Apr 2012
In Defense of Risk
27/04/12 13:10 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Proflike Substance questioned the adversity of federal agencies to funding risky research, since this can offer the biggest rewards. S. Pelech figures that all experimental research should have risk if it is truly original and not merely confirmatory. The decision to carry out a specific experiment or line of enquiry is dictated by the rewards verses the costs, which include time, money, and lost opportunity to pursue more productive directions. Granting agencies generally support low risk, hypothesis-driven research, because this is often believed to lead to better designed experiments that produce clearer answers to the questions posed, but S. Pelech challenges this view. Read More...
Pity the Poor Fraudster?
19/04/12 14:46 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Brian Deer at the Guardian wondered whether the problem of more research fraud stems from increased misconduct or because other researchers are getting better at catching it? He somewhat sympathized with Peter Francis, who due to the stiff compeption for research support, applied for a grant using fabricated data, was caught by his university, and was investigated by the US Office of Research Integrity. While S. Pelech finds it hard to accept Dr. Francis as a victim of the present system, he comments that Dr. Francis' behaviour does reveal how easily it can be abused. He suggests that a better grant funding system that takes into account the realities of scientific research would be to fund established investigators primarily on the basis of their recent productivity and less so on their ideas. Read More...
Well, This Is Awkward
18/04/12 13:44 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Mark Czarnecki at the Walrus magazine noted that while researchers have not yet nailed down their interpretations of the human genome, direct-to-consumer firms are hawking genetic tests and that offer to "detail your risks for a menu of diseases." Czarnecki stated that, "with whole-genome sequencing providing so much data that is so little understood, making the best ethical choice (of what to do) is more difficult than ever." S. Pelech cautions that the tendency of many to use the reductionist view that diseases primarily arise from defects in the genome will ultimately lead to a lot of wasted expense and unnecessary added worry. Disease arises from a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Read More...
Going, Going, Gone?
16/04/12 14:37 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Ken Weiss in the Mermaid's Tale blog wondered whether from interest in whole-genome sequencing is "fading." He thinks that money should be spent on looking at specific problem-causing genes. S. Pelech takes sickle cell anemia as an example of how the identification of disease-causing genes is only the first step in a long road towards successful diagnosis and treatment of illness. He points out that environmental factors clearly have a major influence on whether most common diseases will materialize, and these can exacerbate or compensate for genetic defects. Read More...
Questioning Science
11/04/12 12:23 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
ScienceInsider reported that a Tennessee anti-evolution bill has become law, although without the signature of the state's governor Bill Haslam. According to the Tennessean, the bill encourages students to question accepted scientific theories — listing as examples evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and cloning — and it protects teachers from punishment if they teach creationism." S. Pelech wonders whether the Bill might in fact not be a bad thing. As long as the Bill truly provides for healthy debate, maybe it is a good idea that scientific thought is open to challenge, since this is a primary difference between the development of scientific knowledge and religious beliefs. Read More...
Learn a Lesson from the Past
03/04/12 12:31 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Ed Yong at Nature News cautioned that while sequencing the human microbiome could lead to exciting and important discoveries for human health, researchers working with the microbiome should avoid overhyping their work so that it does not suffer the same backlash as the Human Genome Project. S. Pelech comments that defining what is meant by the human microbiome "sequence" is even more elusive than the relatively static human genome "sequence" even if this is only from one person out of 7 billion on this planet. He argues that what we really need to do is to identify the specific bacteria that are problematic and cause disease, and differentiate them from the vast majority that are benign or even essential to human health. Read More...
Mind the Gaps
02/04/12 12:26 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Daniel MacArthur and his colleagues' in their recently published Science paper described a systematic survey of loss-of-function variants in human protein-coding genes using data from the 1,000 Genomes Project that revealed that genomes of healthy individuals each contain about 100 LoF [loss-of-function] variants, and approximately 20 of these genes are completely inactivated. S. Pelech comments that while the genomes of healthy people can harbour many defective tumour suppressor genes without any manifestation of cancer, it also likely that they might also have activated oncogenes, which alone are insufficient to induce full neoplastic transformation. He also points out a recent study with 53,666 identical twins in registries from the United States and Europe that showed they had similar risks for 24 different diseases as seen they were when compared to the general population. Read More...
'Like Insider Trading'
01/04/12 12:28 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Bloggers Proflife Substance, Namnezia and Athene Donald explored the dilemma that arises when reviewing grant proposals or submitted scientific manuscripts can directly influence the research of the reviewer - the inside knowledge might serve as a trigger for independent thought through to being a source of outright theft of the author's ideas. S. Pelech comments that with the thousands of information bytes that we receive daily during readings, viewings, and discourses with others, it is hard to tell when original thoughts truly emerge as opposed to ideas that were forgotten and triggered for remembrance. Creativity in scientific thinking seems to stem from the ability to string diverse ideas together in novel ways that explain observations or reveal previously unappreciated relationships. Read More...