"data is" is grammatical in more situations than "data are". Would you write "the big data are helping " or "the big data is helping"? Which one is more comprehensible? https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4396
I've got two degrees in English, and all I came away with for grammar is choose one way, use it consistently in that writing, and then none of this matters. It's all arbitrary lol.
My degree is in philosophy, and there was never any nitpicking about grammar from any of my professors. The main priority is that your writing is clear and concise, assuming it met some basic standards of grammaticality.