Humanizing Bioinformatics by Saaien Tist.
From the post:
I was invited last week to give a talk at this year’s meeting of the Graduate School Structure and Function of Biological Macromolecules, Bioinformatics and Modeling (SFMBBM). It ended up being a day with great talks, by some bright PhD students and postdocs. There were 2 keynotes (one by Prof Bert Poolman from Groningen (NL) and one by myself), and a panel discussion on what the future holds for people nearing the end of their PhDs.
My talk was titled “Humanizing Bioinformatics” and received quite well (at least some people still laughed at my jokes (if you can call them that); even at the end). I put the slides up on slideshare, but I thought I’d explain things here as well, because those slides will probably not convey the complete story.
Let’s ruin the plot by mentioning it here: we need data visualization to counteract the alienation that’s happening between bioinformaticians and bright data miners on the one hand, and the user/clinician/biologist on the other. We need to make bioinformatics human again. (emphasis in original)
I just wish there had been a video recording of this presentation!
Questions:
- Do you agree with the issues that Saalen raises? Are there more that you would raise? 2-3 pages (no citations)
- Have “semantics” become what can be evaluated by a computer? Pick yes, no, undecided and cite web examples for your position. 2-3 pages
- How much do you trust the answers to your searches? (Classroom discussion question.)