Understanding genetic interaction networks

Here is a video of a talk I gave at the Newton Institute in Cambridge on Understanding genetic interaction networks as part of a Programme on Theoretical Foundations for Statistical Network Analysis.

I would have liked to embed the video, but wordpress didn’t let me. So click here please:

http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/2284116/embed

At the end is a surprisingly long Q&A about what type of analysis did and did not go into the iconic Figure 1 of Costanzo et al 2010. I need to learn the magic words “What a great question! Let’s discuss it offline…”

Florian

On systems biology and bullshit

Clarity and lucidity are key strengths of scientists and writers. Jargon and cliches can make the best paper unreadable. This is why science writer Carl Zimmer keeps an index of banned words his students should avoid.

One of the words on the index is ‘breakthrough,’ which is overused, because the person reporting it doesn’t bother to think about how big the step forward really is. Using such cliches shows sloppy thinking and lack of scrutiny. This is why Zimmer bans ‘breakthrough‘ “unless you are covering Principia Mathematica”, in which case you are fine, regardless of whether you refer to Whitehead and Russell or Newton.

Not only science writers need to avoid cliches and enrich their texts for content – ‘real’ scientists also often use fancy buzz words with far too much levity. Just think of these three (in no particular order) that you can hear in almost every systems biology talk:

1. Integrated,
2. Network,
3. System.