Re: [DIYbio] Wikipedia clean up

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 12:58 PM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz787@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael, please try to keep discussions separated by their main
> idea/theme. You can simply copy/past the subject from the wikipedia
> clean up thread, into a reply for something from another thread. This
> helps us keep track of common themes in the google groups internet
> cache, searching, etc. Someone reading about wikipedia clean-ups next
> year might never see your replies in the 3d printing thread.

Next year? In which case, they're very likely get the thread about
cleanups by searching on terms that will *also* turn up the
medical-device printing thread. So they won't miss much unless they
aren't looking very hard in the first place.

What I don't want to see: blowups on the Wikipedia talk pages, from
people who would say, "But we came to a consensus on the biomed 3d
printing thread -- didn't you read it?" Unless I contribute my
dissent--and keep eliciting points from others that should make it
obvious that you have no consensus even among those who disagree with
me--they would have a point. (Not a very *good* point, perhaps. But a
point.)

> In short to respond to you, using non-biological materials in DIYbio
> is essential.

I know you don't intend to insult me, but I'm perfectly aware that
biology and biotech use non-biological materials. This is a fact about
me that you could divine simply by reading what I've written so far.

> If it's not biological it's equipment, whether it's a
> gel box or a 3D printed tumor or a 3D printed hip/fingertip/ear
> structure. We are discussing microcontrollers in another thread, we've
> discussed spectrometers a lot before and that's electronics and
> optics.

The fact that you discuss microcontrollers -- and apply them --
doesn't make microcontrollers a DIYbio topic on Wikipedia. You use
e-mail. We're in fact using e-mail right now. Does that put e-mail
clients and servers within scope of DIYbio? What *isn't* DIYbio?

> Biology is just a patterned arrangement of chemicals, they
> intake and excrete chemicals.

You mean, "without chemicals, life itself would be impossible"?

Yeah, I know. I learned that from Monsanto's exhibit at Disneyland in
1964, where they used that famous (now infamous) tag line. It was all
over TV, too. I was 9 years old. And haven't since forgotten.

> Chemicals are essential for biology and
> DIYbio.

And we're even MADE of chemicals! Wow, trippy. I have to go lie down now.

*Sigh*

Is the 5th grade science lecture over yet? I don't fit in this school
desk very well, being 56 years old and of normal height.

> I consider transhumanism to be part of DIYbio too, discussions of
> ad-hoc eugenics (prenatal testing???, partner compatibility tests)...
> most anything I think about could be construed as DIYbio

"Part of" Oh? Do you have the permission of all (or even a majority)
of transhumanists to categorize their whole movement as a subcategory
of DIYbio, on Wikipedia? Or to say that transhumanism is a branch of
the DIYbio movement? (Hm, that gets the chronology backwards, a bit.)
Or ... well, whatever do you mean by "part of"? It has to be something
I can translate into encyclopedic terms and structures, because that's
what I'm editing: an encyclopedia.

> ... because I
> think for myself and I'm bio.

Thinking for yourself is not, ipso facto, thinking clearly. This is a
mailing list. You can say whatever you want. I have to contend with
what other experienced Wikipedia editors will want to do -- and
they'll quote policies and guidelines back at me, if they have a case
against me. They are mostly a pretty systematic bunch when it comes to
semantics. You don't have to worry about semantics much in this case,
any more than an astronomer really has to worry about whether the
masses want to call Pluto a planet or not -- Pluto will still be
Pluto, when the dust settles. Scientifically, it's still the same
object under study. You can just do what you do, without caring much
about what words mean. What I do is edit Wikipedia. Which, believe it
or not, has a government. With, like, *rules*. *Guidelines*.
*Policies*. *Structure*. *Management*. *Process*.

> But we need a little more distinction than that. I think DIYbio is
> about ad-hoc and self-organised scientific collaboration having
> something to do with learning experimenting with or hacking biology
> and/or biological systems.

Really? OK: then put that in the DIYbio article. I can't. If I copied
your wording from this list, it would be copyright infringement. If I
paraphrased you, then cited your e-mail, it might be a violation of
the reliable sources criteria.

If YOU edit it into the article, however, you're in the fray, and will
have to take responsibility for your own word choices. Then you can
fight the people who think it's not necessarily scientific work at
all. After all, maybe some people want to do DIY biotech projects to
make stuff on a purely recipe-following basis without understanding
much of what they are doing. And maybe they want to say they are doing
DIYbio. And about that guy who 3D printed his own tumor and took it to
his doctor? He might also be an editor on Wikipedia, and he might
insist stridently that what he did *wasn't* actually DIYbio. Not at
all. No way.

It could get fun. In a certain conception of fun, anyway. :-(


Regards,
Michael Turner
Project Persephone
1-25-33 Takadanobaba
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 169-0075
(+81) 90-5203-8682
turner@projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:09 PM, Michael Turner
> <michael.eugene.turner@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 3:42 AM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Thursday, September 27, 2012 6:30:29 AM UTC-7, Michael Turner wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18677627
>>>>
>>>> ... which is about giving up on biology as a medium for 3D printing,
>>>> because the cells die, and going with something not alive.
>>>
>>>
>>> Might want to read that again - sounds like you completely missed the point
>>> on this one.
>> [snip]
>>
>> No, I read it through twice. 3D printing of *cells* doesn't work (yet,
>> anyway). So they do 3D printing of something that isn't alive. I got
>> that the first time. And it was done in a clinical/formal lab setting.
>> The problem remains: does *all* 3D printing of non-biological stuff
>> that COULD be used for DIYbio count as DIYbio, wherever it's done, for
>> whatever purpose, by whomever, with whatever funding?
>>
>>> Now, you could argue whether this belongs in a DIYbio wikipedia article,
>>> since the technique was developed in an academic lab.
>>
>> Is any DIYbio practitioner actually doing this outside an academic or
>> industrial lab?
>>
>>> ... It's definitely within
>>> the spirit of biohacking in the sense that it uses some great out-of-the-box
>>> thinking (aka "hacking") and uses some very cheap and accessible tools from
>>> the maker culture (reprap 3D printer). But it's still done by professional
>>> scientists (if you count the grad student who probably thought of this
>>> hare-brained idea as a "professional scientist"), ...
>>
>> The whole first project for my NPO here in Japan is based on a
>> hare-brained idea from a grad student who funded his work on
>> Kickstarter. So I have no particular prejudices there.
>>
>>> ... and likely with some sort
>>> of research funding support.
>>
>> THAT's where one might start drawing the line, I think.
>>
>>> There's nothing to stop a dedicated DIY team
>>> from replicating this though, and we've seriously considered doing so in the
>>> BioPrinter project at BioCurious.
>>
>> If you can affordably use 3D printing to make some substrate (as in
>> the above case) or a custom lab equipment component for your DIYbio
>> projects, that contributes to a body of DIY practice, regardless of
>> how many millions of public/private dollars went into the original
>> invention of the technique.
>>
>> But remember where this started. A hip joint made out of 3D-printed
>> metal? (I respond to your complaint about my "harping", below.)
>> Implanted by a professional? Operating under an actionable code of
>> professional ethics, on top of a body of government regulations? In an
>> institutional (clinical) setting? (They aren't doing hip replacements
>> at home or in educational community centers, last I checked.)
>>
>>> Here's another example of a borderline case of what you might or might not
>>> consider DIYbio / biohacking, depending on which definition you adhere to.
>>> Russel Nyches, who is doing a PhD at UC Davis, has been developing some
>>> really cool tools using 3D printing and Arduinos, including a 3D printed
>>> bead beating adaptor that mounts onto a Craftsman automatic hammer, custom
>>> 3D printed 96-well plates, and a wireless, tweeting Arduino based pH
>>> monitoring platform.
>>>
>>> Again, you could argue that this is all part of his "job" (i.e., being a
>>> grad student and getting a PhD) and therefore not DIY. But I think you'd be
>>> missing out on a lot of really interesting development within the broad
>>> spectrum of DIYbio if you took that narrow an interpretation.
>>
>> There's already a way, one that's Wikipedia
>> policy/guideline-compliant, to not "miss out" on this kind of thing. I
>> would have no problem with citing, and quoting from, Nyches'
>> publications in a Wikipedia article about DIYbio -- IF he gives credit
>> to the DIYbio movement where it's due.
>>
>> In fact, I'd love it if there were a whole article section on any such
>> phenomenon. If DIYbio is a kind of "spin-off" from institutional
>> biotech research, it should also get credit for any "spin-in" that
>> happens. But on Wikipedia, credit has to be [[WP:V]] - verifiable from
>> reliable sources. Just saying, in effect, "Hey, looky! Some people in
>> some labs are doing some stuff that we did first!", in a Wikipedia
>> article -- you can't do it. That's [[WP:OR]] - "original research",
>> which is not allowed.
>>
>>> PS: Stop harping on the 3D printed hip replacement. I think most people here
>>> agree with you that this was not a great example of DIYbio.
>>
>> Perhaps most would agree, but where's the vote tally? If some of the
>> more interested list members joined the Talk page discussion for
>> Wikipedia's DIYbio article, we could determine whether your intuition
>> about their feelings was correct, by relying on a Wikipedia editorial
>> process. If there were significant differences of opinion on that Talk
>> page about what's within scope, and no Talk page article consensus
>> emerged, we could even subject the discussion to long-evolved
>> processes for settling matters.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Disputes
>>
>> Look: I know I sound like the old joke: "I'm from the government, and
>> I'm here to help." But articles get good on Wikipedia, and stay good,
>> only because of a degree of formal process, evolved by volunteers --
>> DIYgov, if you will.
>>
>> I'd love for DIYbio and other related articles to reach Featured article status.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_criteria
>>
>> But note the stringent requirements of section 1. We can all easily
>> point to articles on Wikipedia that flunk 1(a)-1(d). As for 1(e),
>> well, when you have people on this mailing list asserting that DIYbio
>> ethics only apply to biohackers who don't want to violate them
>> (rendering the concept of "ethic" utterly vacuous) the stage is set
>> for getting biohacking articles listed in another place instead:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars
>>
>>> .... I seem to remember a story of someone who
>>> 3D printed part of his own anatomy from a cat scan, and then brought the 3D
>>> print to his doctor - I think that would definitely qualify as DIY + bio,
>>
>> Only if you conflate medicine with biology. Medicine is not a science
>> -- as several doctors I know will firmly assert. It's a profession.
>> Nor is it a branch of engineering. It *uses* techniques and
>> technologies inspired by a branch of biology called medical science.
>> But perhaps not as much as it should.
>>
>>> even though in the end it still involved a real MD to interpret the results.
>>
>> ... an MD who probably did the diagnosis seat-of-the-pants, rather
>> than rely on scientific criteria. Expert systems built in the late 80s
>> outperformed most doctors when programmed for diagnosing specific
>> ailments. Doctors rejected them as an infringement on their
>> professional judgment.
>>
>> Medicine is not a science. It is not engineering either.
>>
>> The guy who 3D-printed his own tumor or organ from CAT-scan data
>> didn't necessarily know the first thing about biology or biotech.
>>
>> And home CAT-scanners aren't on the horizon in any case.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Michael Turner
>> Project Persephone
>> 1-25-33 Takadanobaba
>> Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 169-0075
>> (+81) 90-5203-8682
>> turner@projectpersephone.org
>> http://www.projectpersephone.org/
>>
>> "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
>> together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Nathan McCorkle
> Rochester Institute of Technology
> College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
>
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