Friday Links
All your base are biased to us. A review of the many ways in which DNA-seq & RNA-seq library preparation methods are biased
Current Practice in Software Development for Computational Neuroscience and How to Improve It
My first thought was that it is silly that we have these Current Practice in Software Development in [Subfield of Field] papers when the issues are not that different between fields. However, this paper does have a few quite interesting thoughts which are as applicable to Computational Biology as to Computational Neuroscience.
3. Is post publication criticism of work cyberbullying?
Part of the problem is with with how broad people have been interpreting the notion of cyberbullying:
A person commits electronic harassment when such person, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person, transmits, posts, displays or disseminates, by or through an electronic communication device [...] which [...] (5) Has the effect of causing substantial embarrassment or humiliation to that person within an academic or professional community.
(See popehat for a less measured take on this issue. And, yes, this bill did not become law [and, if it did, it would be have been struck down as unconstitutional, but the point is that people seriously proposed it.)
4. I mentioned back in June that the University of Lisbon was merging with the Technical University of Lisbon and how this should lead to higher rankings for the combined university.
Today, I read that, indeed, the combined university had reached number 2 in the SCImago Iberian rank. This is a ranking system which does not seem to control for size of the institution (in the global tables, MIT clocks in at 43, well below institutions such as the Veteran Affairs Medical Centers at 17). Still, these results are already being trumpeted as a success [portuguese link], even though this implies nothing about improved quality of the institution (in fact, the results are based on data that predates the university merger).