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My lab:
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The journal Current Biology has published a short Q&A with me today (local copy). I had briefly discussed the last two questions on FriendFeed, so they may seem familiar to you. It feels more than a little strange to be asked to contribute to this sort of article. After all, my PhD advisor and mentor Martin Heisenberg was among those interviewed as well as the current professor emeritus here in our institute, Randolf Menzel. It seems almost surreal to now be listed among such luminaries as Antonio Damasio, Michael Ashburner, Nicky Clayton, Robert Hinde, Ed Kravitz, Gille Laurent, Richard Lensky, Martin Nowak, Eve Marder, Karl Sigmund, Mandyam Srinivasan, Frans de Waal, Lewis Wolpert and many other famous scientists. Does that mean I have to trash my t-shirts and start wearing button-up shirts and slacks now? elated.png

Anyway, I am very grateful to editor Geoff North for providing me with this opportunity. Especially because I'm sidetracking the interview at the end away from science, towards how we do science today and how important publishing reform and open access are for science. What I'm saying there essentially runs contrary to the business interests of commercial publishers (at least to current business interests, that is) including Elsevier, which owns Cell Press which publishes Current Biology. Therefore, I value it even more highly that nobody tried to interfere with my attempts to express my views on what I see as the most troubling and disturbing aspect of my work as a research scientist. It is interesting to contrast my last answers to Geoff North's own opinion as expressed in 2004:
Another important, related but distinct function is that general journals act as a filter: ideally, we publish the ‘best’ papers, reporting the stories most likely to be a wide interest, and those with the greatest claim to coverage in the general media (newspapers, television and so on). A hierarchy of journals, with the general ones at the ‘top’, helps journalists to find reports of the most significant developments – those that are of most interest, and also (importantly) ‘sound’, in the sense of having passed rigorous peer review. In this sense, general journals offer a link between the specialist scientific literature and the general media and public.
I'd agree that editors and journalists at general journals serve a terrific, important and valuable function as links between research scientists and their data on the one hand and the general media on the other. In fact, I think that's one of the last, truly relevant and important functions of journals worth spending money on. However, I see no reason why this sort of filter should be used by scientists and scientific institutions as well, whose interests don't necessarily align with those of the general public. It's time scientists develop their own filters. The information technology is here to create a very efficient and genuinely transformative system which will assist each scientist in navigating, sorting and discovering the most relevant and important research. One prerequisite for this system is access to the full text and data of the entire scientific literature. There can be no discussion about this basic necessity, just as there can be no discussion about full access to clean, potable water for everyone. Prohibitive pricing of scholarly literature is analogous to price gauging for tap water and some organizations are starting to take measures.

At least as important was the opportunity to have an informal platform on which to emphasize the change in direction neuroscience is currently taking. Indeed, neuroscience is only reflecting the evolutionary evidence accumulating since quite some time now in other fields of biology, where more and more research is again and again emphasizing how flexible, malleable and almost fluid genomes and their organisms are. A recent blog post by PZ Myers emphasized this aspect of evolution quite nicely. Much of the neuroscience I am in contact with still works under the assumption that brains evolved to compute behavioral output from sensory input. There is now an abundance of evidence showing that if this happens, it is rather the exception than the rule. I have one manuscript in preparation and one in my head which will try to summarize some of this evidence. It was nice to be able to state these recent developments concisely and I'm hoping that one or the other reader might take the time and start reading up on some of this evidence themselves.
In this respect, it is also interesting to quote again CB editor Geoff North from his almost prescient 2004 Q&A article:
Invertebrate neurobiology seems to have entered an exciting phase, with great opportunities offered by new techniques for manipulating the activities of small, defined groups of neurons. I think we shall see a lot of progress here in understanding neural circuits and the neural basis of learning and behaviour.


Answering these questions was a very new and pleasant experience. We'll see if the reactions (or lack thereof) will change that picture smile.png
Posted on Tuesday 27 July 2010 - 18:17:39 comment: 0
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