It’s all the fault of a recent digital camera review which says “some new cameras have a smile shutter, which automatically takes a picture when it detects a smile”.

A future where every photo is adorned with uniform happiness?

No sulks after she got dumped by the surfer.

No sloppy sadness at a lame puppy outside the café.

No exhausted look on the hero’s face look after the match.

No grimace at the mouldy thing she found in the shed.

No terror on seeing the fake spider he sneaked onto her dress.

No flash of anger at her spilling the pasta sauce on his La-Z-Boy.

No frustration when he can never beat her at table-tennis.

No blank boredom from watching the five-day cricket match for her guy.

Arrrrgh.

Wouldn’t you want to remember your friends as they were?

© Grant Jacobs, all rights reserved.

Here’s an adult pygmy marmoset:

(From: http://worldmysteries9.blogspot.com/2009/06/beautiful-complexity-of-animal-hands.html)

Pygmy marmosets are the world’s smallest living primates. As a primate, he (she?) is one of us!

To give yourself a better idea of the size of a pygmy marmoset’s body, give your computer screen that universally understood single finger gesture. You know the one I mean. The smaller species of pygmy marmosets have bodies a little bigger than that extended finger, about 13cm. Given that they’re tiny, furry and cute, it hardly surprising that there is plenty of photographs of them on-line. (I’ve listed a few below.) Sharp readers will spot that they lack opposable thumbs and have claws rather than fingernails.

One fact struck me while learning a little about pygmy marmosets: according to one research paperpygmy marmosets the only primate known to have germline chimerism! This has the startling effect that occasionally a male marmoset can—in a sense—have a mixture of their own and their brother’s sperm, and pass the genes of it’s brother to it’s children. Or put another way, a kid’s uncle could also be it’s father, in a manner of speaking. Women don’t need to worry that they’ve been left out just yet. The same may be true of females, but wasn’t observed in the research study.

In humans, all the cells in our body come from a single fertilised egg; they all from the same genetic stock. In a chimera, the cells in the body are a mixture coming from more than one embryo.

Twins are relatively rare in humans. Part of the reason chimeras are common in marmosets is that marmoset mothers usually give birth to fraternal twins, non-identical twins from two different egg cells fertilised by two different sperm cells.

Chimeras are rare in mammals and when they occur it is usually only the blood cells that are a mixture from the two embryos. One example of what can happen is for early embryos from twins to share or partially share their placenta, so that the developing blood systems of the two zygotes are able to swop blood cells, so that when the zygotes go on to form separate infants, they have a mixture of blood cells. Only the blood cells get mixed, all the other kinds of cells are all from their particular egg.

(Pickier readers will realise that the cells that are mixed are the stem cells that are the “mother cells” of the different types of blood cells, that is, hematopoietic stem cells.)

So, if you looked at the different cells of a chimeric monkey, you would expect to find the blood cells to be a mixture of cells from each twin, but all the other kinds of cells to be from the same genetic stock. Orti’s research group in the University of Nebraska had clues that this might not be the case for pygmy marmosets and checked. They found that in marmosets lots of other kinds of cells from twins were a mixture, including germ cells, the cells that give rise to sperm (or eggs). Zygotes with a mixture of germ cells will grow to have sperm (or eggs) that are a mixture of those derived from germ cells from their embryo and from germ cells from their twin. When these chimeric children, in turn, have children, they could pass on their genes, or the genes of their twin, depending on if the germ cells the formed the sperm (or egg) that the made the child’s zygote originally came from their embyro, or their twin’s embryo.

This study saw examples of males passing on their brother’s genes, but it may be that females can do the equivalent, as I’m sure the equal rights movement might demand! The researchers observed one female who picked up genes from her brother, and had mixed sex (XY) germ cells that were able to make fertile egg cells. It wasn’t known if this female could pass her brother’s genes on to her offspring, but the possibility is there. Maybe some feminists need to get together and fund this research group to check this loose end out…

Postscript

I’d explain the use of microsatellites in this study, but this would make for a very long article. Microsatellites are small, highly variable regions of DNA that can be used to “fingerprint” cells or organisms, like they do in those CSI-type TV programs to match the criminal to the crime scene. Here they’ve been used to check if particular cell types have the same genetics, or are a mixture.

Towards the completion of this article I realised that this story was well-covered by some parts of the media and in blogs at the time the paper was published (2007). It was too much fun to stop, so here it is!

References

1. Ross C. N. et al Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104(15)6278-6282 (2007). Germ-line chimerism and paternal care in marmosets (Callithrix kuhlii) (This PDF copy of this short paper available free for those that want to read it.)

2. Infant pygmy marmosets are incredibly cute, their photographs are all over the WWW. I’d include one of the cuter ones in this article, but I’m unsure of it’s copyright status (I’ve tracked it down to the Everland Zoo in Korea, via the Zooborns blog, but the trail runs cold at that point). Other particularly cute photos include two infant marmosets for sale and in Jeffrey Gordon’s articleCuter Sapsuckers.

3. Nierhardt, Mareen Pygmy Marmosets. (Link to PDF file of article at the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation website.) This article contains many interesting details about these animals, especially about hand-raising orphans.

© Grant Jacobs, all rights reserved.

An advertised “Natural Health Expo” to be held this weekend in New Zealand has caused me to revisit how an earlier blog article on Crank “scientific” conferences suggested one simple test for credibility of scientific claims at these events.

Via Orac’s blog Respectful Insolence in his post “It’s baaaacck” I was alerted to the article Crank “scientific” conferences: A parody of science-based medicine that can deceive even reputable scientists and institutions by David Gorski on the Science-Based Medicine blog.

David Gorski points a new trend to organisations that promote anti-vaccine or natural health remedy views and treatments: giving their conferences the veneer of scientific conferences, when they are anything but.

The conference David Gorski refers to is hosted by a group claiming to represent autism support. As David Gorski’s blog article shows, most biologists and medics will easily “spot the sham” in the “treatments” on offer and in the claims previously made by the more suspect speakers at this event. Biologists have background knowledge to draw on that makes this fairly straight-forward.

Many, if not most, parents with a “disabled” child won’t have as much background knowledge to draw on. (I write disabled in inverted double commas as I dislike the term.) It would be harder for them to be objective, too, having an emotional attachment to the issue. Both will make it harder to recognise suspect claims, especially when they are dressed up in the language of science.

One of my concerns is how the general public can “spot the sham”, as it were, without having expert knowledge of the science (or lack of it). Reading David’s article, it occurred to me that a simple rule-of-thumb that might help parents know when to be alert to a possible sham might be useful: if any speaker is also selling the product they are talking about, be very wary. If most of the speakers in a conference are selling the products that they talk about, be very wary of the whole conference.

I know this seems incredibly obvious reading it here, but it’s easy to forget when you’re in front of credible-sounding sales people.

In scientific conferences the scientists speaking are not selling products to consumers, they are arguing the case for their research findings before other scientists. The conference attendees are critics, not prospective clients. What scientific speakers are trying to earn is the judgement (and criticism) of their peers, not sales. And, well, maybe a job! Or new collaborators or students. But they’re not selling products.

Parents should ask themselves who the conference is targeting. If it’s targeting consumers, not other researchers (or “researchers” for those that don’t deserve the term), it’s not a scientific conference. If it’s aimed at selling products, treat it as—at best—a business expo or a sales-fest, or, at worst, a complete sham. And like always with sales people, don’t buy it then and there, especially if someone’s health or large amounts of money are involved. Walk away, think twice, think three times.

Of course, this advice isn’t enough on it’s own to avoid sham health remedies, but it’s a good start to be skeptical of the sales person.

As a quick self-test, have a quick look at this “Natural Health Expo“, to be held this weekend in New Zealand.

How many people do you count selling what they promote? How does that suggest you should treat the expo?

Or what about their speakers? Who is their target audience: possible clients or peer critics? Are they selling the things they speak about?

Let’s be fair, at one level—with some exceptions—there isn’t as much pretense of presenting things as science that are not in this conference compared to the autism conference mentioned earlier. It’s much more obviously a sales fest. But that’s the point. It’s a sales-fest, a marketing melange, not a source of sound independent advice.

As for explaining the unjustified claims made… there are simply too many! Some are truly scary, and, time-permitting, I’ll dedicate a following post to suggesting a couple of general thoughts and guidelines for visitors.

Over the past few years I have been reading a number of books on science communication.

Leaving aside the “how to” genre, quite a few of these books have been academic examinations of science communication. Some aspects of this interest me, but at times it can become a bit too much fuss. It’s like when you are wanting a viewer’s review of a film, but find yourself facing an overly academic critic loading esoteric baggage on the director’s work. There are times you just want to step back from it from it all. By contrast, some works are more biographical, in that they try take the long, large view and put things in perspective through a narrative of sorts.

Victorian Popularizers of Science caught my attention from a passing comment I read on another blog (I’ve long forgotten where) saying that it provided an interesting contrast of current issues in science communication with that of the period immediately after Darwin’s The Origin of the Species.

Lightman’s book is a survey of the science popularizers of the day, exploring the emergence of science writing as a career, including non-scientist writers (many of them members of the clergy), women writers, scientists as writers, discussions over who should “own” science communication, as well as the religion-science issues of the day with the writers’ responses to them.

His book touches on many other aspects that are interesting in the light of present-day issues, such as the contribution of the steam press and related technologies, which has a parallel of sorts with the WWW today in how it lowered the cost barrier to published writing, the various strategies and styles different writers tried to connect with their readership, and the practical issue of making a livelihood from science writing.

Victorian Popularizers of Science is a substantial work, released in hardback with 502 pages of text and a lengthy bibliography (30 pages) and an index. The acknowledgements open with “This book has taken over fifteen years to reach fruition”, and it shows. The care in it’s production is immediately evident, with amble references, citations, footnotes and an interesting choice of illustrations and cover.

A minor quibble is that some of the illustrations lack full contrast and detail, being printed on conventional matte paper rather than high grade glossy paper as photographs and detailed illustrations most often are in textbooks. This will make the book more affordable and given there is such a thing as pricing yourself out of your market, it’s probably a wise choice. Printing the illustrations on paper does give the book a romantic “period” feel, reminiscent of fine woodcut illustrations.

I dislike reviewing books until I have completed them as it’s impossible to put chapters in perspective with one-another and to have a sound feeling for the whole until you’ve finished.

However, my opinion thus far is that this is an excellent book. Although sizeable, it can comfortably be read for interest. There are many interesting details and quotes that give a feel to the times and the issues of the people involved. Occasionally short passages have several references cited in-line; I personally would like to have seen the in-line reference citations moved to the footnotes to make the text a little easier on the person reading for interest rather than study.

I encourage people interested in science communication to look it up and offer others’ reviews as a taste of what to expect:

A short review can be found at the on-line version of the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Despite the suspicion that a skeptic like me approaches the term ’metapsychology’ (“speculation concerning mental processes and the mindbody relationship, beyond what can be studied experimentally”), the review at Metapsychology online reviews is a sound attempt to summarise the book.

A more substantial–and drier–review is at academici, gives a chapter-by-chapter account of the contents of the book.

Entertainment often plays on fantasies, asking viewers to temporarily accept some clearly fictional plot devices. There’s a place for “psychic abilities” as “super” powers to make a central character be more than a mere mortal for harmless fun.

But encouraging the use of a “psychic” to assist in a serious, real-world, matter?

Not in the real world, please.

Police will have access to people with appropriate training to assist them, such as childhood psychologists. Unqualified parties—no matter how well intended—are best to leave it to those whose job it is. Especially if well intended means a belief in “special” powers.

Surely this is basic commonsense?

The survey that Peter Griffith refers to suggests this is what most people think. It’s good to see, even if 27% in favour of the use of psychics is disturbingly high. (Perhaps many of these people think that using psychics, while unlikely to be right, can’t do any harm?)

Surely commonsense also suggests that it’s unprofessional for the media to use it’s access to the victims to place themselves or others into the
investigation or situation?

Perhaps to clear the air TVNZ should screen Nova’s episode “Secrets of the Psychics”?

Go on. Dare you. Double dare you.

Further reading or viewing

Those interested in further reading could try:

1. Video coverage of the Breakfast show coverage of Paul Henry’s interview with Deb Webber is available on-line, for those with decent internet bandwidth… (See 4:18 onwards in particular).

2. Ciarán O’Keeffe and Richard Wiseman of the Psychology Departments of Liverpool Hope University and the University of Hertfordshire, respectively, developed a careful statistical procedure for testing claims of medium ability, which they applied to 5 police psychics, published in the British Journal of Psychology (2005), 96, 165–179 (2005) Testing alleged mediumship: Methods and results.

Their paper is freely available, quite readable and includes a survey of previous studies. Please note the link is to a PDF file.

They concluded (p175): “In short, the present study found no evidence to support the notion that the professional mediums involved in the research were, under controlled conditions, able to demonstrate paranormal or mediumistic ability.”

3. The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has $1 million on offer for “anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.” This organisation has had a monetary offer for this challenge since 1964, 45 years ago. Of a couple hundred of applications who have completed the preliminary test, no-one has passed the preliminary test.
(Let alone forced the JREF to put them up to full testing.) According to the JREF, most claimants drop out prior to this. They remark that “The hardest part has always been to get the claimant to state clearly what he or she thinks they can do, under what conditions, and with what accuracy.”

3. Druckman and Swets survey a wide range of “human performance” issues in their text Druckman, D. and Swets, J. A. eds. (1988). Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories and Techniques. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.. (ISBN 0-309-07465-7)

This work can be read on-line free of charge (downloads require a fee).

This work has been widely cited as having concluding there was “no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena.”(see page 22).

Pages 206-208 summarise the results of their survey of paranormal phenomena studies and page 17 has a useful short comment on the use testimonials as evidence, i.e. that it is unsound.

© Grant Jacobs, all rights reserved.

The Small world competition website has some stunning micrographs, photographs taken through a microscope.

I found it easiest to get to the gallery and click my way through them as a slideshow. They also sell acalendar and have archives back to 1977 that include large, high-resolution, screensaver images. Go for it, people!

Hat tip to the Sciencepunk blog.

Before passing your judgement, though, it may help to remember that the award committee aren’t dumb and that it might be useful to first read what the Peace Prize is awarded for to try understand their thinking.

My reading of many reactions is that many people are thinking in terms of the aims of the science prizes, which are strictly for past achievement.

The aims for the Peace Prize, by contrast, are interpreted as including encouragement of efforts started that are on-going.

The last lines of the article by Matt Spetalnick and Wojcieh Moskwa on Reuters make this point in their summary of the procedures of the Nobel Peace Prize:

“The prize is awarded to encourage those who receive it to see the effort through, sometimes at critical moments, not only to recognise efforts for peace, human rights and democracy after they have proven successful.”

Also relevant is that “Among the reasons for adding this as a criterion is the obvious point that Nobel wanted the Prize to have political effects”, another bone of contention to some. (Quote from the translation of an article about the Nobel Peace Prize by Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, 1991-1999.)

Everyone’s opinion on who should win will naturally differ, opinions are like that. But even if he’s not your choice that Obama should be considered by the committee is understandable given the criteria used.

The formal citation for Obama’s award can be found on the Nobel Prize website.

My personal opinion, thus far? (Opinions are always moving targets as we learn more, hence “thus far”.) Encouraging his efforts towards peace is worthwhile and well within the scope of the prize, but I’m a timid soul who’d have asked that he play his hand a little longer first.

Perhaps the Nobel Committee simply have more balls than I and many others do?

© Grant Jacobs, all rights reserved.

Woven through this article is the story of a new principle investigator ‘K.’ who, like K. from Kafka’s The Castle, is eaten up by bureaucracy. For some (many?) scientists here, I am sure this story may have an all too familiar ring to it.

Key themes in Peter Lawrence’s article are how the system encourages dishonesty (of a specific sort) in grant applications, the gross inefficiency of the grant system and that this inefficiency by itself can damage, even destroy, careers.

I’m going to leave the first point (for now) and focus on the inefficiency of grant funding systems, a point can can be read as underlying some of the issues raised in some other articles I want to discuss later.

In policy-speak it seems that addressing this inefficiency translates to keeping “transaction and compliance costs to the minimum necessary” (see point 5 of New Zealand’s National Science Manifesto).

NZ’s grant funding process does try go some way towards addressing this and I’m aware that the funding agencies do take this issue seriously. For example, there is a trend towards short preliminary grant proposals, followed invitations to longer full applications for those who pass the initial screening.

Even with this in mind, substantial time is consumed applying for grants, most of which get rejected. I can once recall estimating that I’d spent about 20% of my time in one year trying to get a new grant. I’m sure others can tell similar stories.

So… should it be this way? Is this a “necessary evil” or would some other approach work better? What might work better? (It’s great getting a load of your chest whinging, but that doesn’t solve anything!)

A few starter thoughts for discussion:

Would there be more sense in giving a set number of people longer-term contracts, then assessing them every, say, 5 years on output? (I believe a number of research institutions are run this way, or at least were.)

Funding agencies want some sort of assurance or likelihood that the money will yield an outcome, a little like financial investors. While this is understandable from one point of view, is this appropriate? Does science research fall into too high a risk category (in the business or investors’ sense of the word ‘risk’) that trying to set a likelihood of an outcome is pointless, unless taken against the industry as a whole or some other large sector of the industry? Should granting agencies even be worrying about this?

References

1. Peter Lawrence PLoS Biology 7(9): e1000197 (2009) Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research

(Initially accessed on-line 15 September 2009; PDF copy downloaded 18th September 2009) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000197

The article is available for free download by anyone.

2. Franz Kafka The Castle; translated and with a preface by Mark Harman. ISBN:0805241183.

3. The National Science Panel (for individual contributors, see reference) The Science Manifesto: a plan for the recovery of New Zealand Science, available via a page on the Royal Society website(see links near top of their article). (Published April 2008; downloaded 17-Sept-2009).

[Updated to add 'more' line & error with book title.]

In editing a newspaper, never employ an expert to write a popular article on his own subject, better employ someone who knows nothing about it to tap the expert’s brains, and write the article, sending the proof to the expert to correct. If the expert writes he will always forget that he is not writing for experts [b]ut for the public, and will assume that they need not be told things which, although familiar to him as ABC, are nevertheless totally unknown to the general reader.

While Allan, perhaps wisely, does not make direct comment on this—in his words—“telling bit of advice”, my impression is that he agrees with it. I’ve heard very similar lines elsewhere, including at a presentation for science writing in New Zealand.

I think it’s wrong and that it misses the real point.

There are experts that can write, and write well at that. It’s not that because the person is an expert that they can’t write about their subject. It’s if are they good at writing for the public or not that matters.

Surely it’d be more accurate if rephrased as:

In editing a newspaper, never employ an expert who cannot write for the public well to write a popular article on his own subject, [...]

Inverting the negative we could get the advice:

In editing a newspaper, if possible, always employ an expert who can write for the public well to write a popular article on his own subject, [...]

OK, you think I’m just playing around with logic, right? I am pushing it, but not without a cause. To my eyes there are two things to note, one a stereotype and the other a reality.

There is a stereotype that experts inherently can’t write well for the public, just as there is a stereotype that all scientists are ugly, inarticulate geeks that wear mis-matched clothes! Both are bunk.

A reality is that no-one would expect anyone with little practice in writing for the public—”expert” or not—to be good at it in their first attempts.

A key to any craft is practice. I recall an instructor in a joinery course saying that making one shelf doesn’t make you good at it, but making hundreds eventually does. It’s the same for writing.

The key—of course—is that few scientists have the time to practice writing for the public. That’s pretty understandable, most scientists are  already busy being researcher, teacher, mentor, administrator and fund-raiser all-in-one.

There are two main things needed things for science writing. One is enough expertise (or understanding) of the subject matter to write it accurately. The other is to have enough practice to write the subject matter clearly and entertainingly.

The expert who writes well has both.

Yes, they are—or perceived to be—a rare beast. Nevertheless, I prefer an expert to a non-expert. After all the expert will know if the analogy is fair and meaningful, if that data presented on it’s own is out of context or misleading, if that other guy really is a crank.

If you wouldn’t be happy with an inexperienced writer, who is unable to present material to the public well, why be content with an non-expert writer, who is unable to judge the material well? OK, it’s not a perfect world. There are more non-experts than experts. And non-experts are cheaper. I’ll still say that I think the stereotype isn’t helpful, that the use of experts as writers shouldn’t be dismissed out-of-hand as the stereotype encourages.

What Stead does get right is that articles with science content need two reviews, regardless of who writes the article. One for accuracy, against experts. Another for how the writing would be accepted by the public. Of course, if the writer is an expert, you get both in one. (To journalists: the Science Media Centre provides an avenue for expert comment and review. Use it.)

Am I alone in thinking that writing “experts can’t write” is bunk and the real issue is the time to practice to becoming good at writing? I hope not. A little back-story may help, which I intend to leave for another post. Recent science history research suggests that in Victorian times experts did write for the public and that the stereotype that the “expert can’t write” in part is a consequence of the development of “professional” science, which, it is claimed, repressed this communication role amongst it’s members. Other research suggests that experts still do, it’s just they don’t get the visibility that perhaps they deserve.

Two final thoughts :-

Most scientists are teachers. They teach kids straight out of high school.

All of us are experts at something. Journalists are experts at journalism. Should we say that journalists couldn’t possibly explain journalism because they are experts at it?

© Grant Jacobs

Footnotes

1. I should emphasise (strongly) that Allan’s article is fine once you accept this point. I don’t mean to criticise all of his article, only this particular remark of W.T. Stead’s that he cites.

References

1. Investigating science communication in the information age: implications for public engagement and popular media edited by Holliman, Whitelegg, Scanlon, Schmidt and Thomas (OUP 2009, ISBN: 978-0-19-955266-5).

This blog is a mirror of sorts of my blog Code for Life the New Zealand Sciblogs website. At some point I’ll decide if I should syndicate this site to the other blog. The main difference to users are the commenting policy and the style of the blog. Commenting here doesn’t require registration and will remain open indefinitely.

The material below can also be found in the “About” page. I’m popping it in here by way of introduction.

What’s with the name of the blog?

Code4Life was a name I considered for my consultancy, BioinfoTools. It plays on a number of things related to my work. It plays on a whole lot of things relevant to my work and what I write about:

• My work involves programming (coding) for life sciences (molecular biology and genetics).
• The data I examine and write algorithms for are the sequences of bases in DNA (genes, genomes), the amino acid sequences of proteins (enzymes, hormone receptors, etc.) and the three-dimensional atomic structures of proteins. These are the codes in life, the “information base” of biology and life. (If readers are interested in an introduction to this, let me know.)
• It can mean moral codes and other “rules” people guide their lives with. I won’t be writing about this much about this in the sense of rules for life, but I may look at role of honest skepticism, logic and testing in science.
• You can stretch it to be about writing about life sciences, writing being a code of sorts.
• It has nothing to do with The Code for Life, an album by the heavy metal band Warrior. I am not a fan of heavy metal.

The banner photograph

My current banner may later be replaced with something reflecting the title of the blog… In the meantime it shows where I used to do my science. I work from a home office most of the time and until very recently I was based in a village in the Otago peninsula, near the Otago harbour. The village is near the right of the image. Science from a semi-rural, near maritime location! (The image is open source, obtained from wikimedia and edited using GraphicConverterv6.5.1.)

Topics

Most articles will target a general audience. I’ll try remember to let you know if I think an article is a bit geeky for general readers; once in a while I may write assuming a little basic background for those with deeper interests.

Likely topic areas include:

• Genetics, genomics and evolution. Stunning new findings pour out each week…
• Human biology, esp. cognitive neuroscience and rare diseases or disabilities. The workings of our minds is fascinating stuff and it’s intriguing to explore others’ lives.
• “What science is”, what the basic terms mean, how to read a report on science, sorting out the good stuff from the bad.
• Science and the media.
• “Natural remedies” vs. science-based medicine. The naïve presentation of some of the “woo” out there by various people (including, sadly, a considerable number of media reports) is appalling.
• Vaccinations. (No “flame wars”, please. Seriously.)
• Issues within science, especially within New Zealand. Science is a great enterprise, but there’s always room for improvement.
• Developments in computational biology (my profession).
• Computing & computers (the tools of my trade).
• Plain old ruminations. We all have our navel-gazing days…

Please feel free to ask questions and suggest topics you’d like covered. If possible, I’d like to try base a few posts every month on a subject that a reader has brought up.

I don’t claim to be some gifted philosopher or expert on matters far and wide, in fact I’m frequently embarrassed by my sheer stupidity… (Aren’t we all?) Some of my articles will be off my specialist expertise, in fact probably most will and I’ll let you know. Readers are most welcome to correct any errors but please substantiate your claims.

My background

By training I’m a computational biologist, a biologist who uses computers (algorithms, statistics, etc.) to explore biological problems, and who develops computer tools for biologists to explore data from genes, genomes and proteins. I work as an independent scientist through my consultancy, BioinfoTools, contracting to research groups and biotech companies.

A more commonly-known name for the field is ‘bioinformatics’ but “strictly-speaking” this originally referred to a subset of the field. Some of us who started before the “genome era” prefer the computational biology label, for reasons I’ll explain sometime… ‘BioinfoTools’ is a contraction of ‘bioinformatics tools’.

I have strong interests in science communication and am open to writing contracts or other work (e.g. editing) in this area.

Copyright

The material on my blog is copyright. Journalists, editors & publishers are welcome to contact me if you wish to use this material.