The Importance of Small Science
Small Science helps define the goals and directions of large scale scientific projects. In turn, results of large scale projects are often best synthesized and interpreted by the long-term efforts of the Small Science community. In addition, because Small Science is typically done at universities, it provides students and young researchers with an integral involvement in defining and solving scientific problems. Hence, small science can be seen as an important factor for bringing together science and society.
According to the Chronicle for Higher Education, James M. Caruthers, a professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University, data from Big Science is highly organized on the front end where researchers define it before it even starts rolling off the machines making it easier to handle, to understand, and to archive. Small Science is "horribly heterogeneous," and far more vast. In time Small Science will generate two to three times more data than Big Science.
The American Geophysical Union stresses the importance of small science in a position statement.
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