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| Robert Karl Stonjek... |
 Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 5:30 pm |
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Ockham's broom: A new series
Miranda Robertson
Journal of Biology 2009, 8:79doi:10.1186/jbiol187
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found
online at: http://jbiol.com/content/8/9/79
Published: 16 October 2009
Editorial
Although it is increasingly difficult to gauge what people can be expected
to know, it is probably safe to assume that most readers are familiar with
Ockham’s razor – roughly, the principle whereby gratuitous suppositions are
shaved from the interpretation of facts – enunciated by a Franciscan monk,
William of Ockham, in the fourteenth century. Ockham's broom is a somewhat
more recent conceit, attributable to Sydney Brenner, and embodies the
principle whereby inconvenient facts are swept under the carpet in the
interests of a clear interpretation of a messy reality. (Or, some – possibly
including Sydney Brenner – might say, in order to generate a publishable
paper.)
In due course, the edge of the carpet must be lifted and the untidy reality
confronted, and in this issue of Journal of Biology we are launching an
occasional series of Opinions in which contributors inspect the sweepings
and discuss their implications. The inaugural contribution, published today,
is from Bruce Mayer and colleagues [1] on signaling ensembles. They argue
that the kind of helpful cartoon we are accustomed to leaning on in order to
understand the mechanics of signaling pathways – and that they deploy
themselves in their Figure 1 – is grossly misleading (as graphically
illustrated in their Figure 2), and we need (and are beginning to have)
better ways both to investigate and to analyze the reality of signaling
dynamics. It can be argued that the willingness of investigators to come to
terms with the hitherto unexplained is a measure of the maturity of the
field, and indeed it seems that this is a carpet whose time has come, and
Mayer et al. are not alone in peering under it – see for example [2].
To elaborate that point briefly – While Ockham's razor clearly has an
established important and honourable place in the philosophy and practice of
science, there is, despite its somewhat pejorative connotations, an
honourable place for the broom as well. Biology, as many have pointed out,
is untidy and accidental, and it is arguably unlikely that all the facts can
be accounted for early in the investigation of any given biological
phenomenon. For example, if only Charles Darwin had swept under the carpet
the variation he faithfully recorded in the ratios of inherited traits in
his primulas, as Mendel did with his peas, we might be talking of Darwinian
inheritance and not Mendelian (see [3]). Clearly, though, it takes some
special sophistication, or intuition, to judge what to ignore.
I should like to be able to end by trailing the next broom in our series,
but it hasn't quite arrived at the time of writing, and all editors know
what a mistake it is to count unhatched chickens. So I will stop before I
mix another metaphor.
References
1.. Mayer BJM, Blinov ML, Loew LM: Molecular machines or pleiomorphic
ensembles: signaling complexes revisited.
J Biol 2009, 8:81.
2.. Gibson TJ: Cell regulation: determined to signal discrete cooperation.
Trends Biochem Sci 2009, 34:471-482. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
3.. Howard JC: Why didn't Darwin discover Mendel’s laws?
J Biol 2009, 8:15. PubMed Abstract | BioMed Central Full Text | PubMed
Central Full Text
Source: Journal of Biology [Open Access]
http://jbiol.com/content/8/9/79
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek |
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