Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Scientists like to "fondle their problems"

I thought this was a funny quote from an interesting article in Nature discussing the fact, that despite the identification of many disease-relevant proteins, "75% of protein research still focuses on the 10% of proteins that were known before the genome was mapped".

This is actually probably mostly driven by the conservative nature of funding sources.
From the authors:
Granting systems must be more daring, institutions must foster and reward risk, and the entire biomedical community must play down the legacy of the literature and let new evidence guide research. Genome-wide tools such as the DNA microarrays used in association studies have allowed geneticists to ignore preconceived ideas about disease mechanisms and pursue a remarkably successful broad-brush approach; this approach should be embraced more generally.

Too many roads not taken
Aled M. Edwards, Ruth Isserlin, Gary D. Bader, Stephen V. Frye, Timothy M. Willson & Frank H. Yu
Nature Volume: 470, Pages:163–165

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Wolpoff interviewed by Razib

Here's a very interesting video of a discussion between Razib Khan and Milford Wolpoff.
They cover a pretty wide range of topics, but mostly centered on the multiregional model of human evolution, with some discussion about the "sociology of science" weaved in throughout.

 
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