Machine learning and data science are not new things in science. It's great that we have the ability to share and work with existing data sets, collect data remotely with sensors, and build software to create models, but we'll always need people to go out and collect updated data, place censors and verify that what models predict is actually happening.

> Scientists who run long-term ecological studies, in particular, report that they struggle to find funding.

It's cheaper and easier to do stuff sitting at a desk. In theory that's a good thing if it means more work gets done, but field work has to happen too. For many people it's the best part of the job, for others it's a pain that has to be suffered through to get the data they need. Hopefully there's room (and funding) for both kinds of people to do the work they want.