Agree with Kevin. Not sure about Peter. This is why remote controls have 57 buttons. - Chris White

Wwwwwwwwwhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! - Robert Scoble

Yup! Yahoo experimented with a new interface and got the "New Coke" effect. People wanted the old interface, and Yahoo switched back. Some VCs recommend that only building your user base to 2,000-5,000 users while are experimenting with interfaces. It's too painful to switch with larger user bases. - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell, this isn't exactly the same thing. I would describe the feature problem as "feature creep." The other problem is just resistance to change. Inside a company, there is actually lots of pressure to change the user experience, but little lobbying for removing features. This is a big problem for a product designer that wants to provide an elegantly simple interface. - Chris White

A large part of the cause of feature creep is resistance to change. You can argue that adding new features is also change, but adding a new feature has a relatively small marginal cost for existing users. Most can ignore the new feature, or learn how to use it when they are ready. Removing a feature has a very large impact on every single user that uses that feature, however, as they are forced to adapt. - Laurence Gonsalves

As an aside, all this talk of resisting change reminded me of the story about eBay's background color: http://thoughts.overstimulate.... - Laurence Gonsalves

My point is that feature creep is started before users ever get involved. There are lots of forces on the inside of a company to produce new features and to keep them in a product. It's very difficult as a product designer to defend one of the most important features of any product: simplicity of use. - Chris White

Feature-itis! run!! - Susan Beebe

For example, product marketing often uses other products for comparison. If they find competitors have features you don't , they often want them added regardless of the effect on product simplicity. You need a strong leader to prevent this effect over time. - Chris White

Improve don't remove :) - directeur via NoiseRiver

Quick! Robert is already crying some of the missing feature in the iPhone version! :) - directeur via NoiseRiver

enabling. I like the variety of challenges that brings as opposed to the microfocus of research - Daniel Swan via twhirl

Doing it, definitely. I've been a patch clamper a long time now, but I still get a thrill when I see currents up on the screen. There's nothing like it. - NatBlair

I loved doing research myself, but as a career, definitely the latter. - Deepak

Enabling: adding value to anything which helps the scientific method. Always different, emerging and interesting. - Matt Wood

Enabling it. I have the same feeling as Eva and Matt. - PauloNuin

both, but like to walk on the computational side - Attila Csordas

occasional bench research + running lab as a PI + teaching students - 2/3 of the current hellish grant burden = perfect - Maureen

enabling. greater variety, plus I still get to do all the original thinking I want to. Also I was a danger with P32. - Simon Cockell

I love doing research, but I hate writing it up. I enjoy writing well-crafted Ruby code to answer scientific questions, but I'm utterly useless at communicating the results. - Michael Barton

Haven't had much experience enabling yet, but I have the feeling I'd enjoy enabling research more consistently than doing research. But doing research does give a thrill if it goes well and you can keep the interest alive. - Shirley Wu

I do lots of "research" -- on the internets... - Eric Jain

Enabling & Connecting Minds. In doing my focus seems to move towards empirical work, statistics, anything in highly complex macro-systems. Ah, science in industry is cool. - dekay

It used to be research but then it got to a point where there were no tools available that could meet my needs, so now it has turned to enabling and trying to develop those tools. - Paul Bacchus

maybe I'm on the enabling side? Well fact is I've developed my share of computational methodologies and software so far, and it was fun!, but when it comes to thinking about the biological theories/hypotheses/paper writing from the data the software spit out, I kind of hate it. So I guess I'm no into "doing research", but more for hacking the heck out of it... - Ntino

I just don't know. I'm having a really hard time with that exact question right now. I'm nearing my use-by date as a postdoc and not sure I really want to try to scramble up the faculty food chain. - Bill Hooker

Congratulations! - Bill Hooker

Jonathan, you should title one of those upcoming PLoS papers "Tree of Life" and we'll all link to it and cite it feverishly! http://is.gd/Kxk - Duncan Hull

You may not worry about having the term "Tree of Life" lost to Hollywood, but when the next Angelina Jolie movie is titled Nodalpoint lets see what you do .. - Jonathan Eisen

yes, that wouldn't be good. Speaking of nodalpoint, I'm surprised Bosco Ho http://boscoh.com and Greg Tyrelle http://tyrelle.net aren't to be found wasting time on friendfeed... we should invite them to join the party... - Duncan Hull

"Wasting time"?? I resemble that remark! - Bill Hooker

We actually stole Nodalpoint from William Gibson. As for Greg, ironically for a web pioneer, he maintains almost no web presence whatsoever. Too busy in the Taiwanese corporate biotech sector. - Neil Saunders

Unfortunately http://www.nodalpoint.org seems to be either not responding or redirecting to Melbourne IT services http://www.flickr.com/photos/d... I've emailed greg... - Duncan Hull

"Willighagen E( 9 publications) est victorieux avec 4 publications de plus que Lindenbaum P ( 5 publications)." :) Sorry, just could not resists :) - Egon Willighagen

Oh, this is a clear example that citation count is way too simplistic ... - Egon Willighagen

:-)) - Pierre

I wonder what many a PI would say about such a system - Deepak

"am-I-hot-or-not" for scientists? - dekay

No, a social science-impact factor. - Egon Willighagen

isn't that exactly what the science citation index is about? just without the web2.0 shebang and only people from the same field vote by citation? - dekay

No, because a citation can be anything... "have you seen this crappy research? I just cite it as related work we 'improve' on"... citations do not provide ranking information. Or? - Egon Willighagen

The only thing you'd get by doing this is who's in the news, not impact or quality. Assessment of quality is such a complicated task that it has to be personally done by competent individuals who are familiar with the work of the individual in question. This takes a significant effort which can't be captured by this shallow of an approach, and the results are only useful within each narrow field of research. Systems like this are also extremely vulnerable to gaming. - Mr. Gunn

Since a significant effort is already put into grant reviews, you could simply average across grant review scores to capture this, and weight it by the size of the grant awarded. Then the confounding factor is the cost of research among disciplines. But, if you just want a "name recognition index", your method would be fine. - Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn... it seems you have more experience in this than I do. It's a shame that we do not seem to be able to do better than current systems. - Egon Willighagen

I really don't have any personal experience, I've just spent a couple years listening to the smart people who do. How you do it depends on what you're looking to do, obviously. A name recognition index could be useful, if only to find out who the attention whores are. ;-) - Mr. Gunn

Another problem -- "Hooker CW ( 21 publications ) est victorieux avec 12 publications de plus que Willighagen E ( 9 publications)" -- that a working Researcher ID could solve. (I don't have 21 publications!) - Bill Hooker

I'm waiting for the ResearcherID talk to be subsumed into the larger OpenID conversation. Anonymity is impossible nowadays, so maybe people will start taking online identity seriously now. - Mr. Gunn

I really believe that any identity namespace requires some granularity, one than can be linked with researcher id's and the like. What we don't want to do is reinvent the wheel and come up with some other, random standard for scientific identity - Deepak

What is the value of a unidimensional ranking of people, based on whatever single 'summary statistic' or 'impact factor'? Isn't this bound to be an unacceptable reduction in most of the cases? - Thomas Lemberger

Thomas, you just said what it took me 1000+ characters to say. I think this community has a pro-measurement bias, and the more measurements the better, as long as they're not used where inappropriate. I worry about mission creep much like we've seen with FICO scores in the US. - Mr. Gunn

Thomas Lemberger - When you're hiring (or awarding grants) there's simply no alternative: you're trying to rank applicants one against the other, and effectively end up with a rank order. - Michael Nielsen

Bill is right - I'm still an advocate of the general purpose wiki (Wikispaces in my case) for an online lab notebook. I know it isn't sexy and doesn't seem "cutting edge" but what is does well is let us represent pretty much whatever we need to record for experiments with the fewest assumptions. It is BECAUSE it is like paper that it works. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Jean-Claude: I noticed MediaWiki has some "forms" extensions, where users can create forms which fill out a template (like Semantic Forms). If this was simple enough to use, do you think this could be good hybrid approach between free-form and structured data in a wiki-based ELN ? For example, the powerusers could build forms+templates for standard experiments, which everyone could use. Extra data could be added to the wiki page after it was created from the forms+template. - Andrew Perry

Nice ideas Andrew. A few of the popular wikis have these form plugins (pmwiki, dokuwiki, mediawiki). I've thought before that they might provide a good environment for developing ELNs, LIMS and so on, but never had time (or sufficient positive feedback from potential users) to follow up. - Neil Saunders

There is one very good example of a Wiki-based production quality LIMS system (I haven't used it, but know folks who've taken a look at it). That's the WikiLims system from BioTeam ... so it's definitely doable http://blog.bioteam.net/tag/wi... - Deepak

WikiLims looks interesting; also a presentation here http://www.slideshare.net/gues.... I guess for wikis to work in this way, we need low barriers for developers and sufficient flexibility in the wiki backend. Otherwise you may as well code up your own web app in whatever language you know best. - Neil Saunders

That's definitely one of the plus points of MediaWiki. It seems fairly extensible - Deepak

Most of you know I'm part of the OWW team. So let me ask this question: Those that have used or seen OWW's lab notebook, what would you like to see added (or removed!) from it to make it more to your liking? As it has been said, MW is extensible and we are getting good at extending it, so let me know what you'd like and we can see what's possible. - Ricardo Vidal

I only keep a ELN. It's closed ;-0 It's dokuwiki install with a few modifications and plugins. As I spend all my time at the computer I have found this a lot better than writing/printing/cutting/pasting. I started of using mediawiki but had problems getting the 3rd party plugins (gnuplot, math etc.) to function. 2 of 12 in our lab use an ELN fulltime. I'm unsure of the Universities policy on ELN's, but i'm not concerned given that 2 Masters students just submitted without keeping any formal documentation. - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

That's another good point; many wikis have some great plugins for research (when they work): plotting, formulae, BibTeX and so on. My "ELN" is basically a Trac + SVN installation, since most of what I do is generate file revisions (code, input/output, papers in LaTeX). It's "semi-open" in that parts of it are browse-able but file view requires authentication: https://predikin.biosci.uq.edu.... - Neil Saunders

Added wiki + forms = LIMS/ELN etc etc idea to Biogang projects: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Bi... - Neil Saunders

The other thing I like about the wiki is the discussion page. Supervisors/PI's can read and make comments at their own leisure. I would love to have "virtual meetings" on my ELN - that way when it comes up "what ! you did it that way !?!?!" "But we spoke about that.." "No we didn't..." situations are eliminated. - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

Neil: What about those of us absolutely unable to "code up your own web app" in any language at all? We need someone to make those templates for us... - Heather

Ricardo: I definitely would like the content of each lab notebook *entry* to be searchable. For some reason, this <sitesearch>title=Search this Project</sitesearch> only seems to search within the page titles, at least for me. I'd also like a way to make image entry possible from within the pages one is editing (ie. a notebook page), the way Wordpress does when you are making a blog post. I might be asking for the moon... - Heather

@Heather - by "you", I mean "programmers", obviously! A good thing about wikis is that they are accessible to anyone. If a programmer wants to make them do more, they have to decide whether learning how to hack the wiki is a good use of their time and how extensible the wiki software is. The question is: how many wikis offer this extensive customisation? For a web developer, it can be faster just to code in what they know than learn a new framework. - Neil Saunders

@Ricardo: I signed up for a lab notebook just to play with it (my boss is very conservative, I can't use it for anything real...yet) and managed to break it by including an apostrophe in my "lab" name. I got email from the dude who looks after the notebooks, but he never did get around to fixing what I messed up... - Bill Hooker

Andrew - in a sense we use "templates" on the Wikispaces notebook since students often copy a previous similar experiment and delete the unrelated stuff. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Mitchell - one of my favorite features on the online notebook is being able to point out problems or ask questions directly on the page in bold and italics. When the students address the issues they can remove my comment. I have found this to be much more useful than the discussion tool since it is much harder to point to the exact section in the text. - Jean-Claude Bradley

@Bill I'll fix it up and let you know via email. - Ricardo Vidal

@Heather I believe that the search is working properly. It performs a restricted search within your lab notebook. As for the images, you can add images inside but I see what you are looking for. It is totally possible and I'll suggest it to be implemented :-) - Ricardo Vidal

Sorry to trouble you, but I don't get why it doesn't. Not browser-dependent... for example, if I search http://www.openwetware.org/wik... for the string "Sophie", I get this message: There is no page titled "Sophie +"Etchevers:Notebook/Genomics of hNCC" -"Lab Notebook"". - Heather

I also deleted any previous answers that had been entered so far, because I wasn't clear about how the data would be used. So if you've filled out the survey once, and are happy about your data being released, you'll need to do it again. - Michael Barton

re-posted the form on my blog. - Pierre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... should be enough to figure if you're covered. Data is anonymous and if everyone who takes place understands the data is to be released, not sure what the problem would be - Daniel Swan via twhirl

Cheers Dan. :) - Michael Barton

Michael, for Nationality, should I put "American" or "United States"? "American" is geographically (though not practically) ambiguous. Too bad those fields aren't drop-down boxes so the input is standardized and idiot proof. :-( - Chris Lasher

re-posted the survey as well. - Pedro Beltrao

I've only studied bioinformatics briefly but should be eligible to fill out the survey and I may be able to forward this to some researchers I know - Julian Baldwin

Has E-Bay really stagnated and failed? Yahoo looks to be in more jeopardy because they haven't expanded with services hat equal those of GOOG. - Michael VanDervort via Alert Thingy

Ok, now corrected to say what I meant :) - Vlado Handziski

creative use of Google Trends + 1. Interesting grouping Digg in there, that will undoubtedly upset some people. I would have used Pownce, Kevin seems more forgiving when you attack that, after all even he can see the fail train when its running. - Duncan Riley

Can't agree that Yahoo! has really failed, either. Failed at what? They've still got a bunch of properties that are used by many millions every day. :shrug: - Brent Newhall

Science Progress is amazing. I subscribe to only the best posts via AideRSS, which I can't recommend highly enough for those of us without enough time: http://www.aiderss.com/rss/gre... - Donnie Berkholz

We are so screwed. :-( - Bill Hooker

"Like" as in "I like that someone noticed this and is still pushing the issue". - Andrew Perry

Well, if it's tre that the odds of someone getting a tenure track position by 35 are only 7%, there's only one solution: make PhD programs a mandatory two decade ordeal! That should get most people past 35! - Todd Harris via twhirl

"In 2007, two hundred scientists received six or more NIH grants, and a single investigator won 32 grants, while many others got close to ten." This sounds ridiculous. It is clear that this investigator cannot be coordinating closely all those projects. - Pedro Beltrao

It's a classic catch-22. Increasingly, funding consists of large grants to established researchers with stellar track records. However, to become established and build a track record, you need funding - which you can't get. I'd actually like to see postdocs desert academia en masse; let's see where the big bosses would be without their slave labour. - Neil Saunders

I've always wondered how science would work with a more active 'union' for PhD students and/or PostDocs .... if they went on strike how would things pan out ... it's not like public transport employees or a big building project with tight deadlines ... the 'general public' probably wouldn't notice for years. Hence the level of exploitation that occurs (not saying every student/postdoc is exploited, but many are, and I think the lack of any power in a stop-work is a large part of it). - Andrew Perry

I still get a little bugged by the assumption that PhD = career in academia - Deepak

Yeah, I've often wondered how long it would take for anyone to notice if academic researchers went on strike :) - Neil Saunders

Thing is, the rules are different in academia. Basically, if you're not independently-funded, you don't count and are not free to pursue your own agenda. So we end up working for successful group leaders and furthering their careers, rather than our own. I personally think it's wrong that senior researchers get credit for minimal input, solely because they hold the grant, but that's how it is. - Neil Saunders

Neil ... one of the many reasons I wasn't interested in academia. In a good company, you get recognized (as does your manager) when you do well. In academia, it seems like the managers (PIs) get undue credit ... nothing wrong with academic science. I quite envy the freedom from time to time, but there's a lot more - Deepak

@Neil: don't disagree with you, but just to play DA: it's brutal to get and hold onto a lab as a PI, and once you're there it takes all your time and energy just to hang on. (Unless you're one of the silver-spoon Big Shots, but there are a lot more small, struggling labs than big fat ones.) So there's a PI catch-22 as well: you have to take credit for what your lab does, or you get no credit at all. I keep wondering whether Pawel and his freelancing ideas might not be a viable alternative model... - Bill Hooker

@Bill - don't disagree with you either. In theory, a PI is rewarded for their previous hard work, skills in organisation, directing research, mentoring and so on. Sometimes, it even works out like that :) However, I do think we've entered an era where the system actively favours established researchers and actively discriminates against young, early-career scientists. I think it's untenable and would like to see it proved so by people voting with their feet and getting out. - Neil Saunders

I think there's definitely a "rich-get-richer" thing going on. I also think that competition has reached the point -- 7%! -- where we might as well draw names out of a hat. (Sneaky self link: http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/...) There's not much correlation any more between smarts+hard work and success. Something's gotta give. - Bill Hooker

@deepak: One problem is that academic training is done by academics. That's all they know. They aren't prepared to train people for careers in other environments. And as for grad students striking, it's been done, and doesn't really work for reasons mentioned below. Besides, aren't we all in it for the love of discovery? Are you really going to go on strike when your killer experiment you've spent a year setting up is coming to fruition, your bunnies need a bleed, or you need to read galleys? - Todd Harris via twhirl

Todd, I wouldn't disagree with that, but there are more than enough PhDs who move on to industry, where quite frankly I enjoyed the science I did. I think the stike that Neil refers to is people choosing industry over academia - Deepak

That is indeed the action I meant. The whole notion of striking PhDs/postdocs is ridiculous! If your job (any job) is really making you so unhappy, then look elsewhere. I'm acutely aware of "whinging postdoc" syndrome when we explore these issues. I have no time for those "life is so hard in academia" style of blogs. It really isn't. - Neil Saunders

Well, the strike I was referring to was a real strike, not a shift out of academia, but for reasons Todd (and I) have already stated, it wouldn't work, it would have to be a pretty bad situation before things came to that, and despite problems overall most junior scientists do love their work to much to do it. Because of this, it's one less bargaining chip that they have to improve their situation, unlike some other industries. So in reality, I guess a move to industry is a good alternative to a strike ... - Andrew Perry

Especially since it's often a pretty good alternative, and you get to build stuff and often, esp in a small company, get to do some very interesting research - Deepak

I came to this discussion late (ironically because I'm writing yet another grant) but thought I add anyway. I train people in my lab for academics or industry. Most have gone on to industry as it turns out. Since I've worked in both settings its easy for me to make the training fit either option. I try to give the person the chops for either and then let them pick. - Maureen

Since we are talking about alternative career paths it could be worth mentioning that scientific publishing is still growing at a strong pace. I think if I was not happy with research in academia publishing would be the place I would look for an alternative. - Pedro Beltrao

Postdocs: A 1960s invention because they didn't have enough professorships. Lame. Lame. Lame. - Mitchell Tsai

Comments came back today for a .au funding round. A comment directed at a senior researcher with 10 000+ citations was "very good track record but very no recent first author papers". Also last year the Platypus was not exciting, this year the reviewers are so excited they are creaming their pants. Two questions. Who are the idiots who review these grants (I hope it isn’t those who hold 10+ grants)? Are the only things that get funded something that's been big in the media? It appears very short-term hype focused vs long term vision - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

This is the logical outcome of poorly synchronized boom-bust cycles in funding, training and the availability of scientific careers in any given place. On top of this, since science is now a transnational career possibility, problems are being exacerbated by even more short-sighted policies in other countries. Some interesting comments here: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/... - Heather

Reading this has rather put me off continuing in academia. I like doing research, but I'm not sure if I fancy spending most of my time writing grants if I become successful. Success in research = do less research ? - Michael Barton

Michael, I do think that to an extent it's a choice. I know a few PIs who still write their own code. Even in industry you can choose your track (technical vs. management). Most of my friends are still in the technical track and at least managing large projects if not right in the middle of them. - Deepak

"Success in research = do less research?" Depends in part on the field. A few years ago I started going to occasional math and philosophy meetings (I'm a physicist). I noticed the senior mathematicians and philosophers were a much more interesting and happy bunch than the senior physicists, on average. My eventual theory was that the relatively low level of funding in mathematics and philosophy was actually a boon for these people. Most senior physicists are machines for turning coffee into grants. - Michael Nielsen