[Agathos]

Interesting to read since I made the same career move last year. I agree with about half of it but don't see a lot of value or useful advice here.

I find it curious that he stops to salute ecologists, since I was in an ecology lab. I liked my labmates and our perspective, but we didn't have any magical ability to avoid the problems he aludes to here.

I think a lot of his frustration comes down to not being more involved in the planning process. That's not a new problem. R.A. Fisher put it this way in 1938: “To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of.”

Perhaps the idea that we can have bioinformatics specialists who wait for data is just wrong. Should we blame PIs who don't want to give up control to their specialists, or the specialists who don't push harder, earlier? Ultimately the problem will only be solved as more people with these skills move up the ranks. But the whole idea that we need more specialists working on smaller chunks of the problem may be broken from the start (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1183512/).