Has the Time Come? Or Has the Time Gone?

A megaproject. Dubai skyscrapers.
Source: SkyscraperPage Forum

Inevitably, there will be those who believe in the value of high throughput data collection in biology and those who propose that it’s a waste of time and resources. At a time when powerful new methodologies emerge, such extreme views can be expected. The argument is usually about the ultimate value of investing large sums of public money in megaprojects, versus funding individual, hypothesis-driven research programs. A current diatribe concerns the international Protein Structure Initiative, a megaproject aimed at determining the three-dimensional structures of all proteins. A lively debate is taking place in the pages of the journal, Genome Biology. Gregory Petsko, a biochemist at Brandeis, has taken on PSI with a cheerfully-written article with the provocative title An Idea Whose Time Has Gone. Not surprisingly, European proponents of PSI came back with a spirited rejoinder telling us that they think this is “an idea whose time has come.” At the end of their article, there is a rebuttal by Petsko. Point, counterpoint.

We invite readers to come to their own conclusion about which way the arrow points. Conciliatory sorts that we are, perhaps there is a middle ground. At any rate, this is food for thought and highly readable stuff.

Comments

[Welkin Johnson]

I am a middle-grounder. Under conditions where there are plenty of resources to go around, both have value (what would Kepler have done without Tycho Brahe?). However, if one were forced to choose, I would argue that lab-oriented research can stand alone, while megaprojects simply don't make sense without a constituency of hypothesis-driven end-users (would history remember Brahe, if not for Kepler?).

I'll take this opportunity to raise another, admittedly nitpicky, issue (perfect for blogging). The term "hypothesis driven" is also used in another sense - as the moral superior to "fishing expeditions", the latter referring to things like mutant hunts, library screens, selection/enrichment schemes, shots-in-the-dark guesses, and so on. I happen to like fishing, the real kind and the experimental kind. It requires faith, a sense of adventure, a certain level of comfort with risk. Many great hypotheses were born from fishing expeditions (in some cases quite literally - after all, what would Darwin have become without the HMS Beagle?) This is the organic, fuzzy logic, artistic, novelty seeking, right-brained complement to hypothesis testing, and nothing to be ashamed of. Go fishing!
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Come to think of it, did the Voyage of the Beagle constitute a megaproject?

[Shlomi Dagan]

I don't know which opnion is right, but I can say, from my own little corner, that a large protein database will greatly assist my small, individual, hypothesis-driven research project.