The researchers behind ‘the biggest biotech discovery of the century’ found it by accident in DNA Research

[Business Insider] The discovery of the CRISPR genome-editing technology shows why basic research is so important.

Source: The researchers behind ‘the biggest biotech discovery of the century’ found it by accident in DNA Research

I am posting this as an example that when doing research one has to broadly think how what one is working on may have useful implications for different problems than those we are aiming to study.

The other point, is that basic research, even if it does not have a known or expected application can have a huge contribution to solving practical problems.

Some additions from yesterday’s session

1) Microsoft is using R internally, and what is more, they are going all out for R: it has already announced that MS SQL database’s next version will have R built in. Test release is scheduled for September. It has acquired Revolution Analytics. Microsoft is also funding R development through the R Consortium  announced 4 days ago, under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

2) There are rumors that some future version of Excel will have R built in!

3) R is being now accepted in the financial and commercial world and is quickly replacing SAS.

4) Just a single company called Teradata has more than 400 open vacancies for employees with R experience.

5) Hewllet Packard is releasing its own version of distributed R as open-source software.

6) Next UseR! meeting will be at Standford University and the organizing committee includes members both from Microsoft and Google.

I think it is time for our department and the whole university to stop teaching SPSS to our undergrads and switch to R as our main statistical software.