True Open Source
Gajendra P.S. Raghava
Saturday, 01 November 2008 18:49 UTC
Dear Colleagues
I read this story and highly impress. I thought to share this story with you. This story is very important for Indians where sharing is one of the major problems in progress of country. It has been observed that most us prefer to die with knowledge/data instead of sharing with community. This is one of the reason that contribution of indians is very limited in open source (public domain). We advertise at number of sites that we are building computational resources for drug discovery (CRDD at http://crdd.osdd.net/ ) but so far contribution is very limited. We also write concept of virtual summer training but participation of student is not very encouraging. It is very important in life that we should share our resources/data/knowledge.
Regards
Raghava
Open Science Pioneer Award: Douglas Prasher and the Sharing of the GFP Gene
There is a touching and fascinating story in the Cape Cod Times about Douglas Prasher who used to work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In the 1960s he did some of the pioneering work on GFP (the discovery of which was why Osamu Shimomura, Roger Tsein and Martin Chalfie were given the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year). Prasher had cloned the gene for GFP but his research funds ran out and he stopped working on GFP (he is currently living in Huntsville Alabama and working as a shuttle driver for a car dealership).
His pioneering work was critical to the later work on GFP and one of the nobel winner Martin Chalfie says “Prasher’s work was critical and essential for the work we did in our lab,” Chalfie said. “They could’ve easily given the prize to Douglas and the other two and left me out.”
What Prasher did that was so critical was that he gave the cloned gene away to Tsein and Chalfie and others. He was under no obligation per se to give away the gene. But he bears no sour grapes. And he says something fundamentally true about this:
“When you’re using public funds, I personally believe you have an obligation to share,” Prasher said. “I put my heart and soul into it, but if I kept that stuff, it wasn’t gonna go anyplace.”
Sharing of resources is common in science but not universal. And many do it, well, just because it is common practice. But I think we forget sometimes that we have an obligation to share beyond what is common practice. We have an obligation because the advancement of science is why the government (and the public) gives us money to do our work. So, for not harboring sour grapes about missing out on a Nobel Prize, and for emphasizing the “public good” part of sharing scientific resources, I am giving Douglas Prasher an “Open Science Pioneer Award”
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Good morning -
We like to share your interest in Building Computational Resources and organising Virtual Summer Training. You seem to loose heart in both of your approaches – this is very natural in India. Let a subject be taken by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam with which he is not acquainted at all and see the pouring. In India most of the research student follow a simple logic – how to get seal and signature of reputed institution and well known person; the integrity with the system in the line of knowledge and skill is far from reach even after 62 years of our independence. The reason is simple – we are citizen of developing countries and our mind is tagged differently. But it needs to be addressed positively for person like you. In recent days the Parliament of India is in correct mood and the programs on LOK SABHA TV are highlly impressive from development point of view. Persons like you and executives of Nature India may initiate a program for this channel. Please consult Hon. Speaker of Loksabha and the Secretary General Shri P. D. T. Achary on this matter. Several societal programs are in offing and certainly the few of your choice that aims to benefit the nation and the budding intellectuals will be surely honored by both the dignitaries and the program director.
Regards
Dr. R. Dayal Yadav
Director – Research
Study Group DIM. IUI -
This is interesting that we got lot of emails when their is issue to criticize Indian system. Lot of discussions and problems in system; problem in indian eduction and research system. There is nearly no response even criticism on this topic “True open source” , where every one can contribute. Every indian can play a role in developing open source from India. Open source for drug discovery is mission to promote open source so drug can be discovered at cheaper rate. Idea is to decrease the cost so poor person can afford. This project and its module like CRDD are on web site from June 2008, but response from public is not very encouraging.
Following is my observation,OSDD is completely new experiment and making this successful is really a difficult task. In indian system running such type of models is really difficult. First of all we have very limited expert and their expertise is not up-to level. Even if we generate expertise than we are not ready to work under the umbrella of others. Every expert wants to become top leader and not ready to work under leadership of other expert. Every one feel that other should work for me and I will only manage the show. We are not ready to trust on each other, every person feel that I am only person in country who is doing his/her duty. We do not respect and trust our colleagues particularly indian colleagues. We wish to extract maximum from system with minimum work. Your colleagues doubt on your intention, even if you work hard and server society with full sincerity. This force you to think, why are you working for society which doubt on your intention. This also force you to think about your-self development, if you wish to succeed in Indian society. It is difficult to activate a society which is dominated by selfish/self-centered persons. Their is need to change our attitude if we wish to change the system.
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I fully agree what Gajendra have observed.
From the very beginning (from our school and then at home) we realized that taking responsibility and giving any novel idea to anyone will not be acknowledged in most of the time, leave alone rewarded. Once I was at a CSIR institute in India. There they claim to develop a “more efficient” protocol to isolate an anti-cancer drug. The person who actually did the work was a PhD student and I personally know him. While filing the Indian patent, his name was not there, as per “institute rule” and he was not considered for any monetary “award” when the “efficient” protocol was sold to a pharma company. Later I came across many such examples where main person for a publication was not the first author, where spouse and higher officials (very commonly the directors of an Institute) are included as co-author (even as first and/or corresponding author) when they have no contribution in that work.
If you analyze such behavior a little deeper you will realize that our social structure is responsible for most of the cases. During childhood many parents ask their kids to finish certain jobs (mostly study related) and promise them of a reward once the job is done successfully within a specified time (e.g a tour to zoo or few candies etc). But most of the time such promises are not kept by our own parents (in some pretext or other). Many times our honesty and straightforwardness will be used against us even though it was extracted with a promise that “tell the truth and nothing will happen to you” (I have many examples from my own school days). From the very boyhood we realized that if we have proper connections, we can get rid of any responsibility (if something goes wrong) or can get highest reward even when we have no or very little contribution (for successful projects).
I have witnessed many examples where a person just advertise a project which he has no idea or competency about (but have learned some jargons while visiting abroad or reading an article) and give others the responsibility to make it a success. It will be futile to expect any help or acknowledgement from majority of such people, because they have no other option but to keep whatever minute idea or material they generated to themselves, to remain important or to show others how brilliant and important they are (in the organization and in the hierarchy). Majority of us are doing science to get recognition, if not money. And in such a competitive environment who will like to be left out? Almost none.I personally have shared many research materials and ideas with few people. Majority of them never bothered to acknowledge it, leave alone giving me any financial benefit arising from that. But more hurting is, when I asked any research material, they were very reluctant to share and most of the time we could not get it. This attitude is not limited to Indian scientists in India, but highly prevalent among those working abroad as well. But thankfully they never developed any such material that is so exclusive. We made it ourselves or got from other sources.
After such experiences people tend to behave a bit defensive. I agree with you that such attitude is harmful to them and for the society. Then, if I have limited ambition and ability, then I can afford to ignore helping others and be satisfied in my own well as a frog. -
It is very nice to see regular messages from the “three frequent visitors—-Dr.Dayal, Dr.Raghav, and Dr.Jayant” on this forum. Dr.Raghav has rightly echoed the problems faced by OSDD.Now having known the problems, the top brass of the OSDD should demonstrate some “strong leadership”and try to fix the problem. We all know the good old saying, “Charity begins at home”, so it is upto the visionaries of OSDD to lead the forum to a fruitful end. In my opinion, one major drawback of OSDD is non-assignment of jobs to the experts.In other words, lack of professionalism. If CSIR seriously wants the OSDD to succeed, it should try to develop different centers of expertise with different projects running in parallel but in synchrony.However, specific time frame should be assigned for the completion of each project.We should first build a strong base to succeed in projects like OSDD.
I have one suggestion. Lets assume there are “no experts” or everyone is an “expert”.Everyone is an expert because one can easily spend 16hrs a day (“seriously”) for six months to ‘theoretically master any field’, and have an up to date knowhow of the field. With this assumption, CSIR should hire young enthusiastic people on a temporary basis with the provision that they will be “rewarded appropriately—either in terms of monetary gain or job security” based on their success in the project they have been given. To make the system transparent, the parameters of measuring the success of the project should be spelled out in the advertisement of the job itself.
Upon recruitment of the candidate, CSIR should take care of the "bureaucracy/ scientocracy’ of the old system. Hope this might help. CSIR should also incorporate the ideas of the new recruits to make OSDD a success. -
Thanks for response and suggestions. Though it seems to easy to develop open source project like OSDD but in reality its a difficult job, in a system where people are self-centered. System is much more powerful than any individual irrespective to position/post. Even our president Dr Kalam tried hard to change our scientific community but could not change attitude of our scientists. I am not saying individual is not important, each individual is very important for system. Each individual have impact on society but it take long time to make even slight change in system. Regarding higher experts and developing experts in by giving job. Its not easy to attract and retain talent in system, once you trained they left the system. We have trained large number of PhD students, once they got knowledge they left the country. Their are number of reasons why we are unable to retain talent, one of the major reason is money see Role of Money in Indian Science
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