Leonelli refuses to distinguish data and models through intrinsic properties such as abstraction, numerical form or degree of human construction. Instead, she locates the distinction in epistemic function: data are processed to become usable as evidence, whereas data models are arrangements explicitly manipulated to represent a phenomenon. The theoretical contribution is therefore pragmatic and practice-based, replacing fixed ontological hierarchies with an account of how objects acquire roles inside concrete inquiries. Her detailed reconstruction of plant-phenotyping practices shows that images, quantitative traits, qualitative judgements and computational transformations can change status during research. The methodological operation is philosophical reconstruction grounded in laboratory practice, using the stages of data processing to expose the assumptions and decisions through which evidential scope is produced. The wider bridge is to philosophy of experimentation and STS: what counts as evidence depends upon purpose, sequencing and use, making data practices constitutive of scientific reasoning rather than preliminaries to the supposedly real work of modelling.
