A comment on computational biology and connecting the dots.
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Computational Biology, Computer Education, Data Science
- Keywords
- computational biology, biology, ecology, evolution, and social good, ideation, open science, collaboration, team science, modern synthesis
- Copyright
- © 2018 Lortie
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. A comment on computational biology and connecting the dots. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27408v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27408v1
Abstract
Increasingly, big data, coding, and quantitative methods contribute to contemporary ecological and evolutionary endeavours. This is not in opposition to effective ideation nor does it play to the false dichotomy of theory versus data. Computational expeditions with data, models, simulations or any other number of approaches both expand the toolkit of science and promote more structured reasoning. The implications of computational biology integrated with scientific pursuits such as experiments and theory development include the following positive outcomes: enhanced open science, better reproducibility, data literacy, author inclusivity, social good, and novel ideation opportunities. We face a climate apocalypse and unprecedented ecological challenges of collapsing ecosystem functions. Computation coupled with ideation is one mechanism to align the hearts and heads of scientists and decision makers alike.
Author Comment
This comment is not submitted to a peer reviewed journal or if part of conference proceedings.