At last, I've found it, and it came from the British. Data is a singular noun, and any attempt to wrangle it into plural context simply constitutes bad usage.

I've ranted and raved before about the problems with this good-intentioned grammar abortion, and I was generally on the right track. I said that "data" was a "body of substance". Apparently, there's a more correct term for this: "massive nouns". For example:

The data from the crash tests has helped immensely.

... is the same as saying...

The information from the crash tests has helped immensely.

You would not say:

The data from the crash tests have helped immensely.

... any more than you would say...

The informations from the crash tests have helped immensely.

The article also points out that there are many more of these type of words in English such as stamina and agenda, the latter of which is already under assault for "correction". Definitely a good read.