Researching Life in the Digital Age
Researching Life in the Digital Age
Chapter 6, which is targeted at anyone interested specifically in the life sciences, examines the implications of my analysis of data-centric science for biology as a discipline and for the knowledge thus gained about living organisms. I consider three examples of successful data integration within the field of plant science, which I take to exemplify three different modes of data integration in biology as a whole, each with its own goals, means and ways of valuing and assessing data. I then use this analysis to stress how differences in how data are elected, analyzed and integrated may challenge existing conceptions of what counts as scientific knowledge in the first place. Finally, I highlight the opportunities offered by data-centric research as well as the dangers and misconceptions associated with big data rhetoric and practices, paying particular attention to related processes of inclusion and exclusion, and the ways in which data infrastructures can affect the visibility and future development of research traditions both within and beyond the life sciences.
Keywords: data integration, data use, data reuse, plant science, translational research, Big Data
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
