Data vs hypothesis driven research: the false dichotomy

Read it on Medium (preferred). This post is adapted from a talk I gave at the Plantae Presents webinar More Money, More Data: Data-Driven versus Hypothesis-Driven Research (recording here). The webinar was moderated by Plantae Fellows Krishna Alamuru, Dennis Baffour-Awuah, Aditi Bhat, and Kestrel Maio. They moderated the discussion and invited me and Ivan Baxterof the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to explore the evolving landscape of plant biology in the era of big data. My contribution tackled the presumed tension between traditional hypothesis-driven science and big, data-driven approaches. The slides from my presentation are available on Zenodo. What follows is a blog version of that talk.