One key meta mistake you see a LOT in computational biology is people not seeking out the proper expertise they need. I and countless other people have wasted months re inventing existing tools because I had no idea they existed, which is turn was because there were no experienced researchers around me with the relevant expertise to tell me.
Key quote: “Here is a good rule of thumb: If you are trying to solve a problem, and there are multi-billion-dollar firms whose entire business model depends on solving the same problem, and there are whole courses at your university devoted to how to solve that problem, you might want to figure out what the experts do and see if you can’t learn something from it.”
If I had only had this advice at the beginning of my PhD, I would have saved myself a lot of hassle....
Also, the above advice would suggest, for instance, that we should use SAP’s ridiculous, bloated crapware to manage human resources etc… Sometimes the multibillioner dollar companies fail.
Well, “learn from it” and “use the crapware” can mean different things. I’ve found useful the rule of thumb that “someone else once had your problem and you should find out what they did, even if they failed to solve it”.
One key meta mistake you see a LOT in computational biology is people not seeking out the proper expertise they need. I and countless other people have wasted months re inventing existing tools because I had no idea they existed, which is turn was because there were no experienced researchers around me with the relevant expertise to tell me.
Indeed! I found this to be an extremely helpful resource w/r/t seeking out “meta-expertise”:
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/jesse.shapiro/research/CodeAndData.pdf
Key quote: “Here is a good rule of thumb: If you are trying to solve a problem, and there are multi-billion-dollar firms whose entire business model depends on solving the same problem, and there are whole courses at your university devoted to how to solve that problem, you might want to figure out what the experts do and see if you can’t learn something from it.”
If I had only had this advice at the beginning of my PhD, I would have saved myself a lot of hassle....
Also, the above advice would suggest, for instance, that we should use SAP’s ridiculous, bloated crapware to manage human resources etc… Sometimes the multibillioner dollar companies fail.
Well, “learn from it” and “use the crapware” can mean different things. I’ve found useful the rule of thumb that “someone else once had your problem and you should find out what they did, even if they failed to solve it”.