Parasitic. In the dramatic language that was somewhat reminiscent of the current US primaries, the New England Journal of Medicine warned of an emerging class of researchers referred to as research parasites, researchers who had nothing to do with an initial study, but re-analyze data without being connected to the initial study design, possibly for their own purposes. The NEJM editorial was accompanied by a call for collaborative research on a coordinated basis rather than analyzing data without working with the researchers who were initially involved in the generation of the data. Let’s discuss whether genetics is currently under threat from research parasite infestation and whether this may actually be a good thing. Continue reading
Tag Archives: collaborative research projects
Chutzpah, Zen and Fahrvernügen – the 2013 Sde Boker workshop
Desert Dessert. Cold temperatures, streets closed because of snow – this is not what you expect when traveling to Israel. You also do not expect to have the chance to taste traditional Bedouin food and to see a beautiful canyon every morning. The biggest surprise is that you do not expect this during a workshop. From Dec 12-15th, the European epilepsy genetic community gathered in Be’er Sheva and Sde Boker, Israel for a combined epilepsy genetics workshop and a Young Researcher Meeting. This is a brief attempt to capture the atmosphere of this workshop for everybody who could not attend. By the way, “desert dessert” is a port wine produced in the Negev desert.
Invitation for the EuroEPINOMICS General Assembly in Tübingen
We need to talk. Much has happened in EuroEPINOMICS land ever since the launch of this Eurocores activity in 2011. Back then, exomes were still a realistic, but somewhat remote possibility and the complexity and ambiguity of the human genome was only beginning to be revealed. Now, roughly two years later, we have witnessed major breakthroughs in understanding epilepsy through genetic findings and we have generated large datasets on common and rare epilepsy syndromes that require an unanticipated effort for data mining and sharing. The EuroEPINOMICS Consortium will hold its 2013 General Assembly in Tübingen, Germany, from 30.10-01.11.2013. This meeting will connect all four Collaborative Research Projects and will be the central meeting of this year to jointly discuss our current activities and plans for the future. Continue reading
The meeting of the 1000 exomes
1000 exomes. The EuroEPINOMICS consortium will host its first data analysis meeting at the Luxembourg Centre for System Biomedicine from July 5th to July 7th, 2012, to discuss the results from the high-throughput genomic platforms in the CoGIE, RES, EpiGENet and Epiglia consortia. We will present the first results of the four EuroEPINOMICS programs generated by high-throughput genomic technologies and discuss the overall direction of genetic analysis for the next years, which should soon encompass the proverbial 1000 exomes. In preparation, let’s revisit high-throughput epilepsy genomics. Continue reading
