“Data Science” has taken many disciplines by storm. And for a good reason: New forms and unseen quantities of data enter nearly every scientific field, substantially changing the ways how scientists do science, and potentially allowing them to answer old questions or to pose them in novel ways. The recent success of Data Science is also reflected in corresponding study programs and curricula and the emergence of specialized branches, such as Geographic Data Science (GDS). Some researchers, therefore, claim that Data Science and GDS should be treated as autonomous scientific disciplines, while others fear that it sells nothing but old wine in new bottles. In an attempt to sober the discussion, we investigate GDS and Data Science from the perspective of meta‐science. We provide arguments why today's GDS and Data Science should be seen as an interdisciplinary community of practice of data‐driven scientists, rather than a scientific discipline. We also discuss what is missing for GDS and Data Science to become genuine scientific disciplines.

中文翻译：

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为什么地理数据科学不是一门科学


“数据科学”席卷了许多学科。这是有充分理由的：新形式和看不见的大量数据几乎进入了每个科学领域，极大地改变了科学家进行科学研究的方式，并有可能让他们回答旧问题或以新颖的方式提出这些问题。数据科学最近的成功也反映在相应的研究项目和课程以及地理数据科学（GDS）等专业分支的出现中。因此，一些研究人员声称数据科学和 GDS 应该被视为独立的科学学科，而另一些研究人员则担心它卖的只是新瓶装旧酒。为了使讨论清醒，我们从元科学的角度研究 GDS 和数据科学。我们提供了为什么当今的 GDS 和数据科学应被视为数据驱动科学家的跨学科实践社区，而不是科学学科的论点。我们还讨论了 GDS 和数据科学要成为真正的科学学科还缺少什么。