Toward a notion of intervention in big-data biology and molecular medicine

We claim that in contemporary studies in molecular biology and biomedicine, the nature of “manipulation” and “intervention” has changed. Traditionally, molecular biology and molecular studies in medicine are considered experimental sciences, whereas experiments take the form of material manipulation and intervention. On the contrary “big science” projects in biology focus on the practice of data mining of biological databases. We argue that the practice of data mining is a form of intervention although it does not require material manipulation. We also suggest that material manipulation, although still present in the practice of data mining, fulfills a different epistemic role.