Later researchers treat contested datasets as natural facts rather than as constructed artifacts.

Evidence

These issues constantly face qualitative researchers because they usually have to construct their populations themselves. The same problems are less pressing for the large-N quantitative literature because most scholars rely on preconstituted populations and their corresponding concepts. However, all large-N data sets provoke discussion on key conceptual points when they first appear on the scene. The next generation of researchers takes these data sets as given and is often unaware of the conceptual debates that surround their birth. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 999

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘The Forgetting of the Dataset’ — every big-N dataset begins as an argument and ends as a background assumption, and the conceptual choices never get re-litigated.
• XREF: Echoes the archival-grain work on how bureaucratic conventions become invisible common sense once sedimented in infrastructure.