Two overarching questions¶

The above points frame, at least for me, the "why do we have this problem?" part. As practicioners, for the next five years we will tackle it in a variety of ways. But all our work will be inscribed in the context of two large-scale questions, an epistemological one about the nature of science and research, and a very practical one about the structure of the institutions where science gets done.

1: Is the nature of science itself really changing?¶

"Data Science" is, in some ways, an over-abused buzzword that can mean anything and everything. I'm roughly taking the viewpoint nicely summarized by Drew Conway's well-known Venn Diagram:

2: How do the institutions of science need to change in this context?¶

It is not clear to me that a new discipline is arising, or at least that we should approach the question by creating yet another academic silo. I see this precisely as one of the questions we need to explore, both through our concrete practice and by taking a step back to reflect on the problem itself. The fact that we have an amazing interdisciplinary team, that includes folks who specialize in the philosophy and anthropology of knowledge creation, makes this particularly exciting. This is a big and complex issue, so I'll defer more writing on it for later.

The deeper epistemological question of whether Data Science "is a thing" may still be open. But at this point, nobody in their sane mind challenges the fact that the praxis of scientific research is under major upheaval because of the flood of data and computation. This is creating the tensions in reward structure, career paths, funding, publication and the construction of knowledge that have been amply discussed in multiple contexts recently. Our second "big question" will then be, can we actually change our institutions in a way that responds to these new conditions?

This is a really, really hard problem: there are few organizations more proud of their traditions and more resistant to change than universities (churches and armies might be worse, but that's about it). That pride and protective instinct have in some cases good reasons to exist. But it's clear that unless we do something about this, and soon, we'll be in real trouble. I have seen many talented colleagues leave academia in frustration over the last decade because of all these problems, and I can't think of a single one who wasn't happier years later. They are better paid, better treated, less stressed, and actually working on interesting problems (not every industry job is a boring, mindless rut, despite what we in the ivory tower would like to delude ourselves with).

One of the unique things about this Moore/Sloan initiative was precisely that the foundations required that our university officials were involved in a serious capacity, acknowledging that success on this project wouldn't be measured just by the number of papers published at the end of five years. I was delighted to see Berkeley put its best foot forward, and come out with unambiguous institutional support at every step of the way. From providing us with resources early on in the competitive process, to engaging with our campus Library so that our newly created institute could be housed in a fantastic, central campus location, our administration has really shown that they take this problem seriously. To put it simply, this wouldn't be happening if it weren't for the amazing work of Graham Fleming (our Vice Chancellor for Research) and Kaja Sehrt, from his office.

We hope that by pushing for disruptive change not only at Berkeley, but also with our partners at UW and NYU, we'll be able to send a clear message to the nation's universities on this topic. Education, hiring, tenure and promotion will all need to be considered as fair game in this discussion, and we hope that by the end of our initial working period, we will have already created some lasting change.