The new Encyclopedia of Life may be the best new thing since sliced bread, but not necessarily just because a catalog of every living species is a pre-requisite to understanding our planet. By making it clear just how little we actually know about life on Earth, EOL could be just the thing biology needs to spur new interest among students, government funding agencies, and the public at large in basic science. That might be overselling it a tad, but it's hard not to use hyperbole when addressing the enormous gap between what the average person thinks we know and what we actually do know.
The EOL doesn't represent a breakthrough. It's merely a portal, an aggregator and an enhancer of what's already out there on the web. For example, among the partners is FishBase, which has been around for quite a while, and is now the acknowledged authority and online starting point for research on fish. It's also not complete. No one know just how many species of fish are in the seas, but that doesn't mean a catalog of what we do know isn't immensely valuable.
Here's a little snippet from the EOL FAQ:
Encyclopedia of Life should be one of the most significant developments we have ever experienced in the life sciences. It can be a "macroscope" comparable in power for discerning patterns in large amounts of information just as the microscope is for zooming to the small.
E.O. Wilson, perhaps more than anyone else the champion and inspiration of EOL, was on NPR's All Things Considered today, extolling the virtues of good old fashioned classification and description, activities on which few biologists spend much time any more, despite the fact that we've only scratched the surface of terran and marine taxonomy. Wilson's "wild guess" is that the 1.8 million species we know about represent 10 percent of the actual total, although I've read estimates three times that much.
There is simply no way around this taxonomic deficit. While the EOL won't by itself answer too many questions, by drawing attention to how much work remains before we begin to get a grip on the ecosystems we are already manipulating beyond recognition, maybe, just maybe, we can re-distribute some of our research resources to that less glamorous pursuit known an inventory control.
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wow, it's beautifully designed, I can't wait to see it when it has some real content
Yes, unfortunately still content-less. Cool to have some web2.0 in biology :)
I'd guess people spend much less time on classification and things of that nature because of the discovery of quite a few "new" frontiers -- DNA analysis of numerous kinds, various kinds of microbiology; things that were technically impossible in the heyday of Linnaeus and his contemporaries. It's easier and more exciting to blaze new trails than "mop up" what remains to be classified.
To be sure, a small fraction of all species have been classified and documented, but pretty much all of the charismatic megafauna (I'd go as far as saying pretty much all megafauna, charismatic or not) and the most noticeable of organisms (human disease causing bacteria, things of industrial interest, etc.) have been classified.
The idea of the Encyclopedia of Life and it's ilk (large data classification and interlinking projects) will hopefully bring some recognition to some of our oft under appreciated geeky brothers and sisters -- the Computer Science majors. Them and information theorists, statisticians, things like that. I can make a rather good argument that in the latter half of the 20th century, advances in computer science and information theory have brought as much scientific revolution as physics. It's certainly brought more that is immediately usable and applicable across nearly every field than say, String theory.
With the amount of sheer data in the body of human knowledge growing at an exponential rate, the task of organizing it and making it accessible is going to be just as important (and in the beginning, more so) than actually finding new things.
You said that the EOL probably won't find much new by itself (I'd have to agree) but it will be invaluable in things like meta-analysis.
Honestly, if I had to prioritize "inventory control" vs microbiology and things that you usually hear about in the MSM, it'd be difficult. Sure, we could find a new penicillin, but DNA manipulation, biological engineering -- they all have clear applications to human life. The latter would be what I hope to do once I get into and out of college. Then again I've always had a soft spot for the insanely complex machinery of life.
I remember just last year the event that prompted me to go for research as well as practice (that and my boss, who told me about the MD/Ph.D program -- he's one of it's graduates). I was reading through my AP Biology textbook, and I saw a diagram of ATP Synthase that, if you'll excuse my language, blew my fucking mind. Just thinking about that single component of a single cell had me up nearly all night. A lot of people denigrate "pretty diagrams" in textbooks driving up the cost and killing trees (just switch to e-books!) but staring at that 3 inch color diagram of ATP synthase was honestly a landmark moment in my life. I seriously empathized with the irreducible complexity croud for a moment. Little things that we have trillions of, are ridiculously amazing. If the EOL can give a future biologist the same kind of holy shit moment, it's well worth it. Even without that, it's well worth it.
And that is easily the longest comment I've ever written.
Man, I misspelled crowd. Oh well.
Alright, one more thing about the EOL before I go to sleep.
Some day, I hope it is absolutely extensive, filled with audio, video, insightful articles, links to scientific literature, while understandable and interesting to the nonscientists among us. The little novice -> expert slider bar thing they show in the preview video is a great idea.
Also, some day, I hope that we can do the same thing with individual genes. A side branch or part of the main project. Of course it would be far more specialized, for more obscure, but imagine the potential of a grand genetic databank, discussing origins, function, location (both physical location on chromosomes, and what species -- the genetic equivalent of an ecosystem, I guess). You could have lines of inheritance, tracing back where it mutated, ancestral changes. You could organize it on several levels -- by function, by chromosome, by species, by age, by a kind of evolutionary tree.
It'd be, I think, absolutely massive. Convoluted. But still insanely awesome. Maybe someday you could have the actual genetic code of any specific gene to be downloaded too. That would be awesome.
Maybe 50 years from now, when I'm old and gray. It'd be a massive undertaking, requiring huge amounts of distribution of labor to be sure. But even in a primal state, focusing pretty much only on humans, it would be beneficial, and so, so cool.
I hope it meets the same level of success as Wikipedia. Hell, I hope both it and Wikipedia grow by orders of magnitude.
Actually now that I think about it, the EOL and Wikipedia could be heavily intertwined. Jimmy Wales should get to talking with E.O. Wilson on sort of inter-framing Wikipedia articles on organisms and the EOL, sharing pictures, videos, things like that. Also Wikipedia could adopt it's badass navigation things.
OK I'm seriously going to sleep. It's pi AM.
Très cool. I find the abbreviation EOL a little off-putting, though. As a programmer, I think of EOL as End Of Line and, even more dire, as a medical researcher, I think of it as End of Life.
thx for the entry, and comments
i agree that a visually appealing, info-loaded, readily accessible catalogue could continue to urge budding young scientists along the same vein as bbc/discovery channel's planet earth - that we live in an incredibly complex, puzzling, and truly beautiful world