3 ms·

The obvious questions is "who's going to do the confirmation work?" I think that masters/bachelor students should be able to handle that work. A new grant mech

The obvious questions is "who's going to do the confirmation work?" I think that masters/bachelor students should be able to handle that work. A new grant mechanism for masters/bachelor training grants that fund replication would get the job done with a lot of nice side effects.

untilHellbanned 10y ago
As a middle american, I'm actually serious when I say this could be a way middle america gets on it's feet again. Being a biomedical researcher at a university hospital, the hospital has proliferated with all types of trainees. What's holding back the basic research side? It's an assembly line in the same way the midwest is familiar, the automobile industry. However, universities aren't good businesses, and what's missing is big pharma companies paying employees fair wages to do this work. Though companies saving the day won't work either because putting people to work we'll mean they won't get sick which is bad for business. So oh well on to the next approach.
- tdaltonc 10y ago
  That is an interesting idea. I lot of biomedical research is very repudiative. There are people working on automating it. https://emeraldcloudlab.com/ https://emeraldcloudlab.com/ It would be hard to know if the man on the line is doing it right, but you might get the benefit of accidental insights.
pcrh 10y ago
The article refers chiefly to repeating mouse or rat experiments. The obstacle there isn't what level of training researcher has (as long as it's sufficient), but who is going to pay for it. At the scale proposed (a 6-fold greater number of mice per experiment than is usual) the cost of testing only the core hypothesis is easily over $100K. In addition there is the time involved, which can be from months to years, depending on the experiment.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  Scaling up non-human primate experiment like this could make them span a decade, assuming the infrastructure and staff aren't also increased sixfold.
  - pcrh 10y ago
    I don't think they're proposing to scale up to that level, which would indeed result in excessive costs. Even scaling-up mice experiments would be quite costly, and beyond the size of most research grants. There would have to be new funding mechanisms in place for work like this. The article proposes that this would be more economical in the long run, and so the NIH et al. should be in its favor. Perhaps they will create a new facility for just such work? Though that seems unlikely in the current funding climate.
- makomk 10y ago
  Also, the limited supply of researchers and facilities wiling to put up with death threats, breakins, firebombings, being beaten up on the street by groups of masked assailants...

untilHellbanned 10y ago

As a middle american, I'm actually serious when I say this could be a way middle america gets on it's feet again. Being a biomedical researcher at a university hospital, the hospital has proliferated with all types of trainees. What's holding back the basic research side? It's an assembly line in the same way the midwest is familiar, the automobile industry. However, universities aren't good businesses, and what's missing is big pharma companies paying employees fair wages to do this work. Though companies saving the day won't work either because putting people to work we'll mean they won't get sick which is bad for business. So oh well on to the next approach.

tdaltonc 10y ago
That is an interesting idea. I lot of biomedical research is very repudiative. There are people working on automating it. https://emeraldcloudlab.com/ https://emeraldcloudlab.com/ It would be hard to know if the man on the line is doing it right, but you might get the benefit of accidental insights.

pcrh 10y ago

The article refers chiefly to repeating mouse or rat experiments. The obstacle there isn't what level of training researcher has (as long as it's sufficient), but who is going to pay for it. At the scale proposed (a 6-fold greater number of mice per experiment than is usual) the cost of testing only the core hypothesis is easily over $100K. In addition there is the time involved, which can be from months to years, depending on the experiment.

mattkrause 10y ago
Scaling up non-human primate experiment like this could make them span a decade, assuming the infrastructure and staff aren't also increased sixfold.
- pcrh 10y ago
  I don't think they're proposing to scale up to that level, which would indeed result in excessive costs. Even scaling-up mice experiments would be quite costly, and beyond the size of most research grants. There would have to be new funding mechanisms in place for work like this. The article proposes that this would be more economical in the long run, and so the NIH et al. should be in its favor. Perhaps they will create a new facility for just such work? Though that seems unlikely in the current funding climate.
makomk 10y ago
Also, the limited supply of researchers and facilities wiling to put up with death threats, breakins, firebombings, being beaten up on the street by groups of masked assailants...