Scientists No Longer Sharing Information? 172
chill writes: "A little while back there was an item here on Slashdot about the debate over public funded research and whether or not it should be required to be "open". Well, here is some ammunition to one side of the debate. It seem there is an article in the Chicago Tribune about the increasing unwillingness of genetic researchers to share supporting information with colleagues. The study is from the Journal of the American Medical Association for those who want more than the second-hand summary of the Trib."
Hard to figure out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:1, Informative)
So, what exactly does that mean, to patent it? (Score:1)
I suppose the people who patented the Lac Operon could just tax milk, couldn't they?
*sigh*
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists are allowed to patent the genes that they dicover.......this has lead to the unwillingness to share since sharing would cost them the potential money that can be made with the gene
Before you rush to place the usual blame on intellectual property, look at the results of the study. The top three reasons for witholding information were, in order:
- Too much effort to comply with request;
- Protecting a student's ability to publish; and
- Protecting one's own ability to publish.
None of these have to do with patenting, but 2 and 3 likely have to do with self-interest in an incredibly competetive research environment. You wouldn't want to help a competing group to scoop your own research before you had a chance to completely analyze it.Clearly, self-interest is at play here -- not an unlikely quest for riches from patenting (the odds of which are somewhat akin to playing the lottery), but the more mundane quest for tenure and grant funding.
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:1)
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:2)
None of these have to do with patenting, but 2 and 3 likely have to do with self-interest in an incredibly competetive research environment.
Actually, they may all be oblique references to patenting. Since no researcher wants to say "I don't share because I have chosen to abandon the longstanding ethic of information exchange in favor of nonexistant corperate ethics". So, difficulty of drawing up necessary legal documents to allow sharing without loosing the ability to patent or too much beurocratic red tape to get clearance to share from management becomes 'too much effort to comply with request' or 'protecting ability to publish'. Perhaps publish has become a euphamism for patent?
No, I don't absolutely know this to be true (short of telepathic interrogation, I couldn't know for certain), but I note that the reasons given weren't such a problem before.
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:4, Informative)
The logic on genes is different in a couple of respects; an individual gene is not a fundamental aspect of nature; genes are nearly infinite in number, as opposed to elements, which are finite; unlike elements, genes can be modified/designed. There are extensive and legimitate differences between a patent on a gene and a patent on an element.
I would say that patents on genes shouldn't be impossible, they should just be more difficult to get and more limited in scope. At the moment, I have considerable hearsay (that's the wrong term) evidence that patents on genes are stiffling innovation.
Before I start, I am a Structural Biologist and a Computational Biologist, I might also be called a Biochemist, Cell Biologist, Molecular Biologist, Biostatistician, Bioninformatician or Biophysicist. However, I am not a Geneticist.
The conclusion, reached by the Tribune, that profit motive is having a disastrous impact on genetics information sharing is reading too much into the article. I'd have to head into the university library to actually get a copy of the full text of the article, but most of what the article concludes is that geneticists feel worse about failure to share information than scientists in the other life sciences.
Geneticists were as likely as other life scientists to deny others' requests and to have their own requests denied. However, other life scientists were less likely to report that withholding had a negative impact on their own research as well as their field of research. - Jama article
Saying that geneticists feel worse about information sharing in their field - while certainly an interesting finding - is not sufficient to conclude that
The moneymaking potential of genetic discoveries is pushing an increasing number of scientists to withhold information about how they conducted research
Now, I will channel the spirit of Eric Cartman:
Bad Chicago Tribune! [Whack] That's my pot pie! [Whack] Gimme back my pie, you stupid paper! [Whack]
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Fundamental aspect" has nothing to do with it. Look, patents are supposed to regulate *inventions,* human-manufactured artifical creations.
"There are extensive and legimitate differences between a patent on a gene and a patent on an element."
However, unless one is talking about a gene that has been modified, genes are no more inventions than elements are. Both are from nature and are discovered, not made.
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:1)
Well, in this case, that is exactly what one is talking about. The only successful patents thus far have been on modified genetic strains (Vitamin A enriched rice, the cancer-prone mouse from Harvard, etc.)
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:2)
I believe that JJ is objecting to the patent of the gene, itself, which is a natural thing and not an invention. I still maintain that such a patent is a lesser degree of absurdity than a patent on U-234 would be; but I agree with JJ that they should not be issued.
However, I do think you should be able to patent technologies that utilise specific natural genes - including the "invention" of cloning a particular gene for a particular purpose. Patents like that, which bother some people, don't bother me, and they basically amount to a patent on the gene, at least from a commercial standpoint.
You can also patent a gene where you have modified the gene itself, of course, although what you ought to get a patent on is the modification (which is clearly an invention.)
Patents which actually are on a naturally occuring gene, directly, rather than an application of the gene, are an insult.
Likewise, patenting all possible screens for a gene that (say) causes kidney disease is also an insult - it is like patenting the desired end of catching mice, or patenting the act of immobilising a mouse's tail, rather than a design for a mousetrap.
This may all seem like splitting hairs, but the overextended patents that are being granted are having - I am concinced of this from (thank you, Mr. Anonymous) anecdotal evidence even though I do not have any hard numbers - a chilling effect on innovaction in certain areas. As more and more of these bad, over-reaching patents are issued, the effect they have can be expected to get worse.
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:2)
If the patent was specific on the implemetation, i.e. the cloning is done in a specific way, or the administering of the gene is done a certain way, I'd be fine with a patent on that, too.
perhaps you should find out what patents are... (Score:2)
Re:perhaps you should find out what patents are... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is the idea, anyway... in my former position at a dot-com, the management wanted to obtain a software patent based on some work I had done. Their advice to me for describing my software for the patent was (more or less in these words) "make it descriptive enough so that we can sue anyone who tries to do something similar, but vague enough so that it would not be of much use to anyone trying to figure out how to do the same thing". I trust not all patents are done with this sort of mindset, but any that are, are certainly not doing much to help the public good.
Re:perhaps you should find out what patents are... (Score:2)
I trust not all patents are done with this sort of mindset, but any that are, are certainly not doing much to help the public good.
I haven't seen a patent new enough to still be in effect that WASN'T done with that mindset.
Re:perhaps you should find out what patents are... (Score:2)
If you patent something, then you are by definition sharing it. Patents are public, for all to see
In that case, I suggest we solve hunger and homelessness by allowing those unfortunate people to look at food and housing.
200 years ago, no technological change large enough to be called a revolution realloy happened in less than 20 years anyway. Today, in some fields, important changes happen in
The field of genetic engineering appears to be at about the point computers were in 1979. The only difference is that the patent/copyright issue has been 'resolved' already, unlike software in 1979.
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:3, Funny)
I think I'm going to be rich very soon.
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:2)
Also they could publish, someone else patents or has patented part of their work. Then they find their work hampered by licencing fees and paying lawyers.
I have always said that Patents on genes was a bad disision.......at the turn of the 20th century, scientists tried to patent Elements on the periodic table......the were not allowed because they belonged to everyone.....well, how is that logic diffrent for Genes?
The rules around "Interlectual property" have changed over the last hundred years.
Re:Hard to figure out? (Score:2)
We live (most readers) in a capitalist society. The thing that drives it is competition for resources.
What bad things do patents today do to innovation?:
1. Close information in testing phases.
2. Give profit to the first lab that has its lawyers file the paperwork.
3. Give lawyers money from "prior art" disputes.
What good things?
1. They allow small entitys to spend money in research and development that don't have the resources to manufacture the goods they design.
Getting rid of patents is great for huge corperations that have the production resources, but it sucks for all the little guys.
If you belive that argument you are a little nieve. Hear much about architects, engineers, and programmers that were low paid? There are valid business models for the little guys.
We don't need patents or long term copyright in our society. The only class that gets a lot out of them is lawyers, which tend to be our lawmakers.
Einstein Effect, sort of (Score:2)
Re:Einstein Effect, sort of (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Einstein Effect, sort of (Score:1, Interesting)
1) Gauss, Lobachevsky, Bolyai simultaneously discovered non-Euclidean geometry.
2) Abel, Jacobi simultaneously discovered elliptical integreal.
3) Vallee Poussin, Hadamard simultaneously proved prime number theorem.
4) Erdos, Selberg simultaneously find an elementary proof of prime number theorem.
And most famous of them all: Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus at the same time.
Well, it's better than... (Score:3, Funny)
Forty-seven percent of the academic geneticists who asked other colleagues for information, data and materials related to published research were turned down...
Coincidentally, a vast percentage improvement over their collective attempts at dating.
Greed (Score:2, Insightful)
Greed. That's all there is to it. All those biotech IPOs tell us that genetics research could be highly lucrative. When money enters into the equation, scientists are often driven more by profits than the good they could be doing for mankind.
And that's what's happening here. There's very little difference between proprietary software and "closed-source" science. Both put profits before progress.
Nobody in their right mind (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nobody in their right mind (Score:1)
We won't progress another hundred thousand years, in that case. I also disagree with your view of humanity - while you might be a purely egoistic person, most people are willing to sacrifice to varying degrees to help other. Greed is human nature, compassion is, too.
Re:Nobody in their right mind (Score:2)
Maybe it makes you feel better about your own greed to believe that, but it is nonetheless a fact that there are people who do all of the above. You are just not one of them.
Re:Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
I really enjoyed reading your last paragraph:
There's very little difference between proprietary software and "closed-source" science. Both put profits before progress.
I believe that's the most karma-whorific sentence I've ever read on /. (or anywhere else, for that matter). While we're on the subject though, there were a whole lot of tech IPO's promoting open source projects that were supposed to be "gold mines"... why don't you whine about those?
Re:Greed (Score:1)
[nah i think I will just press the enter button before ending the post...I will be less greedy that way]
Re:Greed (Score:2, Informative)
Since I work in the biotech field, I can say first hand that zaius got it completely correct. The lab I work for commonly withholds information, "until it's published". Unfortunately there is as little honor among scientists as there is among any group of people. Withholding information is the only way to garuntee getting a publication out of it.
And it's not just fame or greed that causes this either. Publications have a direct effect on getting funded, and getting funded is synonymous with keeping your job in science. With the lack of funds governments give to science, getting funding can become a major factor in holding information back for a while.
Re:Greed (Score:2, Interesting)
No, 80% SAID that it was either too much effort, they were protecting the ability of a junior member to publish, or their own right to further publishing.
Since when has the scientific community assumed that once you publish on a topic you have a further right to publish more? Since when is not sharing science helping anyone else publish? Furthermore, just publishing your methods does not prohibit future PhD students from using them. What it does allow is future PhD students that are unaffiliated with you to check and perhaps contradict your results.
And since scientists are apparently withholding information that relates to their research, why assume that they are perfectly honest with reguards to disclosing their reasons? Perhaps the summary really should say that 80% say it would take too much work--above and beyond the patent application.
Re:Greed (Score:2)
Slave System Is Responsible (Score:2)
The reason for not sharing information is obvious: under our economic system, the only source of income for almost everybody is individual labor. Scientific research is a very labor intensive activity and nobody is going to give their work away for nothing. Sure some scientists may share knowledge with others in the hope of winning a Nobel prize and make a name for themselves but that is a long shot.
Intellectual property laws exist only because we have a slavery system. Our livelihood depends on working for others so we can pay our taxes. The reason that we have to work for others is that 99% of people have been deprived of an inheritance in the wealth of the land. Income property is owned by a few and the state. The others are slaves. Artists, programmers and scientists depend on their work to make a living. Can we blame them? We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves. So now we are swimming in a ocean of laws and rules that take away our remaining liberties, one by one. And we are becoming more and more selfish.
But let's face it, if you cannot put a fence around it or put chains on it, it does not belong to you. Makes no difference whether it is ideas, writings, software, music or what have you. Once you've released it, like the air, it belongs to nobody and everybody. Scientists know that as soon as they reveal their secrets by sharing or even patenting them, there is nothing they can do to prevent other people from taking advantage of their labor. IP laws only serve to promote hateful competition and selfishness in a world that is becoming increasingly violent.
The internet and other communication technologies (e.g., file sharing systems) are the first major kinks in the armor of a sick system. As technology progresses, the system will eventually collapse. What will happen to a slave-based economy when robots and advanced artificial intelligences replace everybody, i. e., when human labor, knowledge and expertise become worthless?
And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime. The internet is the latest giant leap in human communication. Before that came mass telecommunication technologies and before that was the movable press. If history is any indication, we can expect a giant leap in technological progress and scientific knowledge. In fact, it is happening before our very eyes.
We should all demand a system where everybody is guaranteed income property, a piece of the pie, an estate if you will. There is plenty for everybody.
Communism confiscates all property and enslaves everybody. Capitalism gives property to a few and enslaves the rest. It's sad. The land has existed for billions of years before the first human beings appeared on the earth. Nobody has any legitimate ownership claim on the land. It should not be divided for a price. It should be an inheritance for us and our children and their children. It's the only way to guarantee freedom and a truly free market in a world where human labor is about to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Demand liberty! Nothing less.
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Re:Slave System Is Responsible (Score:2)
Also, the fact that many of us are able to make a living as "slaves", without working the land, is one of many things which has allowed our civilaztion to progress. It wasn't until we (as a race) had the infrastructure to support people who didn't actively farm/hunt/otherwise produce food that we were able to move beyond a subsistence level. And fantazise all you like about the noble savage living as one with Nature, but people living at a subsistence level will JUMP at a chance to move beyond it.
Sharing and Patents (Score:2)
Re:Sharing and Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
True enough. It's a shame that the effect of the patent system, currently, is to choke off innovation and information sharing.
Re:Sharing and Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's equally obvious that patents do not "choke off innovation". Who out there is not trying to think of better ways to do things just because bad patents have been granted? Preventing people from using inventions (even if they are obvious in retrospect) doesn't choke off innovation. Profit, maybe, but not innovation.
Re:Sharing and Patents (Score:2)
... unless the patent is used to threaten (or extort from) people who build upon it. For example, when a company participates in establishing industry standards, then springs a lurking patent on people once the standard has been implemented.
The current patent system does a lot to choke off innovation, in no small part by shifting emphasis away from innovators and towards lawyers crafting the most restrictive patents possible. I don't believe that patents have to have this effect but I do believe that the current regime -- a PTO driven by application fees, understaffed, overworked, and ill-equipped -- leads to a culture where patents are used as weapons and not as stimulators for innovation.
Re:Sharing and Patents (Score:2)
Assuming a patent system which works correctly.
Who out there is not trying to think of better ways to do things just because bad patents have been granted?
However when "bad patents" excede more than a trivial proportion of patents issued things are rather broken.
Preventing people from using inventions (even if they are obvious in retrospect) doesn't choke off innovation. Profit, maybe, but not innovation.
Maybe they can't even test if their idea will even work, because doing that would infringe on a pile of bad patents.
Re:Sharing and Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Too many patents are granted without any "thorough description of how it works." If this is an attempt to gain the protection of the patent without giving up the trade secrets, it's breaking the basic bargain involved in patents. And if it's a case of trying to patent an undeveloped idea so as to be able to sue whoever later actually delivers a working invention, then granting such vague patents does indeed choke off innovation.
What is needed is a requirement that either the description be clear enough that engineers can construct a working device, or a working device be delivered to and stored at the expense of the patent requestor. If you can't prove that you knew how to build the device at the time of the patent application, the patent is void.
2) Too many patents are granted covering ideas which are NOT new. The Australian patent office granted a patent for the wheel, and the US granted a patent for "training using a manual." The wheel patent application was a prank. The training manual application appears to be serious -- but are they going to sue the US Army for training methods that were old in 1940, or are they going to try to bully some small company into coughing up the dough rather than facing an expensive trial?
More typically (and the training manual patent may be one of these), the patent will mix one small new idea in with lots of old ideas, then claim it all. The PO should sort out the prior art in these, but obviously the US, Aussie, and presumably most other PO's have been overwhelmed until this is no longer possible. This puts the onus on companies trying to produce other products incorporating those old ideas to sort out what was really patentable, and possibly defend their interpretation in court.
There is no penalty for over-reaching like this. So I have suggested before: If two or more claims in a patent application are proven bogus, it is entirely disallowed, published, and any actual innovations contained therein become public domain.
3. It costs too much to challenge a bogus patent in court, or even to do the research to determine that it is provably bogus. The first fix for this is a "loser pays" system for legal costs. Second, I suggest that when a patent is granted the patent-holder be required to post a bond of, say, $10,000. If someone challenges the patent and the patent-holder chooses not to answer the challenge ("Gee, I didn't know the US Army used training manuals in 1940"), this bond pays (some of) the challenger's expenses. If the patent-holder takes it to trial and loses, the bond is just a tiny down-payment on what he'll owe...
Same thing for human genome... (Score:3, Interesting)
This lack of sharing for sure has been detrimental to the progress of this research, but without the motivation of potential proft, I'm sure there would be even fewer people working on it. Let's face it, it would be great if everyone worked on things like this "to make the world a better place," but most of the financial backers are doing it "to make a crap load of money."
Re:Same thing for human genome... (Score:3, Informative)
If you remember correctly (which you apparently don't), the public and private human genome sequences were published on the exact same day, one in Science (Celera) and one in Nature (public). The data in the two sets is slightly different but essentially the same stuff. Interestingly though, the private data (to which I have some access) is almost completely undecipherable and full of restrictions on its use, whereas the public data is simple to get to, simple to understand and completely available for downstream academic use (and easily licensable for commercial use).
I do agree with you statement that many financial backers (including some who fund both public and private research) are
doing it "to make a crap load of money" but I think you ignore the fact that many of us in "public" research take advantage of the private money to advance the public interest. Yes, there are situations in which NDAs and similar documents are involved, but more often than not, the "private" money that I've been involved with in research has had no limits on publication or sharing of resources/reagents. DOD money on the other hand (I'm just getting started on a DOD funded collaboration) comes with so many strings attached that you feel like a freakin' puppet.
Re:Same thing for human genome... (Score:2, Informative)
This is complete bunk (Score:2, Troll)
Any breathing female would certainly be able to find countless opportunities to recieve "genetic information" on any of these campuses.
Re:This is complete bunk (Score:2, Funny)
Any breathing female would certainly be able to find countless opportunities to recieve "genetic information" on any of these campuses.
Stop this intolerenace! Necrophiles have rights too! If I want to fuck a corpse, that's entirely my decision!
Re:This is complete bunk (Score:1)
Is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)
some time. Since you can't publish before patenting, this is the way things are.
The notable exception to the rule has been math.
Math departments have been known for their openness, since math discoverys can't be patented.
Or can they? Since many mathematical topics can
be applied as software algorithms, software patents now threaten Math as well.
Software patents need to be stopped, and I think many people agree that the entire patent/copyright/IP thing needs reinventing.
Re:Is this news? (Score:1)
This is the way things are in Europe. The US gives you one year after publication.
No share = no money (Score:1)
This is tragic... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now with all the rampant patenting and profiteering going on, it's no longer about knowledge for the good of humanity but cold hard profits. Even scientists who normally share information may feel pressured to patent or keep secret their discoveries, if only to prevent someone else from depriving them of it.
Thankfully, most scientists in the fields of "pure science" haven't really been affected by this. But scientists working in fields in which profits can be made (biotech, computer science...etc) will likely find their research threatened.
Secrecy (Score:2)
We must put an end to this for the sake of the people. Say no to Brad Pitt.
Is this a trend... (Score:1)
Re:Is this a trend... (Score:1)
:)
Biotech is learning from CS (Score:2)
No Longer???? (Score:1)
Of course, being too secret means you never get public acknowledgement. The people who get stuff before the public get the credit, shift the paradigms and all that fun being famous stuff.
The sciences wax and wane between secrecy and publicity seeking. Regardless, the science of the next generation will be built on the stuff that goes public.
As for the debate. I believe it is important that scientists are able to control how they release information. You don't want to have to put everything before the public, because most of it is dead ends.
The new moonrace has begun (Score:1)
Free as in market (Score:2, Interesting)
What we have here is a a type of market failure. This does not mean that free markets have failed, but rather that the present market equillibrium is at a situation that is less than optimal for society, a situation that John Maynard Keynes [newschool.edu] addressed in his General Theory of Economics" [newschool.edu].
Keep in mind that classical economics assumes perfect information flow for its theories to hold. A situation like this, where academic career concerns and complexity of data interferes with the free flow of information is a clear situation for the government to step in and free up the market, as it is trying to do with the Microsoft monopoly.
Some sort of federally-funded central information clearing-house, where research information could be purchased by the government and put into a freely-accessible database, would be a good first step.
Re:Free as in market (Score:1)
Re:Free as in market (Score:1)
Running a genome database (Score:1, Interesting)
We are publishing all our images and data freely and people seem to be happily using our data, but while we encourage them to share their images, we made the experience that it just doesn't happen. Hardly anyone seems to want to give anything back to the community!
It's quite sad, because the more people would share their information, the more useful the database would be for everyone...
We'll probably have to hire some people now to scan and upload some images.
MG
statistics and there meaning.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading the data of the survey performed and then reading the ChicTrib article, I'm suprised moneymaking was brought up as an issue. Since, a good breakdown of why information is denied didn't show any indication that money was a factor:
- "80% reported that it required too much effort to produce the materials or information" - This is so true. Having done chemistry and biology research with joint teams in Germany, it is hard to disseminate and gather info for specific inqueries. Especially with alot more folks asking about research being done in this area. It would have been good to do a trend analysis on how many requests for specific research come in on different areas of science... chemical, physics, quantum... vs genetics
- "64%, that they were protecting the ability of a graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, or junior faculty member to publish" - This again is so very true. If you release some info regarding your current research and give it to another group, and they publish material first, you just lost your chance to fulfill your thesis project. You can't do something original in a thesis that has already been done. Can't blame them for denying requests.
- "53%, that they were protecting their own ability to publish" - This is probably the most "iffy" reason. When it comes to publishing papers, if you use one glob of info from another team that you didn't do yourself, that is one more person to include in on the contributing authors. Alot of scientists want to minimize their involvement with other projects, to eliminate backlash, being held back by wrong data, or confirmation of results in data.
Also, the ChicTrib article makes a gross quotation in leaving out that 47% of geneticists only had at least 1 request denied in the past 3 years. And this was just in regards to published research vs. ongoing. The article makes it seem that scientists aren't sharing any info at all, which is just bad news.
All in all, shame on Mr Peter Gorner for a horriably twisted article, grossly manipulating the facts, then considering is an academia "science" article in ChicTrib.
The stats from JAMA clearly refer to published research needing scientist to relinguish info, so other scientists can refute, rebut, and challenge the validity of a complex and controversial area.
Re:statistics and there meaning.... (Score:2)
There's a couple stories on this note I've had a hard time tracking down; both the original moon landing and the Viking mission were supposed to have "lost" most of their data because it was kept in some undocumented binary format on tapes that no one knew how to read. In the case of the Viking tapes, someone was found who remembered how the data was stored, but in the case of the moon landings, the relevant engineers were dead.
Referees should knock back papers (Score:2)
I suppose their attitude might be "well, given that the alternative is not hearing about this research at all we'll let it through", but, given that in most academic environments publishing papers is the key to a successful career, and that competition to get papers into prestigious journals is high, reviewers for those journals should be able to "encourage" complete publication.
I'm currently preparing my first academic paper (a simulation study of a couple of new algorithms we devised), and I know I'm being very careful to explain how our algorithms and simulation environmental worked such as to make it possible to reproduce our results. If I don't, my supervisor wouldn't let me submit it.
Re:Referees should knock back papers (Score:2)
Peer review relies on the same fount of goodwill that fuels information sharing in the scientific community.
If you've reviewed papers thoroughly, you know that it takes an investment of time on your part to get up to speed in the specific subject that the authors are writing about.
I'm finding that it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify that kind of time investment on any regular basis.
I think peer reviewed papers are a great idea, but the current system has some structural defects, in that the peers are not directly renumerated for their efforts and expertise.
If I pay for it, its mine (Score:2, Insightful)
HOWEVER, if it's publicly funded research, the results should be public. If I pay for it to be done, I want it.
Anyone know how the freedom of information act would apply here?
Re:If I pay for it, its mine (Score:1, Informative)
Researchers spend a lot of time doing research. I spend 10 years in a small, dark lab, doing genetic research, becoming a total stranger to family and friends. Do you really think the benefit of mankind was driving me? (I like to tell this on parties, though.). It was more scientific interest and being appreciated (envied, in my wet dreams) by other scientists. Darn, I paid for it. You just contributed your 25 cents a year!.
Scientist are valued by publications and amounts of funds raised. All of these things require you to keep your information from falling into 'competitors' hands. If not, you perish. If being a scientist means you are not entitled to rewards, or being able to protect your work from the (huge and not-always-so-nice) competition then people will stay away from it. In this regard, it is completely unlike the OSS movement, where the reward is based on sharing your work with others (because there is no other way to be rewarded). Scientist who do important work, better protect it. There's a lot of people who would jump on the oppurtunity to 'use' someone elses work. It's not always sure that the inventor will be in the authorlist or acknowledgements.
Re:If I pay for it, its mine (Score:1)
Yet another mis understanding (Score:1)
"I don't want to share stuff with rival schools that will just patent this and invalidate my work" more than "I'm elite!".
Look at other fields like math/crypto/Comp sci/etc... They're fairly open and they share their stuff. That's because crypto research is not patentable as profitably [name 10 people who like RC6 for instance...]
Tom
This is a problem in a number of fields (Score:3, Insightful)
There are rampant problems with private corporate interests having too much influence over the scientific process. I have written numerous legislators about this and it drives me crazy. All these current societal problems--with IP, patent law, and scientific corruption--intersect in bioinformatics and genomics to a horrific extent. It's discouraging enough and makes me sad enough that I've felt like abandoning the field altogether, against my interests (I haven't though).
However, scientific sharing of information isn't as widespread as it sometimes is made out to be, and is lacking in a number of fields (like psychology, which I happen to be a part of). The simple explanation behind the findings--supported by the link--is that people are usually just too lazy, busy, or scared by belligerent critics to give information out to others. I ask for information for meta-analyses all the time, and usually only get replies about 50% of the time. Even when I do, I know the person somewhat, know someone who knows them, or have some sort of institutional affiliation with them (i.e., have the same graduate school alma mater).
Although corporitization is a problem, it's simply not necessary to explain lack of sharing of scientific information. The real causes, although equally disturbing and frustrating, are probably far more mundane.
I guess the really scary thing is that corporatization might make these problems worse than they are.
Don't Forget Selfishness!!! (Score:1)
It's not the selfishness of the scientists.. (Score:2)
Some scientists still share... (Score:2, Informative)
Their stats show about 2500 article submissions per month [arxiv.org] lately (it's been increasing pretty much linearly for the past 10.5 years, although I suspect that uploading a revised version also counts as a "submission" in that graph), and about 150,000 connections per day [arxiv.org]. It's been around for more than 10 years, and is still going strong. It's a great resource; I wish my particular field had something equivalent.
What happened to the quest for knowledge? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:What happened to the quest for knowledge? (Score:3, Insightful)
By sharing your knowledge, you benefit other people, and potentially damage yourself. By accepting their sharing it, you benefit yourself.
People usually recommend that others act in ways benefit them. They usually act in ways that they see as beneficial to themselves.
Before the explosive broadening of the coverage of the patent laws, the academic criterion was used, so that by publishing your findings, you benefited yourself. Once patents were broadened, schools started to consider that research findings were "classified", and patents were seen as a source of money. So the criteria changed.
The schools were responding in a predictable way to changes in the law, and the scientists have responded in a predictable way to the changes in the schools. There are intermediate cases, also, e.g. scientists who get the patents in their own names, and are entreprenurial enough to start their own companies.
This is similar in many ways to England at the start of the industrial revolution. England went to some lengths to prevent the knowledge of how to build the powered machinery from being exported. It was, eventually, but by that time England had gained sufficient power that Napoleon couldn't stand against it, and the British Empire was created. (And it was one of the things that was being surpressed in the American colonies
Nations, guilds, unions, professions, families
If one looks at the current patent law, at least in application, one sees exactly how well this intention is being executed. (Ugh! It's being done so poorly we'd be better off without ANY patent law.)
But these are the standard ways that people act in situations. If the environment encourages sharing, then people share. If it encourages possessiveness, then people are possessive. The current environment is still a bit mixed, but it has tilted strongly in favor of secretiveness and possessiveness in the last few decades. Now, if you have the money, you can patent nearly anything. Feverish dreams of wealth inspire people who haven't a chance of benefiting to support still more restrictive proposals. They can at least dream of winning.
The results of these changes are that the access to benefits is being restricted to a smaller and smaller proportion of the populace. (Well, these benefits were always the property of a minority. Most people won't miss them.) And the imbalance between the upper (most wealthy) levels and the lower levels (the subsistence) has increased. In Athens the ratio betweent the top and the bottom (excluding slaves and women) was about 50, i.e., the richest person owned/earned about 50 times as much as the poorest. There is justification for a larger degree of separation in our civilization. If it's going to be structured as a hierarchy, and that seems to be the simplest organization that people are comfortable with, then there needs to be a larger number of levels than Athens had, and one of the marks of separation that people accept is degree of wealth. But one could easlily argue that in our current civilation it has gotten much too extreme. I think that an absolute limit of, say, 1000 times would be reasonable. I.e., nobody would be allowed to earn more than 1000 times the minimum wage (or, perhaps, the welfare payment). Anything in excess would be taxed at the rate of 100%. This would allow the wealth of the most wealthy to increase at the same rate as the wealth of society as a whole increased.
A top heavy pyramid fosters insane dreams of wealth, and dreams of insane wealth. And this is one of the things that has happend to the quest for knowledge.
.
As a Former Molecular Biologist (Score:5, Insightful)
How right you are! (semi-rant) (Score:4, Informative)
I wasn't a molecular biologist, but I did some work on bioinformatics and the human genome back in 1991-1993. I also got to experience the entire life cycle of a scientific research institute, from before its birth to its death (the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute at FSU.
The 1980's and early 1990's were pretty good. We did a lot of good work and released all of it, gratis. Then a couple of years after the turn of the decade, everything started to go to hell, and funding dried up. This is not to mean that there was a lot of funding in the first place. Academia has always been a life of genteel poverty. When I left academia and went into industry, they started paying me at more than double the amount that I had to work myself up to for 13 years in academia. But there are satisfactions to the purity of unclassified, public research that many people in days of yore considered to make up for the lack.
All the administrators started to talk in basso profundo tones about how research in the future was going to be like Business to succeed. Of course, none of them were actually interested in doing any of the things that business did to succeed. They just wanted it to be more, sorta, kinda, you know, businesslike. So they quite predictably floundered around for a little while, and everything fell apart. There is still public research being done, but way less of it, and actual businesses who knew how to run businesses took over.
Part of the trouble is that all those clowns who say "if I pay a dime for it, I want it" aren't willing to pay any more than a dime, and you'd better believe they're going to stick their tongues straight down the cracks of any politicians who promise to drop it to a nickle or a penny. They still want it, though, because, By God It's Their Tax Pennies!
Of course, they always have a justification for that, like Look How Much I'm Paying in Taxes, or Maybe Universities Would Get More Money If They Didn't Have Football and Taught Better. None of the justifications will pay the piper.
You can't have it both ways ... (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, public science has the implicit assumption of peer-review
So either we go back to the slow but certain government funded research or accept that private incentives will create only temporary information asymmetry. The private market for knowledge is rather unformed at the moment as there are no clear guidelines as to what are acceptable practicese.
LL
Re:You can't have it both ways ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Roads/rail networks are an excellent example. They are extremely effective, basic infrastructure that can be a tremendous advantage to a developed economy. They cannot be provided efficiently by the free market (read some basic economics texts if you want to be convinced), so the government steps up to the plate. Lo and behold, having good transport infrastructure is a key factor in economic success, and by and large it is government provided.
The government expense is justified because the return on the investment (economic success, labour mobility, more income and therefore more tax revenue) is high. I like to think of research in the same way - you invest public money to make discoveries that will benefit everyone and create a better economy overall. Having this research in the public domain is superior to having it privately owned because it allows free market competition in resulting products and better enables incremental research.
I think the really interesting issue is how the government can get smart about funding in order to get even more discoveries happening in the public domain. Results-based funding, for example, would provide an incentive for private enterprises to make public discoveries.
Scientific research was never shared to begin with (Score:2)
Get real. Open source is not applicable to science, never was, never will be.
Re:Scientific research was never shared to begin w (Score:3, Insightful)
Open source and communication in computing brought C, Unix, the Internet, e-mail, etc.
What has your information-control ethic brought? .NET? Wait and see how well THAT works.
The concern is simply that the attitude you seem to approve of tends to stifle progress. Of course, you could simply insist on your self-centered view and insist that the resulting rate of progress is the best of all possible worlds. Buy some old copies of 'Pravda' from the post-collapse Soviet Union, that could help show you how to argue such points...
I don't get it. (Score:1)
Old problem, some recourse (Score:2, Informative)
If you break that (written) promise you won't be publishing in that journal again. I wonder if any publically-funded grants have such a clause? (share or no more tax dollars for you!)
In labs I have worked in, it was considered an honor to receive such requests for the products of your research. And there was always the constant dread of being scooped by the competition...
Competition is a good thing.
Public Money (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were back in grad school again, I would focus exclusively on developing commercially viable or militarily useful things, and avoid publishing the details. Because:
- the only person the publications benefit are the faculty member who will take credit for your research, not you, the grad student or postdoc that actually did the research.
- the only people conference proceedings benefit are your competitors--theft is simplyrampant.
- if what you share is a fact that's at variance with prior or in-press publications of powerful faculty academics, your work will get stomped on for political reasons, no matter how valid the facts you report are (remember what David Baltimore did to Margot O'Toole when her research discredited his?)
99% of what goes on in universities is just a bunch of political games, and has nothing to do with discovering or establishing anything resembling the truth. So why bother?Looks like the faculty members are tired of watching their students do this, and are trying it on themselves -- after being content with merely raping their students' ideas and research for so many decades, they've suddenly realized that there are bigger fish to fry than fat government grants (that the administration takes more than half of anyway).
"Big, Big Science. Every man, every man for himself." -- Laurie Anderson
Re:Public Money (Score:2)
Hear hear. But really, why even bother staying in academia? As a graduate comp sci researcher, I found that the situation even six years ago was that the only funding available was either from corporate sources with big nasty NDA's attached, or was a fucking pittance that would have seen me eating cold canned beans and shopping for clothes in store dumpsters for the rest of my adult life.
I reckoned that if I was going to whore for a corporation, I'd do it directly, make a living wage, and compete with average developers, not the super-dedicated types who stayed in academia. It's working out pretty well so far, and open source projects take care of scratching the Greater Good itch.
Incidentally, the thing that swung my decision was a conversation with my department head, where he stated flat out that if I did original research which was later patented or otherwise claimed as IP by a corporation, the university would not support or defend me if I chose to publish and got the arse sued off of me, even if it was prima facia evident that I was publishing prior art. Given that the only funding open to me that would even let me publish was of the cold-beans-and-dumpsters type, I reckoned that sounded like a bad bet and headed for the hills.
I have done significant research into this... (Score:1, Funny)
As in Asimov's novel (Score:1)
Imagine a life, say, 300 years long. You have enough time to write your own KDE, eh? Horrifying.
oh well (Score:2)
And I forgot to mention one thing: The public would also pay a "beer fee" to cover the cost of beer consumed by the scientists and their partners/employees/whatever during the research.
Open communication tools will always help (Score:2)
(Although I have a bit more of a problem with it in the case of genetic research, which more directly impacts humankind; on the other hand, it impacts mainly the well-developed and financially affluent nations, which can afford to apply genetic results. Third world nations would benefit more from a better supply of penicillin than genetic research; so in the global scheme of things, genetic researchers holding back information doesn't make a big difference to the world. Even if a cure for cancer was found, I would guess that *far* fewer people die from cancer than more basic things, world-wide. Most of the world's population doesn't live long enough to develop cancer, and other more subtle diseases for which genetic research would make a major difference.)
Of course, all of the above is subject to me not being fully informed on the subject, which I'm most certainly not. Regardless it's an interesting discussion.
-me
Patents vs. Trade Secrets (Score:2)
It's time to repeal the laws that encourage universities to take public money for research and then privatize the results for the profits of these big companies. And it's time to reform this crazy system of "intellectual property" law that is destroying science and innovation.
Probably we will first have to change campaign finance laws, though.
reproducibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is reproducibility important? Let's say group A reports some really neat genetics in mice. Group B doesn't have much interest in reproducing it in mice (little potential for scientific rewards) but tries the same thing in primates and it doesn't work. Without being able to reproduce the work of group A, group B doesn't know whether there is a genuine difference in primates, whether there is something wrong with their procedure, or whether group A just published an incorrect or fraudulent result.
Peer reviewers for reputable journals should insist on reproducibility, which should include a binding offer by the authors to make available all necessary materials to other scientists to reproduce the results and build on them. If anything else were to get published, it should at least be marked in big, red letters as "irreproducible" and should not count much towards someone's scientific publication record--after all, it might all be invented.
Re:reproducibility (Score:2)
Temporarily withholding information (Score:2, Informative)
Relating to genetic research specifically, whether it's patented, published, or not, there is a huge heap of genetic data in the NIH GenBank database:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
IANAL but I believe you can subpoena federally funded projects under the Freedom of Information Act (5 USC 552). This would probably be very obnoxious though, but I think I read somewhere that certain large corporations have tried this to effectively steal research data from federally funded projects for their own private (secret, unpublished) efforts.
Difficulty of producing data (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a place where research scientists could really use some good old fashioned technological and social help from programmers. Consider a typical computer-administered psychological experiment's process:
- Write code to run the experiment and log the data. If you didn't document the code or write self-documenting code, you'll have trouble when someone wants the data later.
- Run the experiment and collect those log files. If the log file format isn't self-documenting, you'll have trouble when someone wants the data later.
- Get all the log files transformed into a format that can be usefully imported into statistical software. If you didn't document all the variables and values in the resulting stat file, you'll have trouble when someone wants the data later. And most statistical packages allow you 8 characters for variable names and make detail labelling of variables and values highly tedious.
- Analyze the data and produce some output. If you didn't save the analysis details (as is all too easy to forget if you're doing stats with a dialog-box-based program), you'll
... (well you know the rest).
- Write a paper describing what you did and submit it to a journal. Have it accepted (hopefully) in 4-6 months. Have it appear about 6 months later. It is now probably 18-24 months since you started the study. If you're lucky, you've probably changed computers at least once by now, and possibly offices/buildings/universities, too. If you can find the data yourself and understand what it means, you're ahead of the game.
This is not too far from the problem of managing a source code project over time and across maintainers. It's not enough for professional scientists to have standards for retention and sharing of data -- we need a tutorial in documentation (and statistical and other software packages that better support it.)Speaking as a molecular geneticist... (Score:3, Interesting)
If a project is in the early stages, you don't talk about it at all.
If a project has produced some great results, and it is well in progress, you'll talk about it, but might be a bit hazy on the details. For example, take a geneticist who is hunting for genes contributing to a certain disease. He/she has it partially narrowed down, and is showing a map of the BACs and YACs in the candidate region. Try asking them what chromosome they are looking at. They won't tell you.
If a project is near complete, and is being written up or has already been submitted to a journal, you'll be very open. The odds of being "scooped" at this point are minimal.
These rules vary somewhat depending on whether we're talking about a resource-rich lab that works on projects almost no one else can do, or a small lab doing projects that can be rapidly repeated somewhere else. But in general I think they hold true, and have for many years.
Too much effort? (Score:2)
Consider the dilemma, scientists have to choose between telling others about their work, or doing science. Which would you choose?
A question for the geneticists/biologists (Score:3, Interesting)
It appears to me that we're pretty far along when it comes to the biology of sickness-by-infection, where an illness is caused by being attacked by other organisms. There's a long way to go, but it seems to an outsider that most of the fundimental processes are understood, and the lion's share of what remains is of the nature of "find germ, study germ, develop treatment that kills germ without killing host"
But it also seems that we're not very far along when it comes to understanding sickness-though-internal-breakdown, where actual body processes either fail to function or function abnormally.
It strikes me that understanding how human genetics really work is the key to all survival. If we knew how every gene and every internal process functioned, then we cound re-engineer our own genome to fix problems. Eliminate cancer, eliminate AGING, and so forth.
It would thus suggest to me that working on deciphering the human genome is the most important problem in human biology in history, and perhaps even the most important problem EVER.
We should have huge amounts of public money poured into this problem, with all results made public, and all information shared.
Would you agree? Have I made any erronious assumptions?
DG
Re:i agree (Score:2)
Re:i agree (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure where you heard about Clinton administration's sale of layouts for modernized weaponry and aircraft, but I'd like to see the source. As far as I know, the Chinese military technology is predominantly Russian-based, including their nuclear ICBM's.
Re:i agree (Score:1, Insightful)
I like the Mark Twain-like irony of your comment, however I'll pretend you're being serious. =)
The whole "I think it's best for now" quote smacks of [fill in the blank]-centrism. The political situation now is *not* the worst it's ever been in history and to throw a blanket over science simply because the media broadcasts everything tragic (in a sort of selective, manipulative way) that happens and the Joe Sixpack public at large is more aware of what's going on in the world, feels outrage about this-that-the-other-thing, etc is doing science a great disservice.
9/11 was an atrocity, yes. But tell you what, there are far worse things that have happened before then and science hasn't stopped for them. It's only when stuff happens to Americans that many Americans become outraged...kind of sad, really. As an example, one of my friends is a Bosnian refugee and she's amazed at how many Amerians don't know what happened there (or what happens beyond the TRL show). I suppose mass graves and genocide aren't telegenic enough for Ted Turner.
Re:nigga jam flava (Score:1)
Some more examples, please. Neither of those two qualifies as one of the biggest advancements to me.
Re:nigga jam flava (Score:1)