

Scientists Map 5,000 New Ocean Viruses - treefire86
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150521-ocean-viruses/

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dj-wonk
> "In the few decades since viruses were first found in the oceans, scientists
> have only been able to identify a handful of species. A new survey has
> uncovered nearly all the rest."

My first reaction was "What does 'nearly all the rest' mean and how can one
come to such a conclusion?" The article is a basic but interesting writeup
about Sullivan and his colleagues did to get there.

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dj-wonk
I'm concerned that the study may use "out of sample" reasoning in arriving at
its virus population count estimate. Here is a snippet from the Quanta article
showing some limitations of the sampling / collection methodology:

> In addition, the scientists sequenced only viruses that use DNA to encode
> their genes. Some viruses, such as influenza and HIV, use RNA, a single-
> strand version of DNA, to encode their genes. By one estimate, as many as
> half of the viruses in the ocean are RNA viruses. What’s more, the Tara
> Oceans survey only took samples from the surface of the ocean. The deeper
> regions have viruses, too, as does the sediment at the bottom of the sea.

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comrade1
ugh. quanta. That, medium.com, and one other that keeps getting posted to HN
news that I can't remember the name... it's all just pablum for the TED crowd.

Here's the original paper which you can't read because it's behind a paywall
even though it's research supported by your tax dollars:
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/1261498](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/1261498)

~~~
FlailFast
Is there any group lobbying for an open source proviso from results derived
from a certain threshold of government research funding? That feels like a no-
brainer to me, and one which could have enormously positive economic impact.

~~~
dj-wonk
As mentioned in [https://www.plos.org/open-access/](https://www.plos.org/open-
access/)

> There are many other organizations, such as SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing
> and Academic Resources Institute) and the Open Society Foundations, that
> work tirelessly for progress in Open Access. You can find many free
> resources to help you learn more or to advocate for OA journals in your
> institution.

See also: [https://doaj.org/oainfo](https://doaj.org/oainfo)

