All participants in these research projects sign documents that outline how their data will be collected, de-identified and shared. This ‘informed consent’ process is supposed to let them weigh privacy and other risks before they sign up, and it is required by law in the U.S. and most other places. But these documents can be difficult to parse. “Even if you’re very well educated, [the language] is still probably not as clear as it could be,” says Kevin Pelphrey, a neuroscientist and autism researcher at the University of Virginia.