Is time spent in data collection considered "contribution" in Academia? I've been educated that the correct scientific theory and analysis are far more important than the data collection. 

Let's compare the two papers. The first group of authors collected their data for two years, but they have done very poor analysis, and lead to laughable results.

The second paper simply uses the data from the first group; however, their method is far more rigorous and they got a rigorous result.

Which one is more valuable to academia?
I've been educated that the correct scientific theory and analysis are far more important than the data collection.


I disagree: Neither is more important.

In your example, the second paper may not have been possible without the first. Similarly, perhaps third, fourth, and fifth papers could be written given the first, maybe independently of each other and the second. In this scenario, paper one is more important, it provided the basis for future works. But, maybe the second group could have collected their own data, then paper one has less value.

It really depends on the circumstances, I don't think there's a general answer.