"Competition has almost made conferences obsolete"
Thomas Maniatis
Harvard University

i have read an article in nature about the competion to discover something and publish it in order to be acknowledge in the scientific world. its is true (and i agree) that mutual suspicion is drying up the free exchange of ideas which is really sad. the question that remains to be answered ( by ourselves of course) is are we doomed to work alone?

Certainly we need a balance between these two. If everything works out like the human genome project we will have solved more problems.

mario

Well, I strongly believe that if the legislation had not changed to allow patending of "gene products of beneficial properties/functions", Cellera wouldn't bother with sequencing the human genome. Money makes the world go round...

indeed money makes the world or science go round. it is a pity but that is the hard truth. i´m optimistic though that this cliche will be set aside when a call for universal collaboration is raised. espero que es asi.

Hmm...how will we be paid, if everything is free universal collaboration. How will we buy reagents to do all this wonderful research? I've worked on both sides of the fence; 7 years postdoc'ing, and now in biotech'. Quite frankly, there's a huge amount of research that goes on in industry that is not published nor patented. A person's worth as a scientist is not measured by the number of publications they have achieved. I for one am glad I've gotten off the academic treadmill. Now I have guilt free weekends, where I don't feel bad for not going into the lab, the work is well funded and equipped (industry properly funds projects, academia does everything on the cheap, and it did get frustrating). As a result, I am much more productive, and happier as a scientist