

How outsourcing will transform scientific research - mrkurt
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/08/15/how-outsourcing-will-transform-scientific-research/

======
thefool
The one potential problem with going down this road is that even fewer people
will have a broad understanding of what is going on in complicated experiments
as labs are increasingly encouraged to specialize in a technique.

Without some incentive for such people to exist, it seems likely that
"obvious" connections between different fields may be missed for extended
periods of time as people focus on executing incremental experiments.

~~~
elizabethiorns
Actually I think this has the potential to increase the connections between
different fields because it will truly incentivize collaborations through a
market mechanism rather than the bartering system which currently exists (i.e
I'll trade you conducting this expt for authorship).

The way I envision it working is that the person who has the grand idea
obtains a grant and then breaks it up into microgrants which are outsourced to
specialists to conduct the expts efficiently. The results are then combined to
obtain a broad understanding of the particular question being asked by the
grant holder. The broad results can be communicated to all participants.

~~~
Create
You are alluding to __co_llaborations_ , while describing a market-based
system in which "specialists" would would essentially _sub_contract to your
_grand idea_. In effect just veiling the (current) feudalism in market PR, as
it happened to the economy at the turn of the last century.

Managing intellectual peers as subordinates will not work, if the "specialist"
is any smart, not just educated.

Btw: a _grand idea_ is worth nothing as it is: everybody has grand ideas.
Verne had the idea to go to the Moon, wrote it (ie. published it). I wonder
why he is not credited for it...

------
700ravens
What this author considers a novel, future direction for science is something
that I call "going to work in the morning." The US Department of Energy
operates many user facilities distributed around the country, including
nanotechnology centers, electron microscopy centers, neutron facilities, and
X-ray facilities. (I run an instrument at one of the X-ray facilities.) Access
to these facilities is free to the user and available through a peer-reviewed
proposal system. In many cases, these facilities provide access to equipment
and experimental techniques that don't exist at individual institutions. In
some cases (notably at the nano-centers) capabilities are provided that might
be available at a university or a company, but the nano-center provides access
to a very broad suite of instrumentation as well as access to expert staff.
While there might be a concern that the proposal system would cater to
insiders (as one commenter discussing CERN suggests below), that is not my
experience. I regularly have new folks coming to use my instrument.

My caveat here is that my field is in the physical sciences, while the author
works in the life sciences. The user facility concept is specialty of the DoE
and, while DoE user facilities do serve many life science users, it grew out
of a physical sciences funding agency. Still, the user facility concept works
well and is a model that could address the sort of distributed yet
collaborative science that the author describes.

~~~
flashingleds
It does seem odd. What you're talking about is not even particular to big user
facilities. If I don't have the (physics) facilities to do something, I just
track down someone who does and ask them (which is not hard using google or
looking at the relevant literature). The majority of the time they're happy to
collaborate on the basis that they're on the paper. I think I'm missing some
detail about this.

------
djkn0x
Some great quotes here: "Outsourcing revolutionized the IT industry in the
1990s and 2000s and I believe outsourcing has the potential to revolutionize
scientific research in the same way." "Just think of how many more discoveries
can be made when scientists are able to easily tap into the best resources.
That’s what gets me excited!" This is pretty radical stuff!

------
jayzee
It makes sense when you look at other industries from car manufacturing to IT.
In the west people moved to more and more specialized, cutting edge stuff
(Tesla, developing new dbs) while the bread and butter moved to places where
it was more economic. Makes sense that the trend would continue in science as
well.

~~~
joe_the_user
Yes,

But the thing with science is that a scientist has historically been
considered as not just someone competent enough to run a given experiment but
also as a "seeker after truth". And this does mean something, it means that
the scientist someone who you can trust to some degree to run experiments
honestly. And that trust has been broken on regular intervals and that trust
gets verified by repetition sure. But the basic "integrity" might just be
something that is hard to outsource in the fashion of IT outsourcing. But then
again, it might also involve a loss that various companies are happy to
accept.

~~~
elizabethiorns
The current system for evaluating a scientists reputation and integrity is
hardly perfect - it is estimated that fewer than 50% of data in published
papers can be reproduced (<http://lifescivc.com/2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-
failures/>). By creating a marketplace that has feedback and reputation it
might be possible to actually improve basic "integrity" in scientific research

~~~
jseliger
_it is estimated that fewer than 50% of data in published papers can be
reproduced (<http://lifescivc.com/2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-failures/>)._

I wonder if that data has been reproduced.

I also have a sudden inspiration for an XKCD strip.

------
jessriedel
I have no idea what they are outsourcing. Could someone explain?

~~~
elizabethiorns
Hi Jess - Science Exchange allows scientists to outsource individual
experiments to specialist labs and facilities. For example gene expression
profiling can be outsourced to specialist microarray providers. This is
becoming a bigger and bigger issue as technology advances and scientists are
forced to become more specialized.

~~~
jessriedel
I get the strong impression you have a very specific area or areas of science
in mind, but you seem to speak in generalities. One can't outsource, e.g.,
physics, anthropology, or geology. So what specific fields typically run
experiments which _can_ be outsourced? Is it just biology?

~~~
shadowfox
In some sense some of experimental physics is getting "outsourced" already.
For example (my understanding is that) there are many physicists working on
experimental data coming out of CERN who are not participating actual
design/running of the system. In that sense they are outsourcing the work to
specialists.

~~~
jessriedel
This is a bad example, as those scientist are still part of the collaboration.
(I was one of them.) The key part of outsourcing is that it is work done in
exchange for money. And it's an exchange between two independent parties which
are each self interested.

Otherwise, every time a business split up a project between multiple people or
departments it would be "outsourcing".

------
rebel19
Has outsourcing really revolutionized IT?

~~~
virmundi
From my limited view, not really. I've worked at multiple large insurance
companies (I'm a consultant) over the past 6 years. For many it has created a
large set communication disruptions that are hard to overcome. Also, many
outsourcing companies have poor quality control mechanisms. I've been at
multiple clients where an Indian firm "delivered" code that wouldn't compile.

Outsourced IT can be helpful for some processes. This seems to be mostly grind
work like using humans to automate testing. Rather than investing in a real
automated testing tool, scripts are created and then given to a team in the
country of outsource. They sit there clicking on links and buttons until
something fails. Then, if you're luck, they send you an email detailing what
buttons and data were modified before the failure. More often than not, you
just get an email that says X didn't work for account Y. But better them than
customers.

------
georgieporgie
_Outsourcing revolutionized the IT industry in the 1990s and 2000s_

It did? I thought it was generally accepted that outsourcing "IT" didn't
really work out well.

~~~
blrgeek
Outsourcing != offshoring.

Notice GE GM BT Verizon etc don't have huge IT teams anymore? That's
outsourcing. And it certainly worked.

For many basic IT services even ofshoring works well enough. Jury is out on
offshored product development though.

~~~
georgieporgie
_Notice GE GM BT Verizon etc don't have huge IT teams anymore? That's
outsourcing. And it certainly worked._

I wasn't aware of this.

