A Data Journey Through Dataset-Centric Population Genomics
James R. Griesemer
Abstract
Abstract I describe a data journey drawn from a case study of research in human population genomics. The case is framed in dialogue with a project on what has been called the “re-situation” of scientific knowledge (Morgan 2014). The kind of journey described elicits a missing concept—“data set -centric” biology—in the conversation around the emergence of “big data” and data-centric biology (Leonelli 2016) and its contrast, “traditional” or “small data” biology. I distinguish data point -centric from data set -centric practices. The case study is about the development, use, and amendment of data sets in one lab’s pursuit of human genome diversity studies. I offer a model of data journeys to interpret the case. The model is comprised of three kinds of components: scientific data structures, data representations, and data journey narratives. The case study illustrates two visualizations that frame the dataset journey.