Tag Archives: Mathew Ingram

Disrupting scientific research

Michael Nielsen (mentioned in my May 19, 2011 posting) is making the rounds now that his book, Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, has been published. Mathew Ingram in his Oct. 31, 2011 article for gigaom provides some context for the ‘discussion’ about networked science and disruption,

Traditional media players such as newspapers, magazines and book publishers often get criticized for being slow to change and uninterested in technological progress, but as we’ve pointed out before, there is another world that makes these industries look like the most enthusiastic of early adopters: namely, academic research. Award-winning quantum physicist Michael Nielsen says that the closed and disconnected nature of most research is holding back scientific progress in important ways, and that we need to foster a new kind of “networked science” if we want to make new discoveries faster.

David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society and co-author of a number of books including “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” has his own take on networked knowledge in a new book called “Too Big to Know,” which is to be published later this year. Weinberger argues that the way we structure and achieve knowledge itself is being changed by digital networks, and that much of the existing ways in which knowledge is written down and maintained — from journals and peer review to libraries and copyright — is driven by the needs of a world based on paper …

Weinberger is later quoted as saying, “Traditional knowledge has been an accident of paper.” I disagree with this statement as it stands. There is always traditional knowledge and it is always controlled. However, there are disruptive periods when access become more unfettered. For example, the printing press was highly disruptive. Science or its predecessor, alchemy, was practised in extreme secrecy; information, if shared at all, was available in encrypted documents. It was the advent of paper and printing (amongst other things), which freed access to information and led to the notion of sharing information and the growth of knowledge.

Things have changed and we have a new disruptive technology, digital networks/internet and a very exciting time ahead. Not to forget though that one day, this too will no longer be a disruptive technology; it will be the old way, the traditional way.

In the meantime, we can enjoy stories like this one about Dr. Jay Bradner and his open-source cancer research. From the Nov. 3, 2011 posting by GrrlScientist (on the Guardian science blogs),

How does cancer know it’s cancer?

This is the question that cancer researcher, Jay Bradner and his colleagues have focused on in their research, and they think they may have found the answer: a molecule, which they call JQ1. …  Engaging in an enlightened social experiment, they shared the news of this molecule by publishing their findings — and they mailed samples to 40 other labs to work with. In short, they open-sourced the information about this molecule and they crowd-sourced the testing and research.

If you visit the posting, you will find a video of Dr. Jay Bradner discussing his work at a TEDxBoston event recorded in June 2011.