Octopi, Scientific Authorship, and the Dangerous Supplement of Qualitative Data

What kind of a figure is the prolific, or indeed the "hyperprolific," scientist in an era of collaboration and data sharing?  What kinds of data are used to fill in a sketch of that figure? And how can qualitative data, in this case submerged as a "supplement" but made more analytically available through our own forms of "care of the data,"  serve to complicate, interrupt, and perhaps challenge the dominant, more quantitative, and authoritative arguments and figures being purveyed?