Sharing data, repairing practices: On the reflexivity of astronomical data journeys

Abstract

This chapter probes into how scientists’ discursive interactions are oriented not only to others’ arguments but also toward achieving an agreement on what data are like and how they ought to be used. It does so by attempting a reading of an episode of data re-use from recent astronomy that is mindful of researchers’ interactional and discursive work. I focus on the presumed detection, in 2004, of a galaxy at record distance from Earth. The original data became public at the time of publication and were soon re-used and supplemented with new observations by other teams. Data re-using scientists sought to reconstruct the practices used in making the discovery claim, and found them at fault. This allowed them to suggest the repair of data and of data use practices, which were subsequently taken up by the scientists who had claimed the discovery. I argue that this work was enabled by astronomy’s discipline-specific architecture for observation, of which objectual, technological and institutional elements provide contexts and resources for achieving the reflexive repair of data and data use practices. These astronomers experience data journeys more as reflexive loopings in screen-mediated work than as itineraries across physical sites or geographies.