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Security of genetic data

The judge at the highest court in Germany Hans-Jürgen Papiersaid in an interview last week

Wir stellen nicht erst seit gestern fest, dass dem Grundrecht auf Datenschutz nicht nur von staatlicher, sondern auch von privater Seite Gefahren drohen können

What will happen once my genome once it is on “medical” hardware? Is it as save as the 8,257,378 Virginian patient records that are now under ransom? Continue reading Security of genetic data

Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab

Campbell writing at Edge about Maddox

Despite his original establishment of the peer-review process at Nature, Maddox always had strong reservations about its conservatism. These were perhaps best reflected in his view that the Watson and Crick paper on the structure of DNA wouldn’t pass muster under the current system. That paper was published as a result of recommendations by Lawrence Bragg Continue reading Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab

Paper, supplement or what?

A reviewer just wrote in response to one of our papers

I am first concerned over the structure of this manuscript, being divided into what will be a printed article and an on-line supplement. The description of what I consider to be essential methods are fragmented across these two segments, making the article disjoint and difficult to follow.

I fully agree as I have the same problem with many Nature and Science papers. By the online evolution papers are even more difficult to read. Curiously, even PLoS does this split although there is no printed paper at all.
What about abandoning the supplement practice in favour of a full and an abbreviated version of an article? So we would have an abstract for quick screening, a brief version for the printed journal and a long, fully referenced online version, yea, yea.

Addendum 1-7-09

NG continues with this artificial setup

Starting this month, readers will notice a new section called Online Methods in our Letters, Articles and Technical Reports. Material previously published as Methods and Supplementary Methods is now combined, fully edited and hyperlinked in the new format that will be present on the journal’s website and reprints, and can be downloaded in PDF format. Readers of the monthly print journal will now be directed to find the Methods online.

Is evil contagious?

Here comes an update of the Lucifer post as there are new books on the market. Some want to understand (like Arendt or Amery) while others (like Nietzsche and Sartre) would strongly oppose. I am somewhere betweenboth parties with an increasing tendency to explain human (and corporate) behavior by social group pressure while there is still room by inborn personal differences. Continue reading Is evil contagious?

Mirror neurons and science careers

Spiegel online has an excellent report about mirror neurons, empathy, social background and research (taking up a theme in the ZEIT 2003)

“In unserer Kultur sind am erfolgreichsten die”, sagt Gruen, “die am meisten von ihren Gefühlen, von der Fähigkeit zum Mitgefühl abgeschnitten sind.”

Continue reading Mirror neurons and science careers

Shift happens

The current issue of the blue journal has more stuff on the vitamin D hypothesis (that has been shifted recently into the opposite direction). I agree with the editorial that

Intervention studies of vitamin D in the primary prevention and treatment of asthma raise a number of difficult scientific, ethical, and regulatory issues.

That may be true while the editorial includes the widely quoted myth that immunological effects occur only at high doses Continue reading Shift happens

Why just C11orf30?

I have already seen this data in Washington and even talked to one of the two first authors (pun!) at the airport – the first genomewide scan for atopic dermatitis is now being online at the nature genetics website. The overall effects are disppointing small – my quick plot gives the cumulative (sic!) negative log p values.

screenshot
Continue reading Why just C11orf30?

Epistemic disruption

A new First Monday paper examines our modern publishing system that has been driving the art of doing science into a primitive strategy of making impact points.

These disruptive forces are represented by changing technological, economic, distributional, geographic, interdisciplinary and social relations to knowledge. The article goes on to examine three specific breaking points. The first breaking point is in business models — the unsustainable costs and inefficiencies of traditional commercial publishing, the rise of open access and the challenge of developing sustainable publishing models. The second potential breaking point is the credibility of the peer review system: its accountability, its textual practices, the validity of its measures and its exclusionary network effects. The third breaking point is post–publication evaluation, centered primarily around citation or impact analysis. We argue that the prevailing system of impact analysis is deeply flawed.

yea, yea.

I don’t want to bid for this dinner

NYT reports that Knome plans to offer its personal gene-sequencing service to the highest bidder in an eBay auction set to begin on Friday and continue for 10 days. This will include also a private dinner Continue reading I don’t want to bid for this dinner