I like the thought of making science more science-like. Maybe next thing would be to study the biters!

Studying biters as special data for military science packs only... No idea how to implement this just yet, but it sounds cool :)

Oh, after taking train pause I may try this one !

So three suggestions :
1) Classic : biter & nest leave biomass upon death. You collect it, process it with different chemical operations then you work on the DNA, much like the old artifact system.
2) I don't know if it's possible, but maybe the close presence of aliens around the collector could give you informations, analyzing their behavior and attack pattern to gather data. The gathering area could be large enough to fit a row of walls (don't let your collector die) and why not turrets. This way, you could leave a collector defenseless but will collect more data (perhaps indefinetly if walls are robot-repaired), or rather choose to protect it with turrets in case of big waves, yet reducing the time during which the collector will gather data.
3) Slow passive scanning : something related to the radar. The more bitters and/or nest are in range of the radar, the more it produces data. New radar, module, or adjacent building ; slower than the small collector :D

Oh, maybe a special kind of weapon and/or turret that would scan the targeted alien and then gathering data.
Stun/cryogenic grenades would help pinning biters on place to expose them longer to all those different means (collector and data weapons); but would immediatly move again if they take damage (so no abuse with classic weapons and stunlock).

Capture ! Drive the bitter to low health then throw a special grenade that kills it but gives you an item depending of the alien you captured. Then you would be able to do tons of things with it, from DNA to cell analysis, brainwaves and pheromones studyings, and more...
It would be more complicated that simply killing them but would give you a slow but constant yield. Maybe after capturing it you would have to "reanimate it" and you would have a chance to have different health conditions of the alien (from good to swiss cheese like) thus different yields, forcing you to always seek more aliens and keep the best.

Moreover, a special kind of satellite could study large-scale alien behavior, thus giving back loads of special sheets.

Whatever the approach, it would have to handle games with biters disabled. That would mean adding an additional military science recipe, rather than adjusting the vanilla recipe.

I think I like #3 for a first attempt: Have sensors gather data from radars somehow. If biter nests are in range, generate a special raw data type usable only for military science.

It might have to wait a bit though :-)

I'm thinking about differentiating between types of data collection with different sensor types. Having that framework already in place would make it easier to incorporate military science.