Bioinformatics elephant and Blind men
A group of blind men touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one touches a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes on what they felt, and learn they are in complete disagreement. The story indicates that reality may be viewed differently depending upon one’s perspective, and suggests that what seems an absolute truth may be relative due to the deceptive nature of half-truths.
Science or Tool
People in specialized disciplines ignore closely related fields, often out of arrogance. They may suffer of professional disciplinary “blinders”, and bioinformatics is a prime example.
A biologist often defines bioinformatics as applications of computers in biology, while a computer scientist thinks that reducing bioinformatics to “applications of computers in biology” diminishes the rich intellectual content of bioinformatics. Most of researchers see themselves as pure biologists or computer scientist first, for them bioinformatics is either a tool to be used or it is just a intellectual practice, not a specialty to follow. Neither a experimental biologist nor a computer scientist will ever recognize the sole existence of bioinformatics as separate scientific discipline, and the massage is very clear- we should not expect that a trained computer scientist or biologist will ever discern this. Consider the fact that now most of the wet labs are equipped with bioinformatics facilities, and most of these arrangements (wet+dry lab) are just to support the wet lab research. Likewise computer science thinks a biological problem as computational complexity, delivering more efficient and faster algorithms without connecting it with biological reality. What we require is a moderate way of doing the bioinformatics research, where the emphasis will be more on answering as many questions we can with minimal experimentation. If experimental data points are dots then only bioinformatics can connect these dots to create a holistic picture of the biological reality. Bioinformatics will be appreciated and acknowledge by others only if it is managed by trained bioinformaticains, and when wet labs will be established to support computational findings.
Hype or Hypo
Looking at long list of bioinformatics programs from undergraduate to PhD level (some of them produce genuine bioinformatician and most of them not so genuine) it gives a certain impression that bioinformatics as discipline is overrated. Like every other research bioinformatics is very much repetitive and persistent. Despite the hypes I personally encountered that bioinformatics professionals are equipped with better skills and application abilities than their computer science peers. Considering the quality of the problems bioinformatic poses, it’s difficult not to get excited. Do it because you love it, it gives a sense of satisfaction, regardless of lack of appreciation and recognition.
PS:For those who predicted the death of bioinformatics or they think that bioinformatics reached a wall of stagnation, they might have touched the shit of this elephant (Thanks to Anand).
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I am truly a fan of your posts now. Write in same way you wrote last few blogs and it will make sense to those who actually don’t know anything about the subject and will take you words farther. And as sethu said sometime during our blind four years, that bioinformatics will have a natural death in years to come I would say he might have touched the shit of this elephant.
More is there in Bioinformatics, but only for those who are serious towards it. And on serious note, in any subject there is lot to learn if one is striving to learn. Keep writing.
Cheers,
Anand
A very good article Tiwariji. I think you’ve really touched the core of the problem that has been curbing Bioinformatics and Computational biology for many years. Very often we encounter people who have good knowledge of one of the fields of computer science and biology while lacking the much needed insight into the other making their effort a one-eyed-vision. A computer scientist, as I have seen takes inspiration from a biological problem and try solving it in his own domain without really appreciating the problem on hand and its importance to biology, while a biologist in many cases ‘merely’ uses the tools designed by the former without really understanding the fine details and therefore ends up misusing the tool in many cases. What we really need now are training programs which can address this problem and produce individuals who can really push forward this field.
Bioinformatics elephant and Blind men: A group of blind men touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one.. http://tinyurl.com/ch8v2e
thanks you anand, very nice comment particularly shit of this elephant
Really great bhaiya…….. I was also thinking of the same but I had no words to explain.
-Prabhat
nice read tiwari ji
In my opinion Bioinformatics is niether overrated nor is it repetetive. complementary nature of science has been common theme from quite a some time but fields like bioinformatics have given the scope of amalgmating these so called pure sciences to study various complex natural phenomenon.I would also like to point out that Bioinformatics involve other form of pure sciences like mathematics and physics as well,along with biology and computer science .it is interesting and challenging to work in bioinformatics because of this very interdisciplinary nature.
Dear Blogger,
It is so nice to read and a good message to students and non bioinfos