An anonymous source has informed me that the ASCB has banned “replication of data” by visitors, but has presented Twitter as the poster child of conference data leaks. No word on whether ASCB attendees will be subjected to memory scans upon exit. The sign says:
Twittering and other forms of communication involving replication of data are strictly prohibited at all sessions, in the exhibit hall, and all poster sessions.
I’ve been following the DTC genomics and personalized medicine discussions for years now. I’ve learned that there are diverse and well-reasoned arguments by capable spokepeople proposing many possible futures for the doctor-patient relationship. Discussions during this weekend’s BIL:PIL conference and a recent exchange with Dr. Steven Murphy, with whom I’ve disagreed, occasionally vigorously, for years prompted me to put down my thoughts here. Actual meeting notes will follow in a separate post.
I believe, as does pretty much everyone, that medicine is on the cusp of great changes and that personalized medicine holds great promise. I believe that an informed patient is an empowered patient, and ultimately a healthier one. Every good doctor should want this, and every below-average doctor should pray this day never comes.
Email transcript follows:
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Over a year ago I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I packed up all my worldly belongings and moved to San Diego to begin working full-time for a small biotech startup. This was a unique opportunity for me because it was a friend who was starting the company, he and I had been speaking over the past couple years about his ideas for a company, they had had me out several years ago during their prototype phase to show me the technology and get a biologists perspective on what a successful product should look like, and I had been doing some consulting projects for them over the past year. At the time, they displayed little understanding of basic molecular biology concepts, but I didn’t think that would be a big deal because they were just starting up and not coming from a biology background, rather an electrical engineering one. I’ve now made another big decision, and that’s to end my relationship with them and move on. Below, I discuss what I’ve learned and what I might like to do in the future. Continue reading
With the announcement of Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed, I decided to start pulling my tweets into friendfeed. The results were interesting. Continue reading
A discussion broke out recently on Friendfeed about online commentary on scientific articles. The discussions were interesting because, for the first time in recent memory, there was disagreement about something fundamental. I view this as an extremely positive sign that out community is starting to grow and incorporate people outside of our core group. In fact, if there’s no disagreement, it’s probably a sign you’re doing something wrong.
The disagreement went in two ways in the two different comment threads. In the second one, genereg promoted the idea that PLoS comments would be more abundant if there was true anonymity afforded to commenters. The other side of the argument, argued by Cameron Neylon(Friendfeed) (LinkedIn), Deepak Singh(FriendFeed) (LinkedIn), and Neil Saunders (FriendFeed) (LinkedIn), was that Real Names™ are important and desirable for online comments. The threads of so many different tangential discussions are running through here that I needed to take a second to write out the background ideologies in play. Continue reading
My colleague David Crotty has a rant at Bench Marks wherein he suggests that Nature’s blogging advocacy is just a shallow attempt to get more content for Nature Blogs, and that scientists blogging is just a fad that can’t replace mainstream media coverage of science and won’t amount to much otherwise. He’s certainly entitled to his opinion, but I think there’s another way to see things and I’d like to present a counterpoint to his Nicholas Carr-ying on.
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