DISQUS

Now this is the kind of discussion I'd like to be having! I'm going to say some stuff you're going to disagree with, and probably some stuff that pisses you off, Terry, but I want as much as you do to get analytics that works well, because I need to measure social media impact for my job, too. So I'm speaking from my perception of reality on how to get analytics that works, with no malice intended.

On a daily basis, I deal with problems and questions about measuring social media activity, and there really is no way to get corporate boards made up of mostly people who remember the Golden Age of radio to get on board with social media unless there's a good way to measure it. Unfortunately, the analytics tools are mostly made by people with a marketing/analytics background, which means most people won't use them, so the very use of them tags the user as a marketer, which means any link shortened with them starts out with a performance penalty. Bit.ly is popular because of the fact it's simple and clean - no frames or heavy tracking overhead, no wonkiness.

As much as I would love better metrics, the non-metric aspects of the shortener must come first if anyone's gonna use the thing. This is what bit.ly does well and ow.ly does really poorly.

Professional marketing and SEO is absolutely necessary for social media to be taken seriously by people with money, but you've got to think of yourselves like trash collectors. You provide a necessary service, but most people would rather you stayed out of sight and out of mind. Now, I understand that sounds really harsh, but I also think it reflects reality. It's a tough job - you're doing something really valuable and important, but you'll never be well-respected except among your own profession.

Now, how do we get analytics that puts the usability first, but also allows stats to be collected. IOW, without changing how bit.ly looks to the average user, how to we add analytics, invisibly?

I do agree better analytics support would be great, but let's not forget that there are people besides marketers who shorten links and use twitter.

That's pretty cool, AJ. I've always just fed my feed into friendfeed, but of course that doesn't work if the cite is in someone else's library.

Wow, David and I agree on something! Full-text search is awesome! Based on our our previous discussions, I know that serendipitous discovery and collaboration aren't at the top of his list. The main thing Mendeley is missing, IMO, is an RSS feed of your library or tags, precisely to facilitate such serendipity. Right now, I'm getting by with the real-time sync between Mendeley and Citeulike. Have you played with that yet, AJ?

AJ, I'm sorry Mendeley made a bad impression on you. If I'm reading you right, you want the following (which are pretty much my top three requirements also):

Simply used via browser bookmarklet.
Allows sharing via group libraries.
Free.

You also want it to not bug you to fill out an online profile.

I'll pass your feedback on to the developers, but since all of the things you want to do are already possible with Mendeley, what would you suggest the change to make it less "complicated looking"?

What about just using the friendfeed stream? That displays pictures and video inline.

This questions was actually studied in "The Ability of Woodchucks to Chuck Cellulose Fibers," by P.A. Paskevich and T.B. Shea.
This study answers two questions: Can a woodchuck in fact chuck
wood, and if so, can the chucked material be quantified?
--see: AIR, vol. 1, no. 4, July/August 1995, pp. 4-9.

I don't like it. It places the focus on personalities rather than content, and encourages chattiness rather than discussion around useful content. It also inhibits discussion by merging comments on the same item in different places. The separation sounded like a bug to be fixed, but I actually like the different turn the discussion would take on the same item in different places, so it turned out to be a great, activity-promoting feature.

It does seem rather unlikely that there won't be a correlation between pH and ionic concentration in clinically-interesting samples.

I'm sure they can make it work, but I wonder how well they can compete against the other nanosensing technologies using ring resonators or microcantilevers.

Aren't nanowires extremely sensitive to ionic concentration? Won't that kill their sensitivity in whole blood?

SNP analysis reveals non-medical information such as ancestry, so it's nonsensical to make overworked doctors the gatekeepers of that info. As I expected, it's a regulatory dinosaur that is confusing this technology with DTC genetic tests that they've had issues with in the past. Someone will speak to Mrs. Nickels and if she's as sharp as they say she is, she'll realize the difference between the two. Hopefully by then the fraudsters will have moved on, too.

I think the term for this is not even wrong.

Doesn't this really hinge on how things are represented? The DTC genetic testing services that the CLIA applies to are explicitly for a medical purpose. 23andme's service is explicitly not for medical purposes. While I agree they should hold themselves to the same standard as a medical testing lab, the fact is they aren't, and go to great lengths to make sure people understand this. If, despite all the warnings to the contrary, someone uses their 23andme information to make a medical decision, that's their own damn fault.

All they have to do if they're worried about something in their 23andme results is to go see a doctor and get themselves an actual genetic test designed and validated for diagnostic use. Then they, with the help of their doctor, can start making medical decisions with no hand-wringing about 23andme's accuracy necessary.

Someone could potentially use one of those personal breathalyzer things to decide whether or not they're safe to drive and get a DUI anyways due to an instrument failure. Does that mean they shouldn't sell them, or do we give people the freedom to have it along with the responsibility to accept the consequences if they put too much trust in its results?

Steve is so shooting himself in the foot here. Does he really think that the services of a genetic counselor will be needed less , if everyone is getting genotyped?

Of course, the pro-genotyping side made a similar mistake in the GINA legislation. Did it not occur to them that insurance companies would PAY people to get their genotypes read?

Well said, but note that many genetic counselors feel threatened by these services, informational or not. Perhaps there should be some outreach to doctor's associations to soothe their worry?

So, I signed up for Disqus using my own, personal, OpenID, not from clickpass. Disqus.com says I'm logged in, but any disqus-using site, such as this one, doesn't know that I'm logged in. Checking the "Verify my post" option presents login options consisting only of username and password, no OpenID available. Since I never setup a password, I can't leave a comment anywhere using attached to my disqus profile.

Is this something you're working on, or do I not understand something.

geeky girl talking about next-gen sequencing? I think I'm in love...

XKCD without alt/hover-text just isn't the same.

I got some email from them via the DNA network, but I think I'm going to hold off until things look a little more polished. I'm not quite as early an adopter as you ;-)

It's the limitations you bump up against using Excel/Word that teach you why R/LaTeX are important and useful. I think a little course on data hygeine would be a good addition to any science curriculum, but I also think Excel's OK for a once-off or lightweight analysis.

Well, New Orleans never really was patting themselves on the back. The Army Corps of Engineers (*federal* employees) charged with maintaining the levees were patting themselves on the back for saving so much money cutting corners. But to further the analogy, suppose something like the national flood insurance program(which isn't the best example, I understand) could provide a similar, and more sane example of how to handle insuring things for which risks are reasonably well known. Perhaps a low base rate with a rider for certain specific coverages?

Anyways, I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one that doesn't think GINA makes any damn sense. Perhaps single-payer health care will moot the whole issue.

Any bets as to whether GINA will be as full of FAIL as the ACOE?

I think these are great points. I said the same things to Hsien Hsien and Steve back when it was just proposed legislation. GINA just seems like an entirely impossible to enforce, head-in-the-sand approach to the issue, not to mention how bad it'll screw up any academic research proposed for these impossible to anonymize collections of data.

Won't this allow insurance companies to more accurately determine risk, lowering the cost for everyone immediately, and then still further when medical care improves because of it?

He was probably just sleep deprived. Provigil just keeps you awake, it doesn't make you smarter or increase your memory. There are more effective and safer ways of increasing your intelligence, and they're discussed here.

Yeah, I worry about abuse too, and accounts like his are basically encouraging abuse. Some senator's kid is going to get his hands on some, stay up for 2 weeks, go absolutely crazy and kill someone or himself, and we'll have some media hysteria and shiny new reactionary laws prohibiting anything vaguely resembling the stuff.

Congrats, Johann, you just set research on intelligence back 20 years. I personally think the time has come for seriously looking into whether or not the functioning of our brains can be augmented, but it's not going to happen by tabloid columnists and bloggers ordering random shit over the internet and writing about how it made them feel.

Seriously now, there are some safe and sane things you can do, today, to help keep your mind young and maybe even to boost your memory or motivation a little. I encourage everyone to at least read about the topic, so they can form an educated opinion.

You know, I think the article discussing modafinil was a little over-enthusiastic. It's more suited for people who have to say alert and watchful for long periods of time, rather than people who need to make better decisions. It would help night watchmen or troops on combat missions more than it would help a scientist or software developer. Johann took an over-the-top sensationalistic approach to his article, and probably has ended up hurting the overall discussion.

Modafinil won't make you smarter, it won't improve your memory, and it won't raise your IQ. All it does is keep the need for sleep at bay for a little while. If he had such a huge effect, he was probably sleep-deprived during his use. If you read other accounts, they don't speak in such glowing terms.

Not to mention that there are apparently safer, cheaper, and easier-to-get things available. If you'd like to know more, I recommend Smart Drugs and Nutrients.