kristoff@NET.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) (05/26/89)
Lawrence, Thanks for your informative message about developments at the NLM. The problems are obviously immense, but to get people interested in solving them I believe that the Matrix project should spend more time publicizing a practical plan of action instead of philosophizing on the global immensities of problems to be confronted. Chris' discussion of some of the steps that he is personally taking are interesting but except for his short description and an attempt by Peter Karp some time back to detail his research, the only contributor to this newsgroup has been my good friend Dan Davison. Since I see the mailing list on a regular basis I know that a lot of people are READING these messages, but very few are responding. Am I to interpret this as meaning that all of these people are simply overwhelmed by the immensities of the problems involved and have nothing to contribute? There are always a few wits who come back at me with the line that "real scientists are busy at the bench and are not playing on the computer" but I have worked at enough "high-powered" research institutions to have seen the games of Nerf basketball, etc., that go on during lulls in the experimental activity. I just can't believe that Dan, Peter, Chris, and a few others are the only ones on this list that are doing interesting work. If this is indeed the case then the government must be wasting a hell of a lot of the taxpayers money! > By using the resources that > do exist to good end (identify online services you use in your > publications!), and by devising and demonstrating methods to extend Bravo! One of our perennial problems on BIONET has been to get our going on 1000 participating labs to acknowledge us in their Methods section or elsewhere. We always get a batch of reprints (only after requesting them) with apologetic notes about this. Computer analysis should be documented just as much as how one does one's protein determinations, etc. > the reach and power of what currently exists, we can bring nearer the > day when large institutions are willing to commit the resources > required for the sorts of major projects we have envisioned. Amen! Dave Kristofferson