Questions For All Bioinformaticians

Question

[Susan]

I'm writing a sociology of science dissertation and am thinking about bioinformatics- it's a flourishing discipline and I have a few questions for anyone who has a couple of minutes for me. Please feel free to answer any or all of these ;)

I'll start out with a couple of simple ones and if anyone answers me hopefully I can post some follow-ups..

1. What degree do you have (i.e. PhD), what year did you get it in, and what discipline was it in?
2. Would you say that there is a distinction between a numerical and visual science? If so, what is the difference?
3. Are bioinformaticians more keen on 'open science' than scientists in other disciplines? If so, why?
4. Do biologists need to understand bioinformatics?

Thanks!

[Brandstaetter]

Should be a wiki.

[Giovanni M Dall'Olio]

The title should be changed - something like 'bioinformatics survey' or 'partecipate to a bioinformatics survey'. The title of a topic should be such that people will be able to choose whether to open it or not just by reading the title.

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

You should ask this on http://friendfeed.com/the-life-scientists and/or open a survey on google docs or whatever...

[Istvan Albert]

For your results to qualify as a scientific study you must follow your institution' survey policies, disclose your data usage and retention practices etc. there are many rules you will need to follow. I would also agree that these question would be better formulated as a standalone survey rather than a public question/answer. Finally questions 2 and 3 seem ill defined. For 2 the definitions are missing: "visual science" may mean different things to various individuals. No 3 forces people to use a very broad brush to characterize others - nothing good can come of that.

[Egon Willighagen]

Quite depends on what you define as bioinformatics? Does the use of Excel count? /me ducks...

[Egon Willighagen]

The answer on 4) quite depends on what you define as bioinformatics? Does the use of Excel count? /me ducks..

[Susan]

thanks for your comments! just to clarify, i am not trying to perform a scientifically sound survey- and i will not use your answers at all in my dissertation. i am just trying to get a few informal takes of what is going on with bioinformatics.. in fact, i probably won't even discuss your answers with anyone at all-- (i actually don't know many people who even know what bioinformatics is!)

[Susan]

btw: sorry about the title giovanni- i didn't mean to mislead anyone-- i thought that the tags would sort of indicate what type of post this was.. (i.e. i meant to discuss bioinformatics culture

Answer 1

[Brandstaetter]

1.) I have the equivalent to a Masters degree in bioinformatics, I started 2002

4.) Bioinformaticians need to understand Biologists, not the other way round. Bioinformatics should be the bridge between the totally incompatible worlds of biologists and software engineering. Otherwise the quality of the resulting software is going to be very poor.