Want to change the face of medical research? Want to extract nuggets of vital information from, well, information? Love the idea of sifting through data to unlock its mysteries and potential? Then the role of data detective may well be for you. While it sounds like it was invented by writers in search of a gritty, modern protagonist, it's a very real career. So real, in fact, that according to an article in Nature, a data detective, John Carlisle, recently discovered suspicious medical trials and exposed medical misconduct and mistakes. And he isn't even a trained data analyst. It's a career for anyone with a passion for patterns, and with tenacity and curiosity.This role is ideally suited to people who love the numbers, find the patterns and seek out solutions within the puddles of data that gather below dripping taps of organisational big data.

"The data detective covers the investigative phase before any data cleansing or data preparation takes place," says Martin Rennhackkamp, chief data scientist, PBT Group. "It covers the areas of data accessing and data assessing, and includes data exploration and data analysis."