Genetics by Numbers

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.