Why Biology Sucks
I'm trying to put the finishing touches to my journal paper. This would be great, if two separate reviewers hadn't asked me to add a section discussing the biology of the dendritic cell, ( a part of the immune system).
There's a problem with this... have you ever heard people use analogies like "this man is the Einstein of modern art" or "the Mozart of plumbing" etc etc. Well I am the small retarded monkey, with braces, glasses and asthma, of biology. A veritable runt of the litter in the field.
I'm actually ok with it.
Aside from the fact that I resent being asked for it, (when you write a paper on neural networks do you add a section detailing the mechanisms of sodium-potassium pumps etc?) I'm totally ill-equipped to write it. My supervisors are totally ill-equipped to write it. To be honest they weren't entirely equipped to write a paper on robotics, but that's besides the point. The fact is that I'm a cyberneticist, in a computer science department, writing a paper about an algorithm, for a journal about intelligence. Did anyone see the word "biology" in any of that?
Ok, ok I might have been a bit misleading. It is a special issue on "Artificial Immune Systems" which obviously has ties to biology. But I'm still not happy with the idea. I personally think that the entire thing will further detract from a paper which if I had my time again, I would have cut other things out of to concentrate on the wonderful, wonderful maths of it all, (not my maths you understand, I speak of Monsieur Laplace's genius - but he died in 1827 so the praise will fall on deaf, if not slightly gooey, ears).
There's a problem with this... have you ever heard people use analogies like "this man is the Einstein of modern art" or "the Mozart of plumbing" etc etc. Well I am the small retarded monkey, with braces, glasses and asthma, of biology. A veritable runt of the litter in the field.
I'm actually ok with it.
Aside from the fact that I resent being asked for it, (when you write a paper on neural networks do you add a section detailing the mechanisms of sodium-potassium pumps etc?) I'm totally ill-equipped to write it. My supervisors are totally ill-equipped to write it. To be honest they weren't entirely equipped to write a paper on robotics, but that's besides the point. The fact is that I'm a cyberneticist, in a computer science department, writing a paper about an algorithm, for a journal about intelligence. Did anyone see the word "biology" in any of that?
Ok, ok I might have been a bit misleading. It is a special issue on "Artificial Immune Systems" which obviously has ties to biology. But I'm still not happy with the idea. I personally think that the entire thing will further detract from a paper which if I had my time again, I would have cut other things out of to concentrate on the wonderful, wonderful maths of it all, (not my maths you understand, I speak of Monsieur Laplace's genius - but he died in 1827 so the praise will fall on deaf, if not slightly gooey, ears).
posted by Bob at 4:13 PM
4 Comments:
Hello boB,
I know this is an old post... I've skim read bits of your blog after just discovering it when trying to detract from my dissertation. But you should have said... I do biology! I do dendritic cells (kind of).
But I'm guessing you've not got it all written away. So really I'm just saying hello x
I don't know where the "not" came from.
I meant "But I'm guessing you've already got it all written away"...
Thank you, Rosie! The paper is all written now, but you may live to regret your offer :)
Good luck with the dissertation
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