Computers May Be As Good As (Or Better Than) Human Biocurators

Shipud writes "Sequencing the genome of an organism is not the end of a discovery process; rather, it is a beginning. It's the equivalent of discovering a book whose words (genes) are there, but their meaning is yet unknown. Biocurators are the people who annotate genes — find out what they do — through literature search and the supervised use of computational techniques. A recent study published in PLoS Computational Biology shows that biocurators probably perform no better than fully automated computational methods used to annotate genes. It is not clear whether this is because the software is of high quality, or both curators and software need to improve their performance. The author of this blog post uses the concept of the uncanny valley to explain this recent discovery and what it means to both life science and artificial intelligence."

Comments

Re:"biocurators"?

[PopeRatzo]

International Society of Biocuration

Are they also members of the International Brotherhood of Language Wankers?

I was once a member of the Elks, but guess what? I wasn't really an elk.

No, really, that's very nice that they have a name for their "International Society" and all, but thanks to my matrimonial duties, I've had to read more scientific papers than I could count (if I could count), and I'm well-versed in the scientific butchery of language. It's partly due to a disease which causes people who are expert in one area to spontaneously believe they are expert in any area that they choose, and partly due to post-docs yearning to be special.

I don't know fuck-all about biology or genetics or curation, but I'm an A-number-fucking-One expert in the English language. I've got all sorts of papers to prove it, with fancy embossed stamps, and a picture of myself having a purple hood pulled over my head because of my expertise with English. Hell, I've even got a tweed jacket with suede patches on the elbows somewhere in the back of my closet. And despite one (at least) slightly shoddy episode with a fulsome grad student in the early 80's, I've got a stellar reputation in the field. And "biocuration" is an abomination, no matter how many geeks with lab coats and large pores want to clip a form in the back of a journal and send in a money order for $15 for the right to call themselves "biocurators" (I assume a cheap ballpoint with the words "International Society of Biocuration" screened on it is also involved).

Now don't get me started on "combinatorics". That one almost earned me a trip to divorce court with my mathematician wife.