The Study on the Relation Between

Production of Scientific Data and the Development of Scientists

---- A Sample of Beijing Genetic Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

Danna Shen1    Zhiqiang Hu2

(1 Department of Social Sciences, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, s.dn@163.com)

(2 Department of Social Sciences, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, hzq@gucas.ac.cn)

With the gradual increase of large scale research project(or big science project) since World War II, it has become one of their main goals to produce large amounts of scientific data. Take HGP for example, it has succeeded accurately sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA.

The scientific data production of big science project is different form that of small science project. Some critics point out that the production of scientific data in big science is unfavorable to the development of young scientists. In small science projects, scientists need to be involved in the planning, execution, and data analysis and dealing of the projects from the beginning to the end. By contrast, in big science projects, a scientist, as a passive receiver of projects, only needs to participate in certain stage or part of a project, and under certain circumstances, what scientists fulfill is boring manual labor. The critics believe the knowledge production of small science project can not only develop students’ manual ability in experiments but also improve their ability to manage projects and analyze data.

Then, is it true that big science projects are unfavorable to the development of young scientists as the critics state? The author expects to present a clear picture and answer to this issue by investigating Beijing Genetic Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences on the spot and making a contrastive analysis of two different research processes.