resurrect extinct species. 2 Since the 1980s, speculation about resurrection has followed the field closely, influencing the development of this practice over a prolonged period of time. Drawing on historical and archival material, interviews with scientists, and philosophical literature, this paper presents the search for DNA from fossils, throughout its disciplinary development from the 1980s to today, as a data-driven and celebrity-driven practice. This paper proceeds in three parts. First, I deliver a condensed history of ancient DNA research from the 1980s to today with attention to the role that technology as well as consistent press and public interest played in its growth from a curious idea into a credible practice within evolutionary biology. Second, I introduce interviewees' memories of their history and analyze their perspectives on the historical and philosophical development of ancient DNA activity as an extended episode of boundary-work. In attempts to make sense of their history as a science in the spotlight, interviewees try to draw a line between their past and present in order to portray the practice as a more question-driven, and therefore more mature, area of research today. Finally, I discuss the role of celebrity and credibility in the data-driven practice of ancient DNA research. Methods and Definitions In analyzing the methodologies of ancient DNA researchers over a thirty-year-period, it is necessary to address my own methods that were used in the writing of this history. Specifically, I approached this project as a historian of science with a focus on oral history methods which included qualitative interviews with fifty-five scientists, as well as doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, involved in ancient DNA research. The interview method was semistructured in style, on average two-hours in length, and resulted in partial-transcriptions for analysis. The interviewees represent researchers from disparate disciplines within evolutionary biology and can be characterized within the following categories: paleontology, archeology, anthropology, botany, epidemiology, evolutionary genetics, population genetics, molecular biology, microbiology, and computational biology. These interviewees work within the following countries: United States,

In citizen science, data stewards and data producers are often not the same people. When those who have labored on data collection are not in control of the data, ethical problems could arise from this basic structural feature. In this Perspective, we advance the proposition that stewarding data sets generated by volunteers involves the typical technical decisions in conventional research plus a suite of ethical decisions stemming from the relationship between professionals and volunteers. Differences in power, priorities, values, and vulnerabilities are features of the relationship between professionals and volunteers. Thus, ethical decisions about open data practices in citizen science include, but are not limited to, questions grounded in respect for volunteers: who decides data governance structures, who receives attribution for a data set, which data are accessible and to whom, and whose interests are served by the data use/re-use. We highlight ethical issues that citizen science practitioners should consider when making data governance decisions, particularly with respect to open data.

In this article on the history of ancient DNA research, we argue that the innovation of next-generation sequencing (NGS) of the early 2000s has ushered in a second hype cycle much like the first hype cycle the field experienced in the 1990s with the advent of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). While the first hype cycle centered around the search for the oldest DNA, the field’s current optimism today promotes the rhetoric of revolution surrounding the study of ancient human gnomes. This is evidenced from written sources and personal interviews with researchers who feel the vast amount of data, the conclusions being made from this data, and the ever-increasing celebrity status of the field are perhaps moving too fast for their own good. Here, we use the concept of contamination, in both a literal and figurative understanding of the term, to explore the field’s continuities and disparities. We also argue that a number of additional, figurative interpretations of “contamination” are useful for navigating the current debate between geneticists and archaeologists regarding the origin, evolution, and migration of ancient humans across space and time. Our historical outlook on aDNA’s disciplinary development, we suggest, is necessary to accurately appreciate the state of the field, how it came to be, and where it might go in the future.

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