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PLoS Computational Biology

Fri, 2005-06-24 20:06 — PedroBeltrao

The first issue of PLoS Computational Biology is out. The journal's editors want this to be one of the main forums for the people working in the field of computational biology but so far what I would say is that it is nice to have another open access journal where we can aspire to publish our work.
I would like to point out the interesting perspective by Sean R. Eddy. Among several other interesting points he argues for interdisciplinary people instead of interdisciplinary teams and how the recent "big science" mentality might actually hinder innovation.


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Mon, 2005-06-27 17:56 — Anonymous (not verified)

Bravo

Sounds like Sean Eddy is a maverick heading for a fall :-)

Seriously though, to my mind his piece describes "old-style" science, the work of relatively small numbers of intellectually-driven individuals. But the industrialization of biology has heightened industrial values such as control over resources, monopolization and an incessant fight for privilege by what you might call management. I suspect (OK hope) that "real" progress will still be made by insightful, talented and/or near-crazy individuals, but places have to be left in the system for them to occupy. The rise of the manager-scientist continues to be a worry, but resources have to come from somewhere and managers are fine if they let people run. It's a creative's role to do something new/interesting/exciting/revolutionary/stupid with those resources if/when they arrive. It's a little sad that this further entrenches the managerial mindest, but c'est la vie.

Maybe biology is in a mini culture war and the black hats are winning?


Sat, 2005-06-25 01:27 — Greg

This is a great commentary fr

This is a great commentary from Sean Eddy, I highly recommend everyone read it:

I don't think of interdisciplinary teams combining existing skills to solve a defined problem—I think of single interdisciplinary people inventing new ways to look at the world

The question is where do you find these "interdisciplinary people" ?

I have some posters at BOSC2005 (more on that later) about data exchange standards for alternative splicing. Now I admit that this kind of thing is not exactly "sexy", however there was a panel discussion in the AS-SIG on building a distributed Transcriptome project. One of the themes that came out of this discussion was "we need standards". During the poster presentation the impression I got from most of the attendees was "I don't want to deal with standards development I just want it to work for me". IMO you will never have standards work for you if you don't take the time to appreciate at least some of the technical details.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should implement an XML parser for this proposed standard. Just understand the significance of XML as a useful technology for structuring data in files and exchanging that data.

I guess what I'm saying is you need to have the desire to be an interdisciplinary person. How do you get this ? Environment, training, natural inclination ? I don't really know. My guess is that some researchers will always be comfortable being interdisciplinary, and it is these people that will need to coordinate teams of people...


Mon, 2005-06-27 15:25 — Neil

Spread the word

Agreed, this commentary is excellent. It's one of those articles that gives you a rush of thoughts such as:

Wow, someone entirely on my wavelength
I wish I was in a position to write articles like this
I wonder if they have any positions available?
I really hate where I work

and so on.

I will be distributing this to everyone I know.

I guess what I'm saying is you need to have the desire to be an interdisciplinary person. How do you get this?

It's an interesting question. I think a lot of it is natural inclination. As far back as I can remember I've been interested in "science" - astronomy, physics, computers, biology, the whole package. I just assumed that all scientists were like this. When I first began working as a scientist, I was amazed at how narrow-minded many of my biologist colleagues were - their Ph.D. training involved almost one technique, which they carried into their first postdoc and mention of anything outside of this area (e.g. "Linux") was met with blank stares.

I ceased to be amazed some years ago.