Buzzwords don't come any bigger than "Big Data," which promises to reveal the secrets hidden within big blocks of data held by companies, governments and musty old archives.

Science Snapshot

By Dan Vergano

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  DARPA

  'Big Data' promises to reveal the secrets hidden within big blocks of data held by companies, g

But maybe Big Data has an Achilles' heel, some experts warn, despite its Big promises.

"The initiative we are launching today promises to transform our ability to use Big Data for scientific discovery, environmental and biomedical research, education and national security," said presidential science adviser John Holdren, announcing a $200 million effort in March by six federal agencies to uncork the power of Big Data.

Holdren compared Big Data's advent to the invention of supercomputers and the Internet. But what is Big Datareally? Starting from scientists struggling to analyze massive amounts of genetic data, as they did in theHuman Genome Project a decade ago, or astronomical data, such as the survey of more than 930,000...

Read full story at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/story/2012-0...