社会上这些声音,期刊主编们最敏感。他们经常要思考是否发表基因组测序的论文。今天的Nature Biotechnology编辑部发表了一篇声明式短文,就此问题做了讨论。“The sequence is dead: long live the genome”。文中作者首先基因组测序论文的难度、技术含量和科学重要性确实在下降,“genome papers are sometimes criticized for a lack of intellectual rigor and insufficient biological insight. Genome sequencing, the argument goes, is science by rote—both brute force and high throughput. Even if sequencing an entire genome is not trivial, it remains simply a massive data-generating exercise”。
但是,作者认为,发表基因组测序论文可以“增强巴西、新加坡和中国等新兴学术体的科研信心和力量”(原文是:the publication of a whole genome sequence de novo continues to empower research in scientifically emerging countries, such as Brazil, Singapore and China, spurring international collaborations and consortia)。说白一点,也就是发表基因组测序论文是对落后国家科研人员的扶植。在他们的扶植下,我们国家、还有巴西等发展中国家会成长起一批著名科学家。没想到,Nature系列的期刊也“先天下之忧而忧”,不顾自身的学术声誉可能受到的影响,扶植我们发展中国家的科学事业。