A Blog Around The Clock

I think "plane reading material!" because I have zero time now, but I LOVE networks, so I will read this at some point.

Posted by: Eva | January 17, 2007 5:45 PM

Usually I try to be the voice of reason when commenting on Science Blogs. But I'm in a bad mood over being subpoenaed early tomorrow morning as an eyewitness in a criminal trial tomorrow morning. So, here's a very snarky first impression of the paper cited.

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Catchy title by someone I never heard of.

Hey, we got big bucks from DARPA by using the good name of Princeton.

Networks, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword. But some biologists think it's nonsense. Non-networkologists = neologisms. Why should they care? Why should we care?

Name-drop, bow to Darwin, this way, that way, can we dream up a third way?

Wish we were mathematicians. Wish we were physicists. I can't get no respect.

Networks, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword.

Handwave towards someone else who might have actual data, which may or may not relate to our buzzword.

Paradigm, paradigm, paradigm, paradigm, may well reflect.

Wish-list, wish-list, wish-list, wish-list.

Networks, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword.

Question, question, question, question, question, we ran out of money before we got an answer. Can we have another grant?

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That looks nastier than I really am. Maybe I'm just giving a template for all the articles I had to referee from an interdisciplinary conference. Maybe I'm giving a review template for a dynamic robust network of ecosystem-level cross-disciplinary synthesis. Choose a buzzword from column A. Choose a buzzword from column B. Crossover, inversion, point mutation, handwave, optimization, network.

Maybe my feelings are still hurt by my having had two papers rejected from the same conference in a pretty part of Italy, where I was making essentially the same main points which were, as I recall:

He says paradigm is static, she says paradigm is static, it says paradigm is static, I think it is dynamic. Consequently: evolution, optimization, multidimensional, nonlinear, genetic algorithm, phenotype, genotype, ensemble, granularity, structure, function, pathway, complex interactions, scale-free, fractal, power-law, growth, change, selection, central organizing principle, complex system, heterogeneous, vary widely, patterns emerge, properties emerge, questions emerge, answers still hide.

Yeah, my feelings were hurt when the referees said "This isn't really a scientific paper. It's more of a personal narrative."

Did I say "network"? Oh.

Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, heterogeneous network of sauce.

That's my first impression. If the paper actually makde sense, I'm sorry. No I'm not. Yes I am. Is Colin Fergusson on TV yet?

Okay. Goodnight.

p.s. Hey, guys, if I'm ever at Princeton or Georgia or Duke, you know this was all in good fun. Right. Guys?

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | January 18, 2007 3:24 AM