http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog Collaboration between scientists, in any field, anywhere. Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:49:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Most of us mix up the meaning of Biotech and Pharma since both do pretty much the same thing, invent new drugs. We tend to use Pharma to describe the FIDDCO, i.e. a fully integrated Drug Discovery and Development Company, whereas Biotech companies are more likely to be emergent and ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/25/the-winners-curse/ You know the Borg, probably the best of the Star Trek villains, and famous for their catch phrases "You must comply. You will be assimilated". No ifs, no buts, no negotiation. You'd think that if the Borg really had assimilated the knowledge and culture of thousands of species, at least ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/28/the-borg/ Of course scientists try to be objective and rational, but are only human. So when someone says they can automate what scientists do, and the decisions they make, when those decisions are derived from years of study and practical experience, it doesn't go down very well. So I am going ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/08/automating-science/ Over dinner the other night, a very experienced Pharmaceutical Industry executive asked me one of those awkward questions people reserve for the second bottle of wine. "Why is drug discovery productivity so low when so much is spent on new technology like combi-chem, High Throughput Screening, protein structure determination, etcetera, etcetera?" I ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/08/the-gilman-test/ Should Universities engage in drug discovery, as opposed to basic research into the causes of disease? I have often heard it argued that they shouldn't, in fact I probably said it myself in the years before I found the escape tunnel out of AstraZeneca. i think this is a common ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/11/university-based-drug-discovery/ A number of interesting comments have been left over the last few days, but I owe an apology to the posters in being so slow to approve them. I have an excuse, which I will offer further down the page, but it gives me an opportunity to write about ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/07/23/big-switch-small-apology/ Could you invent a drug for free? No. It costs on average almost $1 bn to get a new drug launched. Although much of that cost comes from counting all the failures along the way, since for every 150 drug discovery projects that get started only one, 12 years later, makes ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/07/08/open-source-drug-discovery/ In the previous post I talked about the long tail of science as independent scientists (or small groups) working outside the mainstream research organisations. Of course it could be an individual within a large organisation who works in a very specialised domain, with few if any peers. But usually I ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/07/05/soho-science/ I guess most people have heard of the Long Tail, the idea that once the restraints of classical bricks and mortar businesses, particularly finite distribution and retailing space, are removed, then niche products (the ones that weren't big enough to stock before) start to make a bigger contribution to sales. ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/06/29/the-long-tail-and-the-independent-scientist/ When we started talking to people about an on-line, on demand home for scientists to do their work and to collaborate, we got told that "it won't happen, they are too competitive and they don't look after their data or store it properly". Well maybe that's true, some people will ... http://www.inkspotscience.com/blog/index.php/2008/06/24/science-in-the-cloud/