Last year, the editors of Nature Methods chose a “Method of the Year” (MOY) and the winner was next generation sequencing. This feature included an editorial, commentaries, news features and other types of content discussing the winning technique.

This year, the editors want input from the scientific community. Go here to see the nominees and cast your vote. Interestingly, you can vote positively or negatively for a technique as well as leave comments in discussion forums. Although the ultimate choice will still remain an editorial decision, at least the editors will get feedback from the community.

This is some great use of Web2.0 to get the community engaged and I hope that you will participate.

Posted by Noah Gray at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Breaking News, Random Thoughts

Another blogging hiatus on the old "Action Potential" blog. Sorry about that. However, the news is now that I have become a neuroscience editor for Nature, I will be taking my show on the road to a new site, and will be blogging on Nature Network. My new blog is called Nothing's Shocking (10 points to whomever knows the reference) and will pretty much follow the same fast and loose style that got me into trouble here. I hope you'll come take a look. There are already two posts up (besides the obligatory introductory trash), with more to come:

What does mirror self-recognition really mean?

Janelia East and the quest for round scientists

I've greatly enjoyed my year+ on AP and want to thank all of the readers and commenters who provided me with the incentive and motivation to continue doing this. Let the debates continue...

Posted by Noah Gray at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, What's New in NN?

Universities are strange two-headed beasts: they are places where much of the research we publish is conducted, but they are also educational institutes, whose job is to train students (not all of whom go on to become scientists, or necessarily contribute to the research side of the enterprise). Added to the mix now is that many universities are now effectively businesses, having to provide their own operating revenues in the face of tighter funding.

In the UK, there is increasing grumbling that this is Not A Good Thing, with many university staff members warning that some of the tactics involved in raising these revenues will dilute the value of the degrees that are being doled out.

Continue reading "The business of universities" »

Posted by Charvy Narain at 06:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Science Policy, Other Contributors

A great discussion over at Nature Network inspired me to initiate a similar conversation here at Action Potential. Corie Lok asked the question "What is fair play in the blogo/commentosphere?" A fair question indeed. The responses have produced some interesting discussion fodder, but got me thinking about my own experiences on several science blogs. Although this conversation is equally applicable to any type of blog, let's stick with those dedicated to or mainly engaged in conversations about science.

Continue reading "Getting into and out of character" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)
Categories: Noah Gray, Random Thoughts

A recent Nature news article regarding the latest battle on the animal research front takes us to Switzerland. There, the University of Zurich and another research institute are taking a case to the Swiss Supreme Court arguing against the rulings of a lower court, which banned two primate-based experiments that had been approved by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The proposed experiments were said to potentially offend the dignity of the animals, according to an external advisory board, overruling a decision by the veterinary office (responsible for animal welfare) who allowed the experiments to proceed.

This stems from a change in Swiss law back in 2004, which suggested that the dignity of animals had to be considered (see Article 120). As the accompanying editorial points out, using a subjective concept like dignity as our guiding compass in determining the moral legitimacy of research proposals is not only absurd, but dangerous.

Continue reading "The science of dignity" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Science Policy, Popular Press

Our June editorial discusses the relationship between web traffic and citations. Specifically, can one predict how well any particular paper is cited years after publication, based solely on the number of downloads it receives immediately following its appearance online? Our preliminary analysis suggests that this relationship not only exists, but is surprisingly strong.

I’ll leave you to read the editorial for more of the background as to why we examined this relationship, but I will repeat a few keys things here. The main purpose of this post is to provide more of the details behind the data and analysis, and to initiate a good discussion.

Continue reading "Turning web traffic into citations" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (1)
Categories: Noah Gray, Scientific Publishing

I apologize for the long time between posts. Things have been busy and I hope to have more for you soon. In the meantime, I wanted to toss out something to tide you over.

A recent Nature editorial extends the previous discussion that began in the AP post "Retraction reaction", concerning the retraction of a paper from the lab of Nobel Prize winner Linda Buck. The editorial touches on the issue of a significant weakness in the scientific process. Namely that save for a select few in the "know", the community-at-large rarely learns of what went wrong in a study, leading to its eventual retraction. This is indeed a concern and an on-going problem.

Continue reading "Retraction reaction redux" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Science Policy, Scientific Publishing

The next installment of the Nature Network Neuroscience group journal club is now live. The paper discusses a potential therapeutic strategy involving the upregulation of the dopamine receptor D2R that may be beneficial in the treatment of cocaine abuse and addiction.

The contributor discussing this paper for the neuroscience group is Áine Duffy, a postdoctoral fellow at Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York. I want to thank Áine for her participation.

Posted by Noah Gray at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Interesting Neuroscience, Journal Clubs

Our May editorial takes a brief look back at some of the history of Nature Neuroscience. We also present some of the most-cited papers over the past decade. This is an interesting exercise, as it provides an opportunity to reflect on the interests of both the authors and readers over the past decade.

Continue reading "Nature Neuroscience turns 10!" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, What's New in NN?

The next installment of the Nature Network Neuroscience group journal club is now live. The paper provides evidence that in unanesthetized animals, sounds are sparsely represented in the auditory cortex.

The contributor discussing this paper for the neuroscience group is Lizzie Buchen, a science writer for Discover Magazine in New York. I want to thank Lizzie for her participation.

Posted by Noah Gray at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Interesting Neuroscience, Journal Clubs

I recently attended the Alzheimer's Disease Keystone meeting in Keystone, CO and became more acutely aware of something than ever before: academia and drug companies really like one another. Sure, the latter always loved the former, since collaborating with university-based scientists often made the publications arising from the private sector look a little more legit. On the contrary, the reciprocity in this relationship has not always been there. There is without a doubt some sub-disciplinary differences in this complex relationship, but in the basic science departments that I lurked around, if you were associated with a company (or worse, left academia for a position there, succumbing to the power of the Dark Side), there was always talk of whether or not you could be trusted. Because companies need publications to prove the legitimacy of their product, right? And the legitimacy determines how much money everyone makes, right? So with such conflicts of interest, could the scientist, or the data being produced by these people, be trusted?

Continue reading "Big Pharma and academia becoming more and more cozy" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Science Policy, Random Thoughts

The next installment of the Nature Network Neuroscience group journal club is now live. The paper discusses the role for brief adaptation in the improvement of population-based encoding accuracy during sensory information processing.

The contributor discussing this paper for the neuroscience group is Adam Packer, a graduate student at Columbia University in the lab of Rafa Yuste. I want to thank Adam for his participation.

Posted by Noah Gray at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Interesting Neuroscience, Journal Clubs

I would say no. Grant proposals are a precious commodity, especially in this day and age of reduced funding and evaporating money. However, in a recent Nature correspondence, Dr. Noam Harel describes his vision for a centralized grant repository, ideally open to the public, where researchers could place their best ideas, allowing various funding agencies to discover the plans most-suited to their respective agendas. Dr. Harel likens this potential web manifestation to something like eBay, Facebook or Google, but for scientists and funding agencies. A more apt analogy might be Monster.com, with both sides searching for their ideal match, and a long-term relationship (perhaps I am now making it sound more like eHarmony.com...).

When it comes to the integration of scientific communication and technology, I am extremely optimistic, and although I don't reject Dr. Harel's idea entirely, I just don't see it taking off in its presently-proposed form.

Continue reading "What to do with your unfunded proposals - place them in a centralized repository? " »

Posted by Noah Gray at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Science Policy, Random Thoughts

The next installment of the Nature Network Neuroscience group journal club is now live. The paper proposes a new strategy to track the location of select synapses using split fluorescent proteins.

The contributor discussing this paper for the neuroscience group is Andrew Hires, a postdoctoral fellow at Janelia Farm Research Campus in the lab of Loren Looger. I want to thank Andrew for his participation.

Posted by Noah Gray at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Interesting Neuroscience, Journal Clubs

When the community is overburdened by peer review, it's everybody's problem. As of today, Nature Neuroscience has become part of the solution by joining the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium, a flexible system that allows voluntary participation by authors, referees and editors. Here are more details, from our April editorial:

Continue reading "NN Joins Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium" »

Posted by at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: What's New in NN?, Other Contributors, Scientific Publishing

The next installment of the Nature Network Neuroscience group journal club is now live. The paper explores the in vivo function of neurexins in the coordination of pre- and postsynaptic apposition using Drosophila.

The contributor discussing this paper for the neuroscience group is Margaret Ho, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica Taiwan in the lab of Cheng-Ting Chien. I want to thank Margaret for her participation.

Posted by Noah Gray at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Interesting Neuroscience, Journal Clubs

[This is the inaugural post for a new feature at Action Potential. Periodically, we will provide insights from a regional correspondent on the interesting news, changes, or issues particularly affecting neuroscience in a particular location. Today's post is from one of our Asian correspondents, Haihong Ye of the Institute for Biophysics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She reflects on the dramatic changes that have occurred within Chinese neuroscience during her decade-long absence from this now-flourishing community. We examined these issues in our March editorial, but now invite you to provide your opinion. - N.G.]

Over the past 10 years, especially the last five, the whole world has been amazed by the Chinese economy. To me, however, the improvement in biological science research in China is much more amazing. In the summer of 1998 I left Beijing and went to the US to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience. In 2007, after nine years of graduate study and post-doc training abroad, I came back to Beijing, seeking opportunities for further career development. What a difference some strong funding and visionary directives, not to mention a decade, can make.

Continue reading "Haihong Ye: Amazing changes in Chinese neuroscience over the past decade" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Correspondents, Science Policy, Random Thoughts

The next installment of the Nature Network Neuroscience group journal club is now live. The paper is on the role of insular cortex in drug craving and the behavioral signs of abstinence-related malaise.

The contributor discussing this paper for the neuroscience group is Ben Saunders, a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the lab of Terry Robinson. I want to thank Ben for his participation.

Posted by Noah Gray at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Interesting Neuroscience, Journal Clubs

In the last couple of years, after the recent explosion in the number of resources where scientific discussions can take place rapidly and without boundaries (i.e., using the internet), one could easily have predicted that we were on the cusp of a revolution; the way in which scientists communicated with each other regarding data was about to change forever. Although poster session chatter at your favorite scientific meeting was never going to be replaced, now researchers could interact, trade ideas and get feedback from anyone, anywhere, at any time. Sounds pretty good, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like neuroscientists are taking advantage of these cool new offerings. I could extrapolate to biology in general, but for more simplicity (and other obvious reasons), let's stick to what we know best.

Continue reading "Neuroscience and Web 2.0: Participation may vary" »

Posted by Noah Gray at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (1)
Categories: Noah Gray, Random Thoughts

Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Linda Buck has retracted a 2001 Nature paper. In the retraction in this week's Nature, the authors report difficulty replicating the data and 'inconsistencies' between the original data and figures and data printed in the paper. Buck told Nature reporter Heidi Ledford that the figures and data in question were contributed by the first author, Zhihua Zou, who was unavailable for comment.

This is the highest profile retraction that I can recall in neuroscience, but so far, there has been little fallout. Perhaps that's because the original findings were notable only in the neuroscience community rather than in the general public. Regardless, it indicates that neuroscience and its well known labs are not immune from fraudulent data. Although I admire Buck's swift and direct action, it concerns me that the first author has been assigned the lion's share of the blame. This seems like a familiar refrain, and I find it troubling.

Posted by Debra Speert at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (1)
Categories: Debra Speert, Breaking News, Scientific Publishing