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Thanks for the coursera link, I will jump into that one. > Scientists do not read single author papers. Hearing about this fact that a lot of papers get publi

Thanks for the coursera link, I will jump into that one. > Scientists do not read single author papers. Hearing about this fact that a lot of papers get published but that single author papers are kinda discriminated (perhaps that is not the correct term for this) is a bit discouraging but I can understand it. There is no way 15k papers can be reviewed like that, so to a certain point it might make sense. On the other hand, what chance does one then have to make a contribution to the field? PR stunts to get your voice heard? Might be a hard problem to solve. > Even among recognized scientists there are schools of thought that are incompatible, with contradictory findings never discussed or even addressed. For example nobody agrees on what is causing Alzheimer, Parkinson, ALS, MS, etc... This is one of the things I want to be able to better understand as I study in this field. Why is that? My current view of things is that some characteristics of the disease being studied should be common on all cases, so there should be at least some consensus on "what is the thing that is wrong that is common among all those cases?" that could then be studied to figure out how that thing being wrong causes the disease. But it could be just that I am still too ignorant on the subject and don't know what is the depth of this discussion. > I think what matters is not only the ability to do interesting stuff, you can do as much interesting studies from your armchair than in a university because you can access public and not so public databases and there is an incredible amount of software available for free and people willing to help. This is something I find to be awesome. I have been poking around some resources such as encodeproject.org and ncbi and the amount of information available is incredible. The issue I am having with them is that sometimes information doesn't match (for example, the address of a gene is different depending on what transcription description I am looking at). Because of this, I get a feeling that relying on the information that is made available online alone might not be enough without being able to verify that the data you are working on actually is correct. Is this something that is feasible? Or would this field be mostly trusting data from others and then working with it and hoping it is correct? BTW, I tried visiting your blog, but it seems that the navigation of posts is broken. Whenever I try to click the links to see posts from previous years I get a 404 page. If you ever get that fixed, would you mind dropping me a line? I wanted to read your first posts to see how your studies in the field evolved.

JPLeRouzic 5y ago
> "what is the thing that is wrong that is common among all those cases?" That's the easiest part, usually it is achieved since a long time. But biology is incredibly complicated, much more than everything else. It's certainly not something linear with one causal event and a unique consequence. Beings have selected multiple pathways to achieve a function during million of years. Multiple systems are interacting and changing roles. For example there is not a unique immune system but a galaxy of components assuming different roles at different times. And technology plays an important role, a century ago we were unable to discern anything else than neurons in a brain, now we can "see" multiple glial cells. How to theorize about something we do not know as existing? > On the other hand, what chance does one then have to make a contribution to the field? The best is to work with scientists to solve some issue and them publish with them. I once talked with someone who did that with success. So the problem now is to meet scientists. The easiest way is to present a poster in a conference in order to meet a maximum of scientists at a low cost. If you are not accustomed to "posters" it's a one page summary of what is often a future paper. Master and PhD students are accustomed to present posters but usually there is no other entry barriers than the cost of attending the conference (~$800). > for example, the address of a gene is different depending on what transcription description I am looking at Probably because they use different reference genomes. The reference genomes are arbitrary, all humans have slightly different genomes. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Genomes_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Genomes_Project > I get a 404 page Many thanks, I will look at this ASAP.

JPLeRouzic 5y ago

> "what is the thing that is wrong that is common among all those cases?" That's the easiest part, usually it is achieved since a long time. But biology is incredibly complicated, much more than everything else. It's certainly not something linear with one causal event and a unique consequence. Beings have selected multiple pathways to achieve a function during million of years. Multiple systems are interacting and changing roles. For example there is not a unique immune system but a galaxy of components assuming different roles at different times. And technology plays an important role, a century ago we were unable to discern anything else than neurons in a brain, now we can "see" multiple glial cells. How to theorize about something we do not know as existing? > On the other hand, what chance does one then have to make a contribution to the field? The best is to work with scientists to solve some issue and them publish with them. I once talked with someone who did that with success. So the problem now is to meet scientists. The easiest way is to present a poster in a conference in order to meet a maximum of scientists at a low cost. If you are not accustomed to "posters" it's a one page summary of what is often a future paper. Master and PhD students are accustomed to present posters but usually there is no other entry barriers than the cost of attending the conference (~$800). > for example, the address of a gene is different depending on what transcription description I am looking at Probably because they use different reference genomes. The reference genomes are arbitrary, all humans have slightly different genomes. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Genomes_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Genomes_Project > I get a 404 page Many thanks, I will look at this ASAP.