Bill Hooker was born in Papua New Guinea but had his schooling, second grade through PhD, in Australia. (His education, a different matter entirely, is ongoing.) Being interested in roots and beginnings, he is a molecular biologist by trade; but having not ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air, he is also interested in photography, poetry, community and social justice. He lives in Portland, OR with his wife Cat Connor, likes cheese and rain and late afternoon light, and can be got at through his own website, Open Reading Frame. Email: [email protected]
by Bill Hooker Attention Conservation Notice: this post is here to ask you to sign a petition asking the White House to make all publicly funded research publicly available. Read on for background, or go straight to the petition. You paid for it — this is about research funded by tax dollars. You don’t own…
When Abbas offered me the keys to the liquor cabinet here, he asked that I write about science — which was just as well, because I don’t know about anything else. I barely know anything about science, either, but perhaps what distinguishes science from other pursuits is exactly that: the average practitioner’s willingness to be…
In the post that triggered this month’s offering from me, political blogger Digby is actually talking about the corporate-welfare state known as this here USofA, but it doesn’t take much to aim the same screed at the modern practice of science (my text in blue): The entire enterprise is designed as an exercise in conformity…
I'm not even going to bother sourcing the quote that initially spurred this column; we've all seen a hundred similar claims in press releases, news articles, blogs and so on: It is an established fact that 98 percent of the DNA, or the code of life, is exactly the same between humans and chimpanzees. So…
Although I swiped my title from the media coverage of this story: SCIENTISTS have created “miracle mice” that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart,…
I gave blood recently, and the barrage of questions asked of all donors reminded me that I’d been meaning to write this article since June of last year. At that time, Art Caplan wrote that it’s time to let gay men donate blood, but he did not present much solid evidence for that position. As…
In Parts one and two, I talked about the scholarly practice of Open Access publishing, and about how the central concept of “openness”, or knowledge as a public good, is being incorporated into other aspects of science. I suggested that the overall practice (or philosophy, or movement) might be called Open Science, by which I…
In Part 1 of this essay, I gave an outline of the scholarly publishing practice/philosophy known as Open Access; here I want to examine ways in which the central concept of OA, the “open” part, is being expanded to encompass all of science. Terms Though I am adopting the term “Open Science”, there are an…
I’ve never had an idea that couldn’t be improved by sharing it with as many people as possible — and I don’t think anyone else has, either. That’s why I have become interested in the various “Open” movements making increasing inroads into the practice of modern science. Here I will try to give a brief…