That Pesky Metadata

Here is a good article from ABC News on metadata.

As the article reveals it was through metadata that the New England Journal of Medicine learned that Merck had deleted data about the number of heart attacks suffered by subjects taking Vioxx in a safety study of the drug.

I am at least somewhat familiar with metadata and its implications since I work at a law firm that actually has a policy regarding metadata and how we produce our documents.

You can even read this report by the National Security Agency on the proper method of stripping metadata when converting from Word to PDF.