Comment by the_erd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_erd | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's just me, but looking at molecular accumulation in this way doesn't seem that promising. However, there are other problems here...

In order to get this kind of research funded in a traditional way, the author would need a much more detailed explanation of the work: specifically, a compelling and well-referenced account of why drug accumulation in mouse brain sections will be helpful in understanding the mechanism of stimulant function. I would also like to see more detailed methodology and an account of how the researcher will responsibly conduct the research (in terms of accounting for hazardous materials and maintaining researcher safety). These are essential components that any PI would need to provide in order to get research funded, because they are necessary to ensure that the researcher can actually conduct the research (has the knowledge and resources), and get it published (missing some of these features would prevent publication in an academic journal).

It seems to me that other kinds of analysis, such as molecular state-space based approaches (transcriptomics, metabolomics, etc.) would be much more useful than cellular and sub-cellular accumulation, especially since we have very little knowledge of how spatial tissue, cellular, and sub-cellular neurobiology relate to brain function.

Please let me know if I just missed these essential details...

After reading a bit more about this, it seems that they are an established lab with protocols in line for the questions you asked about. The PI's last publication (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...) states that they are affiliated with Princeton, so dealing with hazardous materials etc are dealt with Princeton's Environmental health and safety dept. The same applies to animals, radioactive materials etc.

It looks like a lot of the details of the experiment are purposely left out of the application as they are looking to appeal to the general public and I think that is a smart thing to do. Putting details into the application would make people's eyes glaze over, so keeping it simple was the correct way to go.

From my understanding of their proposal, they are looking to do something quite common in neuroscience research. While I personally haven't done autoradiography, I know people who have and it is a commonly(although not much now) technique that has been used numerous times. To do this as a new lab, without university support would be dangerous, unethical and worrisome, but it seems clear this lab is already established.

What they propose seems to be an initial step in a nice project that could lead to something useful. Doing the anatomy (they are basically trying to see where the drug binds within the brain first) and then the molecular techniques makes sense and I wish more labs did stuff like this. As a neuroscientist, I applaud their going outside of the system and I'm happy to see that they will share their data with everyone.

I'm not sure that leaving details out of the proposal is really that smart. It seems like we're doing the public a disservice by excluding them from the kind of information traditional funding sources use to make allocation decisions, because it reduces the basis for making funding decisions on all proposed research to oversimplified descriptions, while providing no insight into traditional research funding.

In other words, people can get duped into funding research that is not as well founded as this one (supposedly), and we pass over a key opportunity to teach the public how organizations like the NIH make funding decisions. Maybe if people had an idea about how rigorously funding proposals are analyzed they would be less likely to cut science funding because of inane arguments like Sarah Palin made about public funding to study fruit flies.

NIH has recently changed how they deal with grants. They are asking for less methodology information and more of the conceptual info. I support that, especially since most of the methods will be modified throughout the experiment and commonly read over anyway. This is one step above that. The concept and end result is the important portion for people to get interested in the project. Those who are in the field know what autoradiography is and how it is done and the investor who is interested in the outcome isn't going to understand/care. If you have limited space to pitch an idea, are you going to spend more time explaining the idea and why it’s awesome, or the intricate details as to how you are going to do it? You talk about the idea and why it’s awesome, if someone is interested in knowing how, they ask. In regards to Sarah Palin’s inane arguments, I agree/disagree. There is some amazing science going on, and some realllllly shitty science going on, both of which are federally funded. This is a huge topic (also one of the main focuses of my YC application) and I don’t know if the details of this proposal, or proposals like this are the venue to really get at those issues. However, I do understand your point and I think it is valid, just in a different venue.

A lot of the information that you are curious about can be found in Ethan Perlstein's website.

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