Recycling Experiences

Why No Editors & Reviewers?

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:46:00 +0000

After a long period of thought, suggestions and consultations, we have decided that instead of Editors and Reviewers, we will have Panelists who will oversee the entire process at Journal of Errology.

Since we are something of a mixture of a scientific repository and conventional journals, we choose to get rid of the title of Editors and Reviewers and instead create a panel. This panel performs the same functions as that of editors and reviewers, but in a slightly different and improved way.

Being uncertain, we initially went along with the old format that has received a lot of flak from scientists the world over. We also realized that indicating that we have reviewers and editors was scaring away potential contributors, hence we finally decided to completely get rid of them.

With most supporters of open science opting out of having an editorial and a peer review board, we however believe the role that they play is very important for any scientific repository and helps in maintaining quality and propagating the information to a certain degree.

We hope that this will bring about a change in the frequency and quality of submissions we have got till now.

Check our list of Senior and Junior Panelist on our website: http://www.bioflukes.com/reviewers . If you would like to volunteer as a download this form and mail to info@bioflukes.com.

What Actually Can you Use Journal of Errology For?

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 07:29:00 +0000

We continue to get the question, about what kind of submissions do we accept at Journal of Errology? Let us try and give you a clear idea about the aim of Journal of Errology and the submissions you can make.

Journal of Errology is a peer reviewed open repository that seeks all the unpublished parts of research. Most users confuse us for a journal that seeks papers with negative results. We can't deny that we don't accept them, papers confirming null results are just as important as any other paper announcing a major breakthrough, however, our aims and the scope of JoE is much bigger than that. Our aim is to provide researcher's with a peer reviewed, open access medium to share all there micro findings, shortfalls, false starts, theories, failures, databases, etc associated with successfully published papers.

Often a researcher begins an investigation with little more than a hint of an idea, a hunch that some hypothesis is true. Then begins the process of outlining a way of testing this hypothesis, usually vaguely in the initial stages, gradually filling in more and more details. Experiments often need to be performed more than once, with the experimental design gradually changed or the direction and aim of the hypothesis completely changed in the process. Most of the times, the final paper is nothing like the hypothesis that they went in with, at the beginning of the research. All this is a slow process that involves lots of arguments, futile attempts and false starts, as the scientist gradually moves to more and more complex arguments and evidence. The end goal, though, is a set of arguments and evidence that adheres to the shared praxis of the field.

We are looking at the entire research process with fresh eyes. Our aim is to save other researchers from carrying out the same research that has already been carried our before. To continue where another researcher has left, without worrying to repeat the same futile experiments that have already been performed. We want a researcher to be confident enough to pursue a new idea, without worrying if someone else has done and failed at the same sometime before.

We have received a few concerned inquiries about a repository such as this leading to other researchers shying away from carrying out research, just because someone else has done it before and failed. We can assure you that our repository will do nothing of this sort. In fact with Google at one's finger tips, chances are that incomplete information about the experiments will be found by someone conducting research on the internet. This will lead to a person completely changing his plans of carrying out research in this area.

However, if complete information is made available, in a peer reviewed and citable format, it can help a researcher understand where the other person went wrong and how far did he go. With this information at his or her finger tips, one can pursue an alternate course of direction, get new insights, create a better strategy that circumvents the previously failed experimentation, leading to saving time, resources and lots of effort.

Please don't get us wrong, we love failure, it is the best teacher there is. We don't want researchers to stop failing, rather we want you to fail at something other than that has already been tried before, something more innovative and more path defying. If you share our vision, please go ahead, sign up on Journal of Errology and share with the world you most innovative futile attempts. Help us spread the word and help us create a new medium, where researchers communicate not based on what they hace succeeded at, but what they couldn't accomplish.

The Uncertainty Every Researcher Becomes Used to

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:42:00 +0000

And again, EUREKA!!!! I could do it over and over again. Every time I did it I would double the signal…I stopped the car at mile marker 46,7 on Highway 128. In the glove compartment I found some paper and a pen. I confirmed that two to the tenth power was about a thousand and that two to the twentieth power was about a million, and that two to the thirtieth power was around a billion, close to the number of base pairs in the human genome. Once I had cycled this reaction thirty times I would be able to the sequence of a sample with an immense signal and almost no background….”Dear Thor!,” I exclaimed. I had solved the most annoying problems in DNA chemistry in a single lightening bolt. Abundance and distinction. With two oligonucleotides, DNA polymerase, and the four nucleosidetriphosphates I could make as much of a DNA sequence as I wanted and I could make it on a fragment of a specific size that I could distinguish easily. Somehow, I thought, it had to be an illusion. Otherwise it would change DNA chemistry forever. Otherwise it would make me famous. It was too easy. Someone else would have done it and I would surely have heard of it. We would be doing it all the time. What was I failing to see? “Jennifer, wake up. I’ve thought of something incredible.”

Above is an excerpt from the Nobel prize winning scientist Dr. Kary Mullis, who is credited with the invention of PCR. This is a perfect example of what every scientist goes through before and during the process of an experiment. Self-doubt is something that not just scientists but others too face when working on something new that has not been done before. This leaves a researcher in doubt about their original theories, no matter how good it is. The result can be either a long delay in carrying out the intended experiments to prove their theory or completely crushing their plans to carry out the research. The problem is that scientists do not publish when one of his theories or experiment fails. They are too busy to spread around their failures that leaves no place or no time for sharing these failures, although they learned a lot from these.

Kary Mullis puts it our perfectly in his 1983 Nobel prize lecture, why a repository such as Journal of Errology is necessary. He describes his amazement over the obviousness of the idea and how couldn’t anyone have previously thought about it. The quote by Bertrand Russel, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts”, makes the doubtfulness obvious.

We are coming to an age when everything that can be thought of or done has either been already thought before or maybe even attempted that lead to their failure or success. In case of a success, you can know for certainty that it works, but unfortunately you cannot work on this. However, in case of a failure, there is no way of knowing if someone else has had the same ideas before. Even in cases of success achieved, there is very little information shared about what worked, leaving a researcher aiming to make an improvement on the work done by the previous scientist to unknowingly go through the same mistakes that the previous scientist did, uninformed of the fact that these experiments and hypothesis have failed before.

This presents future researchers with an even bigger conundrum, leaving them confused about any theory they may or may not have. The moment of EUREKA is followed by a long period of doubtfulness. Journal of Errology was founded to give researchers a clear idea of what has been done and not worked out as well as it should in theory. Although the intentions are clear, it still seems like an inclined uphill battle to convince researchers the need of such a journal, although we are getting there.

Points of View in Research

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:27:00 +0000

Image Source unknown.

Universal Rules of the Lab

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:27:00 +0000

Team work is essential; it allows you to blame someone else.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Experiments must be reproduceable, they should fail the same way again and again
When you don’t know what you are doing, do it neatly.
Always keep a record of your data. It indicates that you have been working.
Experience is directly proportional to the equipments destroyed.
No experiment is a complete failure. At least it can serve as a negative example.
First draw your curves, then plot your data.
If you can’t get the answer in the usual manner, start at the answer and derive the question.
Do not believe in miracles, rely on them.
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
All unmarked beakers contain fast-acting, extremely toxic poisons.
All your stored samples will mysteriously disappear when you really need them.
Any delicate and expensive piece of glassware will break before any use of it can be made.

Journal of Errology: Enabling Edison’s Research Practices on the Global Scale

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:37:00 +0000

Thomas Edison is known as one of the greatest innovators/inventors of all time and still holds the record for the largest number of patents held by one person (1,093 patents). In a career spanning six decades, Edison contributed to the development and improvements in diverse fields such as telegraph, telephone, rubber, electric bulb, cement manufacturing and many more. He was an inventive genius who learned to summon creativity by reducing it to set of principles and working methods.

A large part of his success is attributed to his research and development methodologies. Since his childhood, Edison noted down everything that worked, failed and even things that he planned to do. He followed the same practice in his laboratories in New Jersey and Florida, where he provided a note book to each employee in his laboratory and asked them to note down every detail of the work they were carrying out and asked them to keep a wary eye on any unexpected results. He used the quote “Guard Against Results”, which meant that one should not become so focused towards an anticipated outcome that the person starts ignoring the unexpected outcomes which could lead towards a new direction.

This practice proved to be advantageous for him in more than one instance. When he failed to create a pyromagnetic generator using anthracite (coke) rod, he later used the techniques developed and experience gained from these failed experiments to create a carbon button telephone transmitter. His most famous and the most expensive failure was the electromagnetic iron extractor which later on helped him to develop the Portland cement kiln. However, his most iconic failure/failures and also incidentally his most iconic invention was the light bulb. Edison conducted and supervised close to 10,000 experiments in the process of creating the perfect light bulb, and made sure that with each new step he experimented with another aspect, in order to improve it and he never repeated any experiment because of this.

Whenever Edison wanted to begin his work in any new area, he started by understanding everything that there is to be known about in that area, from success achieved to failures and the problems faced. He believed that every failure is an experiment that lets you learn something new.

Applying these principles to life science research on a global scale is what Journal of Errology is aiming for. The process of research is a series of trials and errors, full of disappointments and frustrations. Research articles in traditional journals only publish one side of research, completely ignoring the other side. Journal of Errology seeks to create a medium where researchers can proudly share the other side of the story that is hardly publicized. Think of a large open notebook that provides a submitting researcher with opportunities for connecting with other researchers, receiving feedback, encouragement, ideas and at the same time helping other researchers in designing better experiments and saving time, effort and resources.

Researches can share their unpublished futile attempts, hypothesis, iterations, shortcoming, inexplicable/frequent errors, time consuming problems that are connected to their successfully published papers and other stumbles on Journal of Errology, before, during or after the publication of their papers. A beta version of the journal has just been launched, and has begun accepting articles from biological sciences. We are sure that no researcher has achieved success without his or her fair share of the above. There is no submission fee and everything is freely accessible under open access and protected under Creative Commons.

What it means when it says ...

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:08:00 +0000

Stumbled on to this....

Journal of Errology ....

Journal of Errology: Benefits for a Submitter

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:21:00 +0000

Many critics are fast to point out that there is absolutely no reward for the career of a researcher submitting his or her stumbles (we do not like to call negative results as failures, every result obtained is a success) on Journal of Errology or any other negative results journal for that matter. I thought it would be better to write an article, pointing out the advantages for a researcher contributing to Journal of Errology.

Since the intentions of an author behind all publications is self advancement, all articles on Journal of Errology are citable, making it possible to give credit to the author if any of this data or results are replicated in another experiment. This will help in researchers knowing the impact of their articles using new impact measurement techniques such as altmetrics and total impact, and also to make their publications more discoverable on search engines.

Apart from these there are obvious benefits of receiving positive feedback, encouragements and also new ideas towards the future course of research, this makes sharing stumbles better than publishing successful papers, where the only feedback received is criticism.

However, our intentions are more than just giving credit to the author. We also aim to make every minute spent in the laboratory worthwhile and productive for both the researcher and the entire scientific community. The mistakes and futile experiments, instead of just being thrown away, need to be recycled so that others do not make the same mistakes again; these are valuable sources of experience generators that teach more than successful results can.

Another issue raised by critics is that researchers will not be able to comfortable in discussing their stumble or futile efforts on a public form.

For this I would like to ask how many researchers achieved success in any area of science without ever failing. Every step outside the periphery of human knowledge is a step into the unknown, where disappointments are imminent. The current state of publishing puts forwards the wrong picture for the future researchers. By publishing just what worked and ignoring what did not, a researcher becomes uncertain about his ongoing research. It is possible that researchers in the future will have to face more disappointments than today, and will need to attempt more daring hypothesis that the ones already done, which will lead to possibly bigger disappointments.

In the end we would like to remind our critics that the ultimate goal of scientists, is to contribute to the advancement of human knowledge.

www.journaloferrology.com

Innovation Stagnation or Just a Phase

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:16:00 +0000

Look at the above graph. Any high school student will tell you that it is a bacterial growth curve, with phases such as lag phase, exponential growth phase, stationary phase and finally the death phase.

However, what if we told you that this curve also signifies the alarming nature of research and development in a few branches of science. This curve has played out a few times before in various civilizations, and it is about to come in play again. We can’t say with certainty at what stage of the curve are we currently at, but we can say with certainty that we are not at the exponential phase at least in the field of life sciences.

The amount of knowledge in every filed has expanded, so much so that researchers today spend a lot more time trying to know all there is to know in order to add to the human knowledge. Then there is the part of actual research and development, which is a long and frustrating process of hit and miss. A lot of innovative hypothesis prove to be ineffective, while a few work and these too at a later stage prove to be irreproducible. At every stage there are unseen problems, mistakes, errors and stumbles, which are all part of the research. These are things that play a major part in a researchers experience, however are surprisingly nowhere to be found in the publicly published papers. Yet there is no certain process of medium where these experiences can be shared, even at a time when people can share instantly what they ate for breakfast with the entire world.

An unfortunate researcher has to unknowingly make the same mistakes, face the same problems already faced and solved and also formulate the same futile hypothesis already tried, in the hopes that they were not disproven before. This leads to expenditure of more time and more resources, and ultimately a delay in the following discovery or invention.

Already the average age at which researchers make contributions to the field of science has increased. The steady climb in the average ages of Nobel Prize winners proves what we are talking about. Link

These we believe are among the leading cause of innovation stagnation: the inability of researchers to share their experiences to the future researchers, the increased fear of failure, the increase importance of publish or perish and partial information flow or lack of transparency.

Open science is being termed as the next big change that will be at the forefront of science 3.0, which will help in easy dissemination of scientific advancements and results to the public. However, open science will not be complete without sharing of a researcher’s tribulations and disappointments i.e. experiences along with their success, so that others don’t make the same mistakes.

Journal of Errology is seeking to do its part in disseminating experiences by creating a repository that aids discussion and feedback. Help us in these unique and humble efforts. Submissions and access to all files are free and also peer reviewed.

Why New Employees Need to Know About a Company’s Past Failures?

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:00:00 +0000

Life science organizations invest a lot of time and money into training fresh employees. New skills are imparted to a fresher in the first few months after hiring to make sure that the employee is fit for the job. Employees are told about the present work being conducted and the future area of research that they are going to focus on. However, organizations do little to teach their employees about the history of the organization and its past efforts which went in vain.

Like every researcher, organizations do not realize the importance that sharing failures can have. Consider an organization with more than 20 years of history behind it, with most of their employees just beginning to retire. These employees take all the experiences gained through past failures, which took the company to the brink of bankruptcy and which are also the reason that the company is where it is today. New employees unaware of the past failures end up committing the same mistake and errors that their colleagues did. An organization cannot afford to make the same mistakes it made before.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. - Mark Twain

Company recruitment departments look at an employee’s experience as the major deciding factor while hiring. However, experience is nothing but the accumulation of life time of lessons learnt through failures. Management students are taught at length about the past lessons learnt while entering into new markets, bad acquisitions, marketing, etc. However, the same is not taught to new recruits, even though it can be.

New employee training needs to include sessions where candidates are taught about the past futile attempts made by the organization’s researchers. In fact, these candidates are perfectly suitable to digitize and document these attempts, which the organizations can decide to make open source. This can be done as corporate responsibility towards the advancement of global research.

Any organization interested in making their past efforts open source, can contact Journal of Errology, a place where researchers share experiences.

Image Courtesy of Vadlo.com

Differences Between Failures and Mistakes in Research

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:23:00 +0000

A failure faced by researches is often a hypothesis that fails to verify as predicted or numerous iterations before the success. However these failures play a very important part in building experiences and teaching a lot at the same time. It seems to push an individual or the team away from the goal, however in reality it indirectly takes one closer to their goal.

A mistake on the other hand is a failure repeated, again and again, something that is happening in laboratories around the world each day. Take the recent example of the Geron, the private research organization that pulled the plug out of their advanced stem cell program, taking thousands of hours of research work along with them, inevitably cursing the millions of other researchers to do the same mistakes that they have already done.

Failure to share these failures leads to other researchers wasting time, resources, patience and effort on these mistakes. Yes, researchers need to make new and much bolder failures, however at the same time they really need to share these failures. Researchers go ahead and fail more innovatively, and make sure you share them.

The Positive Effect of Sharing Negative Results in Commercialization of Penicillin

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:21:00 +0000

Penicillin is the very first antibiotic to be discovered and one of the most widely used antibiotics. The discovery of Penicillin is widely attributed to Sir Alexander Fleming, although his role in the discovery of the penicillin was that of a re-discoverer pointing out something that previously many people had discovered.

The discovery of penicillin has had significant contribution from many other scientists which way surpasses that of Fleming. However, the discovery is widely attributed to him instead of these other researchers and also won him the Nobel prize.

Other researchers who prior to him noticed the ability of molds to avoid bacterial growth were Joseph Lister, William Rothers, Louis Pasteur, Jules Francois Joubert and Ernest Duchesne.

The fungi that produces penicillin was noticed a long time before Fleming, in 1897 by a French medical Student known as Ernest Duchesne, whose dissertation went unknown, even though he was successful in proving that a solution of mold was proven effective in diseased pigs. Only if his discovery would have been given enough credit and if it was shared with other researchers, penicillin would have been discovered way earlier and could have saved many more lives.

It was only again in 1928, when Fleming stumbled on the Fungi that produced Penicillin, was the property of molds rediscovered. Fleming was not new to serendipity, he is also known as the person who discovered Lysozyme by sneezing into a petri dish containing bacterial culture. After investigating into Penicillin and publishing a paper, Fleming gave up his research after concluding that it was very difficult to culture Fungi for harvesting Penicillin in large quantities, and also the uncertainty of penicillin to stay active in vivo long enough to be effective.

However, it was Fleming’s feat of sharing of his work on these Fungi with Dr. Howard Florey, which led to the growth of interest in penicillin. Florey with the help of his well-equipped laboratory and a team of excellent researchers, which included Ernst Boris Chain, Edward Abraham, Andrew J. Moyer and Norman Heatley, were successful in finding a way to purify penicillin, find its structure, testing in humans and also leading to large scale production.

Thanks to Fleming’s ability to raise interest in this Fungi and his ability to share results of his work, other researchers were able to succeed where Fleming himself failed or gave up. Similarly, in many cases researchers give up or fail to gauge the full potential of something that they have stumbled upon, because of loss of enthusiasm, lack of vision or even absence of resources. However, if researchers were able to share these results, it could help other researchers with better resources to take the leap necessary. Hence, we request researchers not to bury your half-baked discoveries and other stumbles that can lead to other potentially ground breaking discoveries. Every mistake, every error, every inexplicable finding, every minor discovery is an opportunity to discover something entirely new.

Break Up of Time Spent in Laboratories

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:39:00 +0000

This is just a approximate break up of the expenditure of time in laboratories.

The 30% of the time spent on doing experiments involved hundreds of futile iteration, mistakes, varied approaches and failed hypothesis that are not beneficial for the field as a whole, unless shared with other researchers.

The 10 Benefits of Sharing Negative Results

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:50:00 +0000

There have been a lot of discussions, debates, blogs and papers about the advantages and disadvantages of sharing and publishing negative results from research in various fields of science. However, researchers still have their difference in opinions. Some researchers such as Steven Wiley go all out against publishing of these "failures", by calling them unnecessary for the progress of science. Still there are many others who think that these results can lead to benefits for researchers. However everyone just agrees to disagree, with a few bold attempts at creating journals that accept papers that confirm a null hypothesis. Here I would like to state the 10 benefits that we at Journal of Errology and RecyclExp think that are beneficial to research in biological sciences.

Reducing Redundancy in Research
Saving Time, Resources & Efforts
Better Experimental design
Increasing Feedback and Collaboration
Passing on Experiences
Aiding Serendipity
Bolder Innovations
Internet More Comprehensive
Placing Critics in a Researcher’s Shoes
Accelerating Research

1. Reducing Redundancy in Research:

The frequency of redundancies of futile experiments, missteps and hypothesis in research is uncertain, since most researchers do not share these results. For these reasons it is thought that there is little chance of redundancies in research. However, when approaching individual researchers working in the same area around the world, it comes to light that they have spent numerous days trying to accomplish something that has already been tried elsewhere. It is only after wasting a large amount of time and resources, that these researchers realize the importance of publishing their futile attempts. Just a brief examination into the highly privatized and overhyped stem cell research sector yields alarming number of redundancies in research. Thousands of experiments are repeated and discarded, dreading that their competitors might get a hint about the research being done. The case might be slightly different elsewhere, but adding the factor of time into this equation, leads to redundancies in research becoming very common over a span of few generations of researchers. Availability of data from these negative research guarantees that the redundancy of these experiments is minimized, if not completely eliminated.

2. Saving Time, Resources & Efforts:

Time: Time spent in proving a hypothesis right or wrong can range between a few weeks to a few years. This includes hundreds of iterations, spanning numerous months and even years.

Resources: Funding for researchers is the sustenance to their scientific career. Funding helps in procuring the required resources and equipments that are important for the research. However, an unknown but significant part of this funding goes into repeating experiments that have been tried earlier and failed.

Efforts: Carrying out any experiment requires effort on the part of the researcher. It takes years before a researcher accomplishes what he set out to do, with a considerable percentage of time spent in disappointments in the form of hypothesis that don’t work and other missteps and unexplainable futile approaches.

Making sure that researchers share data from their unpublished negative experiments can help other researchers save up on time, resources and efforts, which can prove to be valuable in the long run. Money and time saved can be invested in carrying out other experiments.

3. Better Experimental design

An experimental design is created only after careful analysis of what already is known and what needs to be known. When the data from a part of the experiment that has already been tried before is not made available to a researcher, the new experiment increases its probability of getting the same disappointing results that have been obtained before. In many cases information about the earlier experiment already done before can lead to better experimental designs, keeping in mind all the pitfalls. This can be only possible if scientists share their negative results, which have given them innumerable sleepless nights.

4. Increasing Feedback and Collaboration

The dual upsides of sharing anything online is being able to help other researchers and also enabling others researchers, working in the same area, to connect with you and offer feedback. When sharing negative results and inexplicable errors, researchers can obtain valuable feedback about the area which might have been overlooked and the next most probable steps necessary for successfully completing the research. Researchers around the world can collaborate on problems which they might previously tackled. Sharing of negative data aids open collaboration and can lead to streamlining the process of research.

5. Passing on Experiences

We could quote hundreds of significant personalities from different areas of research, who stress the significance of failing and making mistakes in building up experiences. Humans are the only creatures on earth who have the ability to share experiences. The innovation stagnation thesis suggests that the learning curves for researchers of tomorrow is developing double humps and even expanding in length and breath. The average age of innovators is steadily rising over the last century. The average age at which Nobel prizes are awarded has also grown. A researcher has to spend more time than researchers earlier spent on learning, which includes by means of failing or re-failing at the same things that previous researchers have. By sharing negative results, researchers can make sure that the next generation of researchers avoid the same mistakes made earlier and sustain the speed with which discoveries and inventions are made.

6. Aiding Serendipity

This might seem a very implausible idea at first, however many researchers have stumbled on something remarkable while doing mistakes. One such example is Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Fleming, who stumbled on Penicillin by mistake while studying staphylococci bacteria. His sharing of the unexplainable results with his peers led to the discovery of the lifesaving antibody. It is not certain that other researchers too might find something as significant as penicillin while referring negative data, but why seize such an opportunity from other researchers, to stumble upon something remarkable from your discarded results.

7. Bolder Innovations

Few inventions or discoveries have been possible without failure. Iterations and missteps have been a part of research in order to prove a hypothesis or to make a discovery. The first thing that comes to every researcher's mind is the question if the hypothesis that he or she has been formulating might has already been tried before or not. However, for the dis-proven hypothesis, there is no way to be certain. By avoiding already carried out negative result producing experiments or hypothesis, researchers can formulate better experimental designs and aim at bolder innovations by moving ahead from what has already been attempted and failed before. In other words, make more brilliant mistakes and bolder innovations.

“Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter.”

- Julius Comroe Jr.

8. Internet More Comprehensive

Internet has redefined the way researchers share and design their experiments. Thousands of journals and other resources make it the primary and the most up to date resource for seeking information. Researchers depend on data in published papers and information from other sources to base their future research on. However, a vital part of research is missing in the form of negative results that have been an important part of a research, which are not published in final papers. Research papers are usually trophies that tout the achievements of researchers, where there is no place for lengthy and uninteresting failures and iterations. However, when researchers are unable to obtain data related to failed hypothesis and missteps, there is a high probability that the same experiments are repeated again or its will lead to bad experimental design. The only way to make research on the internet complete and make way for a networked science, as noted in the book Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen, is by sharing and providing free access to unpublished stumbles, dead ends, futile hypothesis and other such information.

9. Placing Critics in a Researcher’s Shoes

Sharing of stumbles, dead ends, futile hypothesis and other such negative data can help shine light on the incredible perseverance and dedication of researchers. A lot of effort and hard work goes into proving the simplest of things, which are brushed off as not being a significant find by critics and the media. Sharing of these futile approaches can help in keeping the funding authorities informed on their money being utilized for the right purposes. It can help as a means of keeping an account of your untiring efforts.

10. Accelerating Discovery through Open Science

The ultimate aim and benefit of sharing negative results and the eventual outcome of all the above mentioned benefits will be acceleration of research and advancement of science. We envisage that the more researchers share, the more beneficial it will turn out to be for the future of research in life sciences. Science 3.0 will have to give its long overdue importance to negative negative results and stumbles in research, if it aims to succeed.

These are the ten benefits that I could round off to. If you can think of any more advantages or absolutely devastating disadvantages, then please share them with us in the comments section.

The Truth About R&D

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:31:00 +0000

A graphic representation of what is shown in published papers and media, and what really happens in laboratories.

Please add a link to this blog if you are sharing the above images in your blog or anywhere else. Make sure you also shoot a mail to us at admin@bioflukes.com. Thanks

RECYCLING LIFETIME OF EXPERIENCES VIA FAILURES

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 04:42:00 +0000

A person born in the 1920s has seen incredible advancements in the field of biological sciences, so much so that a person born in a barn, dies in a state-of-the-art hospital with a plastic heart implanted in his chest, artificial hormones given to him to regulate his blood sugar level and eating genetically modified corn. However, what is our generation going to see that is so different from what we have already seen?

At the pace in which discoveries are being made, it appears we will see nothing that significantly life altering. The dreams of seeing cures for advanced caners and HIV are still nowhere near reality. We are yet to fully understand the secrets embedded in the genetic code, something that was discovered in 1953. The number of new drugs gaining approval annually today is the same as that it was three decades ago, in spite of manifold increases in investments in research and development.

So where have we gone wrong?

Researchers blame it on the highly secretive nature of research and the existence of the process of patents, which is said to hamper innovations. A few also blame it on the shortage of funds because of the slow rate of return on investments, and the absence of support from their respective governments along with various other things.

We do not deny that the above reasons do not play a significant part in hampering innovations; however there is another often overlooked factor that also has a substantial impact on the field of science. It is the inability of researchers to share the results of their failures as well as being able to share success. It is popular wisdom that failures can teach a person much more than success can, and it also suits perfectly to the field of biological sciences.

Millions of researchers each day have to face disappointments in the form of hypothesis that don’t give the anticipated results, stumbles from known and unknown factors, etc. This deviation from the intended path can be in the form of entire research papers that confirm a null hypothesis at the end or which are termed to have “negative results”. They are also in the form of repetitive futile experiments and approaches, repetitions, dead ends or stumbles that act as important stepping stones in the path of researchers, which lead to further insights, breakthroughs and ultimately the discovery or invention. There have been attempts to publish papers proving a null hypothesis, however there has been little done to make those fruitless yet innovative approaches to reach other researchers.

These experiments are important contributions of a researcher’s experience in their own field and it is in the vested interest of researcher to share these approaches and their data with the rest of the world. The repetition of these approaches leads to wastage of valuable resources, effort and time, while on the other hand sharing of these experiments leads to better experimental designs, even out the bumps of the learning and research curve, and also welcoming feedback from peers working in similar areas.

What do we aim to do?

It is with these advantages in mind that Journal of Errology was created and will try to make sure that researchers do not choose the same futile approaches already attempted, and on the other hand also make sure researchers opt for more unique and innovative possibilities in research and go for more advanced hypothesis. Check out Journal of Errology on www.bioflukes.com for more developments in this area and care to share with us your thoughts and opinions regarding this.

Hello Researchers!!

noreply@blogger.com (Mahboob) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:08:00 +0000

This blog will accompany the soon to be launched Journal of Errology. It will try to state the importance of such a Journal and our aims of accelerating research using this.