found that about half of the women, or 8, 651 patients, with dense breast tissue went on to have ultrasounds which found 28 cancers that weren't visible on mammograms.

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