DEMYTHOLOGIZING BIOLOGICAL DATA BANKING

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Abstract
Summary: The author asserts that biologists have been quite unrealistic in their predictions of what the computer can do for them in the realm of computerized data banking. With a backdrop of several years of “hands‐on” experience in the Flora North America Program, he analyzes the veritable mythology about data banking that has been fostered unwittingly by the proponents of computer‐based information (data) retrieval systems and challenges biologists and other scientists who are prospective designers of such systems to demythologize computers and data banks. The data bank is not a larger‐than‐life creature of science and technology having vast, McLuhanesque powers to digest information and spew back answers. The myths about the computer lead to unrealistic assumptions and expectations, becoming in time grand delusions and dangerous snares. Four myths are discussed: I. The Myth of the Automatic System, II. The Myth of the User‐Oriented System, III. The Myth of Compatibility, and IV. The Myth of the Liberated Scientist. Under the first myth, six specific fallacies about data banking are discussed, concerning personnel requirements, the flexibility of computer media, and the computer's capacity to facilitate the organization, editing, and publication of data. The computer, it is asserted repeatedly, has a greater potential to enslave than to liberate the scientist. It is concluded that computerized systems are not alternatives for conventional systems of storing and retrieving information (data), but merely extensions or enhancements of such systems. Computers will not substitute for people, nor will automation replace the hand of the expert. The author, even while exposing what he terms data‐banking myths, tries to make plain his own continuing dedication to the computer revolution in systematics as it pertains to information retrieval, but he stresses that this revolution can go forward only on the basis of realities, not on myths.
Funding Information
  • National Science Foundation (GB‐8441, GB‐26173, GB‐31715, GN‐812, C‐720, C‐757)
  • Smithsonian Institution (Sgo621054)