Abstract

Computational resources are used for a wide array of disparate tasks for scientific research, challenging any neat classification system. There is, however, a common feature that runs through many of the computational resources being used for scientific purposes, and this is their sociality. The scientific programmes of research that are emerging are highly complex socio-technical systems. The computations in question are embedded within collaborative and often cross-disciplinary or cross-sector relationships in their design and development as well as in their use. In designing and developing the resources, scientists of various disciplines collaborate with at least one other discipline: computer science. In addition, in using the resources, they often either need to rely on the data of others, on the co-operation of others to carry out some of the tasks required for the research, or on the active participation of others in the analysis and interpretation of their results. These are typical hallmarks of e-science modes of carrying out scientific research. The paper presents findings from a continuing empirical social study of two groups of biologists: computational and mathematical biologists. The computational biologists in this study are working on whole heart models for in silico experiments; the mathematical biologists are working on modelling tumours also with an eye to future in silico experiments. The very different set of collaborations in which these two groups operate has a fundamental effect on the research questions they pursue and how they do so. There are, for example, different degrees of reliance on published data, and different prospects for the validation of the results of modeling and simuluation. The parameter values which are required for the work of both computational and mathematical biologists are the points of articulation in the collaborations with physiologists and biologists. Yet these parameter values have a very different significance for these groups, both with respect to their meaning as terms within the research practices of the groups, and with respect to the investment of work and energy. They can emerge as sites of contestation in the development and push of quantificational methods in biology. There is also a different attitude towards visualisations between the two groups, with visualisations being key to the scientific process for computational biologists and less so for mathematical biologists. The visualisations can be seen to play epistemological and rhetorical roles in mediating the relations between the members of these different groups. The paper will focus on parameter values and visualisations as different stages of the research cycle of computational and mathethematical biology. Parameter values and visualisations will be placed against the background of the socio-technical-epistemological context in which they operate and circulate. Finally, the paper attempts to show how the understandings of parameter values and visualisations relates to the epistemic trust between the various communities involved in computational and mathematical biology, that is, the extent to which the communities are inclined to trust each others’ epistemological resources and output, and the extent to which this is required for the development of this form of research.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call