Continued from my previous post about the conference.

One of the more interesting sessions I went to was one given by a chemist at Drexel University named Jean-Claude Bradley. His lab uses a wiki as its official lab notebook, the place where they record raw and analyzed data, ongoing experiments (including ones that failed), protocols, hypotheses (see here). Anyone can read it, and if they register, they can edit it. Not too many scientists out there who take “open science” to this extreme.

The small room we were in was packed with scientists, many rightfully skeptical. Bradley admitted that by doing this he’s given up any hope of publishing in journals like Nature and Science. He’s focused on publishing in open access journals. He’s doing work on malaria, so he doesn’t think he’s losing many patenting opportunities. And he’s looking for funding from foundations like the Gates Foundation, which he says are more open to different ways of doing research.

He and his students have only been doing this for about a year, so it’s perhaps too soon to tell whether this mode of open science pays off, or whether he’ll be scooped too much to be worth his while.

Btw, there’s an interesting exchange going on here in response to the question: What would you do if you were the head of NIH or NSF (in light of plummeting grant approval rates)? Have your say.