Stolen MacBook Contains Research For Cancer Cure

Seriously though, nothing I do is "mission critical" and I back up everything. Storage is SO cheap these days, there is no reason to to have a back-up drive.

Hell, I use two 1TB drives for back-up:

cancer_cure.jpg
 
I go quantity of materials route. I have 6.5 TB of hard drive space in 4 drives. If one goes I still have at worst 4.5 terabytes worth of pron. Should last me a couple of weeks if the internet shuts down.
 
magoo said:
Bullschizle.............

let's see.............major acedemic research for 2 years.........has to be funded by someone somewhere, and to continue annually, reviewed.

major acedemic researchers that don't back up their data somewhere else in their lab?

Bullschizzle......
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Yeah, that story makes no sense at all. No way anyone funding cancer research doesn't get regular status reports and any breakthrough data isn't being backed up, replicated and verified.
 
Steve said:
Seriously though, nothing I do is "mission critical" and I back up everything. Storage is SO cheap these days, there is no reason to to have a back-up drive.

Hell, I use two 1TB drives for back-up:

cancer_cure.jpg
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What's the point of Shin's "research" when we have Steve's "research" on the cure.
 
ShugaBear said:
Yeah, that story makes no sense at all. No way anyone funding cancer research doesn't get regular status reports and any breakthrough data isn't being backed up, replicated and verified.
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Status reports?
The process can be quite hands off:
1) Apply for money by bragging about what you've already done, and describing what you're planning to do
2) Get it, if you're lucky and made a good case
3) Show them the publication(s) when you're done

No way does Joe McDiedofcancer's Memorial Fund for Cancer Research care about how the researcher(s) back up their data - the people involved have better things to do, and aren't IT people anyway.

"Breakthrough data" is often kept secret from the outside world, to avoid other labs stealing your thunder - though it is typically shared within the lab. There's two types of research data - the input data (in this case, gathered from patients or mice or whatever), and the output from whatever kind of analysis you've done. The former is typically treated with great care and in many copies, since it's irreplaceable; the latter can be recreated by doing the same work again. You would share the raw data around in the lab, since different people can do different things with it. The analysis results, on the other hand, are not that interesting until you've actually finished something - so one researcher might be the only with a copy of his or her in-progress analytical data.

This specific case sounds like a combination: Some raw data (why the hell are they sitting on the single copy of any raw data), and a lot of analysis work (which is more typical).

Oh, and replication is more interesting if you can do it in a different data set. ;)
(Or not - that can also be an interesting paper.)


Re *Ç|®8tË<ETH> : Why wouldn't you do any research on a laptop? They're really convenient to drag to conferences, presentations, and whatever.
 
HHunt said:
Re *Ç|®8tË<ETH> : Why wouldn't you do any research on a laptop? They're really convenient to drag to conferences, presentations, and whatever.
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Yes, but they should be dragging back-up data to and from conferences / presentations on that laptop ;)
 
BiGx5MurF said:
+1

considering research projects usually have some sort of custom software, who the hells wants to program those on macs?
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As earlier noted, macs are actually oddly sensible for it.

Scripting and data processing on windows sucks. Serious, golf balls-through-garden-hose local vacuum. Linux works fine, but some people want a more polished OS with the same available tools. Extra bonus if you can get Office and perhaps some of the Adobe tools, and even more if it comes preinstalled and is guaranteed to work on your hardware.

What does that leave you with? OS X.
(I use FreeBSD myself, but I enjoy some setup and maintenance now and then.)
 
Maybe I should back that up: A typical bioinformatics projects is an ugly bundle of R scripts, using a bunch of libraries, some from CRAN, some from bioconductor, some from the home pages of random other researchers , plus some one-off scripts in whatever language people prefer for comparing/contrasting/subsetting/annotating/studying data files (I tend to use python), and depending on skill a bunch of unix command line data mangling (head/tail/cat/cut/paste/sort/uniq and friends).

Oh, and there's absolutely no guarantee that all the libraries - or their dependencies - will have binary packages for windows. They'll just automatically compile on Linux and OS X, though.
 
HHunt, I really love your posts. You can tell some thought went into them, however your attempts to show people why Mac's/OSX have use in this field is futile. You are not going to turn around someone who is dead set that "mac's suck". I would love to sit here to defend a platform that pays my bills but people simply won't listen because they can't get their head around that some people use different platforms for different reasons. Regardless of hardware.
 
To add, some people simply can't see beyond the product being branded by Apple and their conclusion whether its good or not to them ends there.
 
Thanks. :)

As for the Mac haters, eh - I think most of them are just drive-by trolling. It's not like any of them has come up with any form of argument, nor even replied. In other words, they're not posting because they have thought about it and concluded that macs are deeply unfit for the purpose.

I'm answering more for the benefit of the audience than to convince them. ;)
 
HHunt said:
In other words, they're not posting because they have thought about it and concluded that macs are deeply unfit for the purpose.
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... but because it's a brainless form of trolling that probably also has some social marker effect. (It's like picking on the nerd to prove you're cool, I guess.)

Also, I want an edit button in this forum - a window of a few minutes would be really nice.
 
As someone involved with trying to automate the lab, I can totally see this.

Many of the most gifted and talented individuals I've worked with almost seem to have Asperger's on they way their thinking is focused on one thing. They aren't expected to be tech savvy, they aren't expected to be able to communicate with the general public, they are expected to understand the specific area of research they are working on.

Think of it as the basement dwelling code god, only with a different obsession.

LOL at the anti-intellectual BS from the drive by trolls.
 
bacon said:
It was supposed to be comical. Serious trolls are sad. :D
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Ah good. Something about the timing there after we'd been discussing the drive by anti-apple trolls was just perfect. :p
 
HHunt said:
Re *Ç|®8tË<ETH> : Why wouldn't you do any research on a laptop? They're really convenient to drag to conferences, presentations, and whatever.
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It's not so much the laptop, it was questioning the researcher as to why use something portable to do such 'research'. If the work is so important, why not use something that wont get lost, stolen, and can be backed up!

I call bullshit, as that 'research' wasnt so important!
 
*Ç|®8tË<ETH>;1036706458 said:
It's not so much the laptop, it was questioning the researcher as to why use something portable to do such 'research'. If the work is so important, why not use something that wont get lost, stolen, and can be backed up!

I call bullshit, as that 'research' wasnt so important!
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I work with these people, and trust me, they use laptops. How hard it is to steal isn't the first or second criterion people use when picking a computer to work on.

And did you just say that you can't back up a laptop?
 
HHunt said:
I work with these people, and trust me, they use laptops. How hard it is to steal isn't the first or second criterion people use when picking a computer to work on.

And did you just say that you can't back up a laptop?
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Um for realz?. Point is, the shit must have not been important to be left on something so portable and left about.
 
HHunt said:
Right, I work with cancer researchers, and.....
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HHunt has the right of it.
As the network administrator for a cancer research center, I can guarantee that at any point in a week, there are plenty of principal investigators that have not remembered to put their precious data on the network so that my nightly/weekend backups can safeguard them.

As with any other industry, the fact that someone is a brilliant researcher has little or no connection with their ability to remember to put data on the network.

And that's the P.I.'s that do understand the necessity of backing up their data.

Even my co-workers in the IT department have a tendency to forget that the vast majority of computer users are not tech-savvy.
And those who do understand don't generally think along the lines that most of the [H]OCP community takes for granted.
 
HHunt said:
Right, I work with cancer researchers, and I haven't gotten to type up a good rant for a long while. Your stupid collection of misspelled nonsense will do beautifully as an excuse.

To start off, you manage an interesting mix of half-truths and full-on fails. A good example of a full-on fail is the way you think it's possible to find a single cure for cancer. Let me explain: Cancers are cell failures - a cell starts replicating uncontrolledly, while also evading the mechanisms that would usually catch it. There are many possible routes to this, though - and many possible origin cells, in many possible environments. This is why there are many different treatments: They target different cancers, and work weakly or not at all against other kinds. A single cure would have to be able to recognize any cancer cell and kill it, and at thesame time never kill a non-cancerous cell. We have, after years of study, found some examples of small changes that will turn cells into cancer cells - and they don't neccesarily overlap: There isn't any single biochemical way of targeting "cancer". Oh, and since there are a large amount of cancer cells in a late-stage patient, and they tend to accumulate mutations faster than normal cells, they have the annoying ability to evolve resistances to different drugs. [1]

Let me digress and explain how actual cancer research works.
One of the early and interesting papers from the lab where I work (in cooperation with anoher lab) looked at mRNA epxression data[2] from breast cancer patients. The goal was to see if they fell into separate groups, by using that data to cluster them together. In short, the answer is a qualified yes: There are some clear divisions, and some more overlapping subdivisions within those groups. We've gathered a lot more data from a lot more patients the lastten years, and one of the things that has ben done with it is to try and find out more about these groups. What is clear is that they behave differently: They have different survival rates, and react differently to treatment. Our speciality is genetics, so we try to find out what genes and gene networks are different in these. The most obvious thing so far has been that some of these are dependent on hormones (especially estrogen) from the outside, while others basically ignore it. The former group benefits a lot from estrogen blockers; it's a waste (with side effects) on the latter.

Does this in itself lead to a "cure for breast cancer"? Of course not. But it is one of many small things that means we can target medication better, and use slightly less drugs with the same side effect. We're also getting a better view of exactly how these cells work - at some point, a pharma company might look at it and start looking for drugs that can knock out something that's not vital in normal breast cells, but a bottleneck in the cancer cells - if they find something, it'll be another drug in the arsenal.

A neat little example of that strategy: There are basically two DNA repair mechanisms at work in your cells. In certain cancers (those with dysfunctional BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, like some breast, ovarian and prostate cancers), one of them doesn't work. Create a drug that stops the other one, and normal cells can still get by - but the cancer cells break down. Cure for cancer? No, but if it passes trials without too many unpleasant side effects it'll be useful and might help cure some people.

This is how cancer research works. It's a slow, at times frustratingly so, search for more information, in the hope of finding some approach that will let you (or more likely someone else) attack some specific variant of some specific cancers. Or maybe not even that: Some of the things we do are solely to find ways to reduce the amount of side effects [3].

And big money? Ha. Research is underpaid, and we have to apply to a bunch of memorial funds, national research councils and the like every year just to keep going. If big pharma is paying us, they're really bad at it.


Oh, and the story: I can easily see it happen. Biologists aren't the best IT people on average, even less so when they're overworked trying to finish a project. (The ones I work with are usually ok at backups, though - if nothing else then because I push them to it.)
And finally, macs are quite popular with the researchers I've met. Something about the combo of a nice GUI, solid hardware and a unix shell, I think. (I've got a thinkpad with linux myself.)


[1] On the positive side, each patient does at least start from a the beginning - unlike bacteria and viruses, those resistances won't be transferred to anyone else.
[2] mRNA is basically the intermediate stage between a gene in DNA and a protein, so the expression levels can be usd to see which proteins are being produced.
[3] Small example: In a fairly new development, women getting radiation targeting their chest are asked to breath in deep and hold their breath before the beam is turned on. It moves the target further away from the heart, reducing the risk of damaging the heart muscle. As tricks go, it's a rather cheap and neat little modification.
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Thank you for providing some useful information, seeing as half of this thread is conspiracy theories and nothing of real importance or anything that adds to enlightened conversation.

I've known a few scientists over the years and I agree that not all of them are tech savvy people fit for IT teams, but they're improving. The younger ones tend to be better with tech considering that it's introduced more thoroughly at a younger age.
 
*Ç|®8tË<ETH>;1036707075 said:
Um for realz?. Point is, the shit must have not been important to be left on something so portable and left about.
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Oh, absolutely. It's not like most people are careful (paranoid?) enough to think "I can't leave that file on my laptop, it'll get stolen", unless they live or work somewhere really dodgy. It might be naïve, but if they've gotten away with it so far...

I don't worry too much about it myself, either, but on the other hand, I do think "I can't leave that on just the laptop - what if the drive fails or I do something unusually stupid and delete it", which works out the same way. Non-IT people will often not worry about that, though - and then stuff like this happens.
 
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