While collaborative knowledge databases seem to be catching on in classrooms, scientists have yet to adopt the idea, at least in part because of the competitive nature of science as a profession.
Some 100 researchers studying the genetic makeup of a worm, which has become a model organism for the Human Genome Project, are testing a knowledge database developed by Bruce Schatz, the director of the Community Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona.
The Worm Community System, as Schatz calls it, contains the complete body of journal literature about the worm, including the community’s unrefereed newsletter, The Worm Breeder’s Gazette.
Raw data such as genetic maps, knowledge about each of the worm’s 959 cells, and 302 neurons is also included. Schatz has found in previous trials that a knowledge database has to cover a body of knowledge completely to be of any use.
Researchers can use the system for much more than literature searches. They can analyze the raw data, add their own notes, and create new links between previously disparate pieces of information when they find a new relationship.
Researchers discovering that three separate genes are controlling the same function may not have enough to publish a paper, so they would not normally release such information, says Schatz, but the electronic community provides means for adding that piece of knowledge, which may be useful to the community as a whole. The system enables researchers to always know who contributed what piece of information if that knowledge is speculative, raw data, or has gone through strict scientific peer review.
Schatz chose the worm scientist community because it has only some 500 to 600 researchers worldwide, is close knit, and has a strong tradition of sharing unpublished data. Scientists are rewarded by publishing papers, so they have a tendency to hoard information rather than share it. Before electronic community systems catch on, the scientific community will have to come up with a different structure of rewards, Schatz admits.
Perhaps, he says, researchers could earn points toward tenure by the number of times the information they have entered into the database has been read and cited by others.
Schatz has used the worm community system in a graduate course in molecular biology as a textbook supplement and will use it on an experimental basis in an introductory undergraduate biology course this fall. The system could easily be transplanted to other fields, such as oceanography and physics, or even to private enterprise, where it could act as a community memory of all of a company’s procedures and important decisions.
For information, contactBruce Schatz, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; (602) 621-2211.
