Scientific Appeal to Community

dshatto writes "Help! This posting is to everyone who supports open source science: The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) will start taking shape in the next few months. This is the organization that will be spending $3 billion on stem cell and related research over the next 10 years. California has a chance to set a new model for scientific research. Models to consider for its intellectual property (IP) include open source models. I'm announcing a project that hopefully will:" Read more below... "

1. 1) Demonstrate the power, speed, and effectiveness that open source principles and distributed collaboration offer.

   2) Produce a temporary community of advocates for open source science that links supporters together in a self-organized network aspiring to the common good.

   3) Develop information resources that the Committee setting up the CIRM can use in its consideration of open source models for intellectual property.

Please go here for details:
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~dshatto/PROSODICOL.html

Slashdot gets the scoop on this - I won't post it anywhere else until I gauge your response. Why? Because, well, I think it's cool, and I think it's the right community to get this project going.

I believe that together we can make a lasting impact on science.
David"

Comments

Not for me..

[ThisNukes4u]

I don't support you because I don't believe that the state should be funding scientific research, and beyond that, that embryonic stem cells are not the wave of the future for regenerative science but rather, adult stem cells and DNA manipulation. Don't take it personally, but thats just my belief.

Re:Not for me..

[Linuxathome]

What don't you support exactly? I respect that you don't support state funded research, nor embryonic stem cell science. However, the main issue of his "proposal" is to lay the groundwork for an "open source" science system whereby IP is open to build upon and to expand. Do you at least support that premise?

Although I respect your opinions, I don't share your opinion on state funded science. At least with it coming into fray, we can make an impact now on how IP is handled--a bottom up approach that may be easier to implement. Whereas if we had to change the current funding system now, it would be much more difficult to supplant it with a new set of standards.

Re:Not for me..

[sfjoe]

I don't support you because I don't believe that the state should be funding scientific research,...

Interesting. From Da Vinci to Fermi and beyond, the state has supported and funded scientific research. In fact, I don't think there has ever been a scientific advance that wasn't either funded by or directly based on research funded by the state. Caves may be fine for some but I prefer many of the comforts of modern society.

Re:Not for me..

[the gnat]

In fact, I don't think there has ever been a scientific advance that wasn't either funded by or directly based on research funded by the state.

This is incorrect - there have been many of these. However, they usually fall into the category of "corporate engineering wizard", "lone genius", or "rich dude who can buy tons of laboratory equipment". The first is still quite common; the invention of PCR is a good example. The latter is occasionally found still (Craig Venter - although he got his start at the NIH, and also had a corporate sugar daddy that thought a genome sequence could make money) but more of those guys will just donate the money to scientists (thank you, Mr. Gates!). The second is the one that the libertarians praise the most, and I think it's the least common - because the lone genius can accomplish squat without a few hundred thousand dollars of equipment. (At least; I regularly use a $5 million facility at a $300 million accelerator. Thank you, American taxpayers!) Some rebel academic working out of his garage is never going to cure cancer unless he has access to a whole lot of money.

Anyway, there was a time when quite a few advances were made privately, but I think the exponential progress in the hard sciences over the past century is due in part to increased funding. If we took all that away, I have no idea how progress would continue - most of basic research isn't driven by the commercial market because it's hard to predict whether something is going to be commercializable.

The libertarian response to this is usually either "Not my problem!" (say that again when you're dying from cancer) or "Private donations will find a way!" (put down the bong, please). I agree with the libertarians on all sorts of issues (yay capitalism!) but I just don't see any replacement for our combination of public and commercial science. It seems to work pretty well. (Okay, it pays me, too.)

Australian Open source biology

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a similar approach being adopted in Australia, as reported in Wired.

Published papers are akin to open source

[infonography]

It's not exact but patents are pretty specific about bits of technology. However to get anywhere in hard science you need to publish. The techniques will be availible to the community. It is the primary benchmark for the research community.

Open source works in the context of tech, however medical knowledge isn't so tightly defined by copyrights. The project is publicly funded, and like a university it will be availible to the public at a smaller price then a private research company's.

Re:Published papers are akin to open source

[the gnat]

However to get anywhere in hard science you need to publish. The techniques will be availible to the community. It is the primary benchmark for the research community.

This is true - but it's even more complicated.

Among the many reasons why the US system of publically funded science continues to be such an incredible success is that within the confines of government funding, it's like an artificial free market. (All you Randians out there, shut the fuck up for a moment and listen.) Scientists compete for a limited amount of grant money - I believe about a fifth of NIH grant proposals actually get approved. Once you have money, you usually have hates to issue a retraction so they're pretty cautious most of the time.

So, the incentive is to keep things secret until you're ready to publish. (Unfortunately, molecular biology is so competitive that it's gone too far and people will sometimes be ultra-secretive about their work.) Once you've published, virtually every journal requires you to make your data and materials publically available. If someone writes you saying "I'm working on the same protein - could we get that construct?", you're obligated to send it to them. And any "data not shown", or raw numerical data - that also needs to be shared on request. (The rules for this don't go far enough, in my opinion.)

Patents only cover commercialization. Up to this point, you have a combination of ruthless competition and community-mandated sharing, plus some collaboration between investigators. This is probably the most efficient way to get science done under our current system. If we were to make commercializable discoveries "open-source", we'd end up with the same problem. No company would invest in the science; you could leave it to public investigators, but you'd have four or so competing with each other to make an actual product, which is more expensive and not as useful (from the public-funding perspective) than basic research. And let's say you do come up with a proven product - who's going to manufacture that when any competitor could potentially do it cheaper? Or do you want the government to pay for that too?

Scoff all you want, but the current system has served us very well, and it's a bad idea to tamper with progress. Finding a happy medium between the free market and public science is exceedingly difficult but we've done it about as well as possible.

Well, no

[Otter]

I apologize for vaguely using the term "open source" to get my point across. I trust you will have an intuitive understanding of what I'm trying to communicate.

Well, no. It's not at all clear to me what you have in mind, and your resume doesn't suggest that you know anything about biology or biomedical research.

Guessing about what you might possibly mean:

• Making data, conclusions and tools freely (by normal, non-Stallmanist usage of "free") available: this is easy enough to do, but you're talking about "public-domain" in that case.
• Some sort of GPL-ish scheme: this would be an unmitigated freaking disaster. It would create precisely the sort of tangled web of encumbrance that you want to avoid.
• Distributed collaboration: I'm always skeptical of these notions in biomedical research (and distributed and "open-source" aren't the same thing, anyway). If you have a workable scheme, I'd love to hear about it but as I said, it doesn't sound like you know the first thing about the subject.

I wish you luck, and hopefully I'm underestimating your planning. (And if you get something promising going, I'll be glad to help.) But right now, with all due respect, this sounds like the equivalent of a new Sourceforge project from someone who expects volunteers to do all the work.

Re:Not for me..or is it?

[clonan]

You are correct when you say that "embryonic" stem cells are not the wave of the future for regenerative medicine...but they ARE a critical first step.

The goal is to take adult stem cells and give them the abilities of embryonic stem cells and THEN use them for medicinal purposes.

Just taking adult stem cells will not give you much...but by understanding embryonic stem cells we can in effect Have our cake and eat it too.

Get all the real benifits of embryonic stem cells without the problems of rejection and ethical problems.