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Informatics and hypothesis‐driven research
Author(s) -
Smalheiser Neil R
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1093/embo-reports/kvf164
Subject(s) - informatics , skepticism , surprise , data science , computer science , framing (construction) , psychology , epistemology , political science , philosophy , social psychology , engineering , structural engineering , law
of data, but rather as providing significant ‘added value’. Consider a commercial database consisting of credit-card transactions: its purpose is to keep track of individual accounts, and most of the queries to the database are specific, focused and initiated individually. In contrast, automated data-mining techniques permit the same database to be characterised in terms of significant large-scale correlations that provide a rich array of market research data. More importantly, one can search on an ongoing basis for anomalous patterns of activity that raise the possibility of fraud; in fact, a commercial database that does not carry out such automated ‘data-driven discovery’ might even be considered negligent. I suggest that research databases that are populated and analysed according to specific