Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology
by Bruno J. Strasser (Author)

About the Author
Bruno J. Strasser is professor at the University of Geneva and adjunct professor at Yale University.

About this book
Databases have revolutionized nearly every aspect of our lives. Information of all sorts is being collected on a massive scale, from Google to Facebook and well beyond. But as the amount of information in databases explodes, we are forced to reassess our ideas about what knowledge is, how it is produced, to whom it belongs, and who can be credited for producing it.
Every scientist working today draws on databases to produce scientific knowledge. Databases have become more common than microscopes, voltmeters, and test tubes, and the increasing amount of data has led to major changes in research practices and profound reflections on the proper professional roles of data producers, collectors, curators, and analysts.
Collecting Experiments traces the development and use of data collections, especially in the experimental life sciences, from the early twentieth century to the present. It shows that the current revolution is best understood as the coming together of two older ways of knowing—collecting and experimenting, the museum and the laboratory. Ultimately, Bruno J. Strasser argues that by serving as knowledge repositories, as well as indispensable tools for producing new knowledge, these databases function as digital museums for the twenty-first century.

Brief contents
Introduction 1
　　　　Biology, Computers, Data 6
　　　　Biology Transformed 8
　　　　Naturalists vs. Experimentalists? 11
　　　　The Laboratory and Experimentalism 21
　　　　The Museum and Natural History 24
1 Live Museums 29
　　　　Microbes at the American Museum of　Natural History 33
　　　　The Industrialization of Mice 40
　　　　Corn in an Agricultural Station 44
　　　　Sharing Flies 49
　　　　Viruses, Bacteria, and the Rise of Molecular Genetics 54
　　　　Putting Stock Centers on the Federal Agenda 58
　　　　Biological Collections Become Mainstream 63
2 Blood Banks 67
　　　　Measuring Species, ca. 1900 69
　　　　Alan A. Boyden’s Serological Systematics 74
　　　　A Museum in a Laboratory 81
　　　　Between Field and Laboratory: Charles G. Sibley 89
　　　　Collecting in the Field 92
　　　　Hybridization, Not Invasion 105
3 Data Atlases 113
　　　　Understanding How Proteins Work 117
　　　　Cracking the Genetic Code 121
　　　　From the Field to the Laboratory 124
　　　　Margaret O. Dayhoff, Computers, and Proteins 127
　　　　The Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure 135
　　　　A Work of Compilation? 139
　　　　The Gender of Collecting 146
　　　　Research with the Atlas 147
　　　　Whose Data? Whose Database? 151
4 Virtual Collections 155
　　　　From Physical to Virtual Models 159
　　　　The Systematic Study of Protein Structures 163
　　　　The Creation of the Protein Data Bank 169
　　　　The Natural History of Macromolecules 174
　　　　Privacy, Priority, and Property 181
　　　　A New Tool for Research 189
5 Public Databases 195
　　　　Information Overload on the Horizon 197
　　　　Margaret O. Dayhoff vs. Walter B. Goad 202
　　　　Europe Takes the Lead 205
　　　　Mobilizing the National Institutes of Health 212
　　　　Collecting Data, Negotiating Credit and Access 214
　　　　Distributing Data, Negotiating Ownership 219
　　　　A Conservative Revolution 224
6 Open Science 227
　　　　Databases, Journals, and the Gatekeepers of Scientific　Knowledge 228
　　　　Databases and the Production of Experimental　Knowledge 237
　　　　Sequence Databases, Genomics, and Computer　Networks 239
　　　　The Rise of Open Science 244
　　　　Databases, Journals, and the Record of Science 252
Conclusion 255
　　　　The End of Model Organisms? 256
　　　　The New Politics of Knowledge 263
Archives Consulted 273
Bibliography 275
Notes 317
Index 387

Pages: 392 pages
Publisher: University of Chicago Press; First edition (June 4, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 022663504X
ISBN-13: 978-0226635040