May 2012
Global Scientific Principles
16/05/12 13:05 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The Nature News blog reported the creation of the Global Research Council (GRC) by a group of research agencies leaders from nearly 50 countries. The GRC plans to discuss "shared goals, aspirations, and principles, and provide a vehicle to unify science across the globe." op, where research agencies agree on broad-brush issues but do little to resolve practical differences." S. Pelech questions whether further politicization and standardization of scientific research is so desirable. While a strong case can be made for international funding of a few large scale projects for the common good, he argues most research in academia and industry should be investigator-driven and collaborations should be dynamic and naturally arise from the science rather than the desires of politicians and bureaucrats to see further interactions with their favoured countries. He describes three trends related to the financing of scientific research endeavours that he finds particularly disturbing. Read More...
Not Worth It Anymore
10/05/12 16:09 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Bloomberg reported that a survey conducted by the National Venture Capital Association found that about 40 percent of the 150 venture capital firms that responded decreased their life science investment in the last three years. Bloomberg also observed that biotech stocks are now tending to fall even after firms receive approval for their drugs. S. Pelech comments that it is not surprising that venture capitalists and other investors are very wary of investing in biotechnology companies based on the last decade of very poor returns from this sector. However, roughly half of the new drugs entering the market place today originate from the biotechnology industry and large pharma relies on a healthy biotech industry to meet its R&D needs, often by acquisition. These big fish will have a lot fewer small fish to sustain them the way things are going. Read More...
Let the Games Begin
09/05/12 18:33 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Rebecca Boyle in Popular Science highlighted how the success of games like Foldit has shown researchers how useful it can be to put a problem in front of a wide group of gamers and science buffs to get help in solving it. S. Pelech argues that to tackle most problems in molecular biology and other life sciences, the recruitment of gamers is really impractical. Unless savants are engaged in these problems, the data are just too complex for meaningful explorations within video games on i-Pads. Read More...
Cloudy, With a Chance of (Data) Showers
09/05/12 13:08 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Adina Mangubat, CEO of Spiral Genetics, wrote in Xconomy that the $1,000 genome won't do any good for science if researchers can't interpret it, and she points to a need to continue aggressive development of bioinformatics software that works in a cloud environment. S. Pelech comments that this is only part of the solution, and suggests that greater emphasis should be directed towards the collection and consolidation of large data sets from high throughput genomics, proteomics and metabolomics measurements of clinical specimens, and the development of predictive biochemistry algorithms that can efficiently interrogate this meta-data. Read More...
Oh, the Pressure
08/05/12 22:49 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
David Colquhoun from University College London wrote in the Guardian that the pressure to publish scientific papers has led to the ability to publish just about anything, whether the paper merits publication or not and this can reduce the quality of science. S. Pelech comments that in the scientific research endeavor, discovery is of limited value if it is not disseminated, but most research findings are of interest to a rather select group of aficionados. The best measure of impact is how highly cited the work becomes and this is evident only after a period of years. Read More...