From the article, you learned about the difficulties (competition,
politics, corruption, greed, pursuing of own interests, education, etc) that
scientists face in trying to collaborate with each other to obtain the most
accurate results. It has been established that the collaboration must be done
for future SNP research. Then, how do you think these difficulties can be
overcome and will there be further ramifications?
Often collaboration between
scientists is necessary for advancement such as the research on SNPs as it
requires vast data sets. Collaboration between scientists is important because
it provides faster results and increases scientific progress. If scientists
work together, the work load of the research would be divided and this would
allow for more efficient research and faster results. Yet, from the article and
class discussions, it is evident scientists face many difficulties when trying
to collaborate with each other for instance, greed, competition, money, etc.
Competition among scientists is hard to overcome as it is human nature to be
competitive. A little sense of competition is ok since it creates motivation in
scientists to work harder in order to be the first to discover, publish, and
receive credit and grants. However, intense competition creates a barrier to
collaboration as scientists would not receive all the recognition and financial
grants to themselves.
In order to overcome these
difficulties, scientists need to change their view and put aside their greed
and understand that science is not about money and publicity but for the
greater good of humanity. For instance, scientists could start working in
research teams to develop a sense of team work where all the team members work
towards SNP research together instead of trying to publish individually. By
doing this, scientists would collaborate to benefit society and as a result
there would be great advancements in research. Also, international research
projects can be created to encourage the collaboration of scientists from
different countries. The video on SNP Chip for the Sheep Genome is a good example
of SNP international collaboration. To produce the SNP chip, nineteen countries
collaborated, with each country playing a role in part of the research process
to contribute to a piece of the puzzle. In addition, the funding for the
research was shared as well. Together, these countries were able to create a
pool of resources and developed a SNP chip.
This shows that it is in fact
possible for scientists to overcome competitiveness and collaborate for the
common good of science and society. However, this is hard to achieve in the
science community as money and corruption tend to come in the way of
collaboration.
