What do dating sites and research facilities have in common? More than you think, apparently, at least in the case of the Neglected Tropical Disease research, who is increasingly
benefitting from the website technology used by dating sites to encourage sharing and collaboration across research projects. Says Trudie Lang, researcher from the University of Oxford, UK:
Modern technology, such as wiki-style and dating sites software, allows scientists to "organise information in a very clever way", she added. "As scientists, we're rubbish at sharing," Lang said. "Unless we share the methods by which we collect the data, it won't be of much use."
Sounds good to me. It's easy to believe researchers all collaborate in a utopian bubble of sharing and cooperation, until you see what really happens for yourself. Anything that encourages information sharing and careful stewardship of scarce research funding has got to be a good thing, and if that gets a few scientists a date, too, that's just bonus.