Scientific progress
It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times...
08/09/10 19:49 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Physician James Le Fanu has suggested that research institutions have never been so impressive and well funded, but their recent output has been rather disappointing when compared to the beginning of the 20th century, and this has generated a lot of negative feedback from the biomedical research community. S. Pelech accepts some and challenges many of Dr. Le Fanu criticisms about biomedical research progress, but points out that the US citizen commitment to finance biomedical research has actually been very modest in real numbers when income, taxation and inflation are factored in. Read More...
Quantification Quandary
02/12/10 16:04 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Michael Nielsen noted that it is "very, very difficult for even the best scientists to accurately assess the value of scientific discoveries," but as a practical matter we are forced to make such evaluations in hiring scientists and judging grant applications on committees. S. Pelech points out several of the difficulties associated with measurement of scientific impact, and argues that it is time to overhaul the grant funding system to support a larger percentage of the biomedical researchers with, if need be, small grants. Read More...
What's the Point?
17/12/10 23:19 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Hannah Waters wonder why science stories like the NASA arsenic bacterium sometimes get overhyped and "out of hand," and she concludes that researchers feel the need to be "purposeful" while doing their work as government grants with public money requires some ultimate benefit for the public. S. Pelech comments that the real value of basic research is well appreciated amongst those practitioners within the scientific community and it should be funded based solely on its own realistic merits. However, since the bulk of the grant funding for biochemistry and molecular biology research comes from government and charitable agencies that are mandated to improving human health, there is a clear obligation to work towards more practical outcomes with these particular funds. Read More...
Glug, Glug, Glug …
11/02/11 14:16 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Josh Fischman at The Chronicle of Higher Education observed that a recent series of 10 articles published in Science highlights the problem of "data deluge" and the difficulties in sharing such data due to the diversity of data formats and the lack of "a common language for tagging their data." S. Pelech comments that there remains of wealth of largely ignored genomics and proteomics data available in many open-access repositories on-line that is easily retrievable, and the real problem is the lack of expertise available within the scientific community to interpret this data. More researchers need to markedly expand their biomolecular vocabularies about proteins and their activities to generate actual knowledge from the raw data. Read More...
Take it Easy
04/08/11 01:07 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
John Horgan at the Scientific American Cross-check blog suggested that when researchers rush to publish their results, they can make mistakes and exaggerate the importance of their work, cut corners, and sometimes commit fraud. This is why some researchers are now championing what's being called the "slow science movement," which calls on researchers to be deliberate and cautious in what they choose to print. S. Pelech comments that slow science does not necessarily equate with better science, and exaggeration of the importance of research findings, cutting corners and committing fraud are not really linked to performing faster science, it just bad science at any speed. Read More...
Paul Nurse on Funding
26/04/10 12:33 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Paul Nurse proposed that the most elite scientists should receive more funding, because it is these individuals that are the most likely to make the big breakthroughs that will drive science forward. S. Pelech disagrees and argues that even with more limited funding, the greater the number of different scientists involved in the discovery process, especially with cross-disciplinary expertise, the better the prospects for scientific advancement. Read More...
Rocket Scientists, Brain Surgeons, and All That
15/04/10 12:31 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Success in science is proposed by blogger Zen Faulkes at NeuroDojo to depend more on perseverence than genius. S. Pelech agrees and notes that high curiosity and a real passion for their work gives leading scientists an edge. Read More...