The Jinx on the NASA Software Defect Data Sets

Background: The NASA datasets have previously been used extensively in studies of software defects. In 2013 Shepperd et al. presented an essential set of rules for removing erroneous data from the NASA datasets making this data more reliable to use. Objective: We have now found additional rules necessary for removing problematic data which were not identified by Shepperd et al. Results: In this paper, we demonstrate the level of erroneous data still present even after cleaning using Shepperd et al.'s rules and apply our new rules to remove this erroneous data. Conclusion: Even after systematic data cleaning of the NASA MDP datasets, we found new erroneous data. Data quality should always be explicitly considered by researchers before use.