Comments

  1. Kay Tye said:

    I agree with Leterrier: The Hausser SFN abstract was the single most-talked-about SFN abstract that I can recall…although at the time —as with most posters— the controls were not comprehensive. This project was something that many groups (I can think of at least 4) have been working very hard on for the last 3-5 years, and credit should be given to all groups that pushed this forward and actually implemented this tool. Necessity is a very interesting question, and this leaves us some work to be done…This is definitely a major advance that I have personally been eagerly waiting for since the previous Mayford paper was published.

  2. hysell oviedo said:

    Indeed, the community felt this experiment was low-hanging fruit just begging to be plucked. Nevertheless, this episode will boost a trend we all complain about: people NOT showing unpublished data at scientific meetings. It is not uncommon for posters to be pulled at the last minute because the paper hasn’t been submitted. It is not uncommon for big labs to browse posters from small labs for ideas they can do faster and sexier. And the more tech-driven the field the worse it gets. This in part has driven the explosion of small, invite-only meetings. They create an environment of accountability: I know the handful of people who saw my unpublished work, so I’ll be watching you closely… We’re clearly en route to (if not there already) a winner-take-all system in scientific research. Funding agencies and the scientific community need to think hard about whether this is a good direction because resources are scarce, and if so implement it explicitly.