Thus The Technology Review on the front page of its current issue, which shows the face of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder. “It has collected more personal data than any other organization in human (sic) history,” the magazine elaborates. “What will it do with that information?” According to the article under this title, there is a team of in-house social scientists working for the social network. Fast approaching a billion users, Facebook could reshape our understanding of how society works. In particular, it could shed more light on how ideas and fashions spread. What is more, the social scientists can experiment with the users, as they have done by nudging them to register as organ donors. “Everyone has a feeling that this resource will yield something big,” the article points out, “but nobody knows quite what.” The very least that can be done is sell some insights to interested businesses, assuming that this can be achieved without legal wrangles. Such trade could be lucrative, the article concludes. This is a far cry from understanding how society works, though. If this is indeed among Facebook’s aims, as the article maintains, its team of social scientists needs a dash of scientific method in its approach. How about testing plausible hypotheses about ways in which ideas and fashions spread? That would be a good start, no doubt. If they do not pass muster, a new hypothesis would be the next logical step. Curiously, this is something that Facebook does not seem to know.