I understand the author's concern, but I wonder how different the situation of what he calls a "pet-bioinformatician" is from any other work situation: your success and career development will depend on your attitude, initiative to seek out of the group, and ability to be responsible for your own professional development. Which are basically the advices the author gave to those professionals, so I agree with all the points he listed. I just think they apply to more than the lonely person brought to a group in a different field, and I think this type of situation is more beneficial than concerning. I am no bioinformatician but I was once the "pet epidemiologist" in a microbiology lab, and the "pet vet" in a mathematician's lab (the exact opposite side of the story). Both experiences were extremely enriching, once I got over two competing feelings: the cockiness of knowing more than them in one aspect; and the depressing feeling of not knowing anything on their field of expertise. Once I found what my place was, and what I had to GIVE there, it was just a matter of making sure I still had a place OUT of there to GET what I needed to continue growing in my career, which is exactly what the blog's author pointed out. Really nice blog post, and thank you for bringing up the discussion (I think you are right, posting a question seems to be the right way to start a discussion)

I understand the author's concern, but I wonder how different the situation of what he calls a "pet-bioinformatician" is from any other work situation: your success and career development will depend on your attitude, initiative to seek out of the group, and ability to be responsible for your own professional development. Which are basically the advices the author gave to those professionals, so I agree with all the points he listed. I just think they apply to more than the lonely person brought to a group in a different field, and I think this type of situation is more beneficial than concerning. I am no bioinformatician but I was once the "pet epidemiologist" in a microbiology lab, and the "pet vet" in a mathematician's lab (the exact opposite side of the story). Both experiences were extremely enriching, once I got over two competing feelings: the cockiness of knowing more than them in one aspect; and the depressing feeling of not knowing anything on their field of expertise. Once I found what my place was, and what I had to GIVE there, it was just a matter of making sure I still had a place OUT of there to GET what I needed to continue growing in my career, which is exactly what the blog's author pointed out. Really nice blog post, and thank you for bringing up the discussion (I think you are right, posting a question seems to be the right way to start a discussion)

Yes, I think there is no problem. If you join a wet lab you would have plenty of data and you would get paper. I agree with the points which author explains in the paper in the above mentioned link. He explains very clearly that if you want to be good/great you have to learn yourself. In my point of view , for a bioinformatician both experience (in bioinformatics lab + wet lab) are important. Working in hard core bioinformatics lab one can develop bioinformatics skills, but what about to frame a research problem?. Research problem framing skill can only be develop with the biological group (well this is my opinion).

I am also a Bioinformatician, finishing my PhD this year and looking for postdoc. But Now I really want to work in collaboration with a wet lab.(Wet lab and collaboration with bioinformatics would be a plus). I don't mind to be a pet bioinformatician for some time.

In my masters and PhD , I worked in hard-core bioinformatics lab (with no real data) , I learned how to design bioinformatics solution for a particular problem. But how to frame a research problem/biological question is still lacking in me. I think working as pet bioinformatician in wet lab can help me gaining this. There would be problems in this, but i am ready to face those.

Hard Core Bioinformatician + wet lab experience = great bioinformatician (my opinion)

Above all its completely student's choice. At what stage of learning he/she want to join which lab.

As a bioinformatician, we have the power. We already help to design most experiments, analyse data and interpret the results. Don't limit yourself to write the bioinformatics methods sections, figures and tables. Go deep into the Biology and write the papers. If your advisor has some sense of justice, this will guarantee some first-authorships.

The biggest problem I see with being the only bioinformatician of the group is keeping up with the state of the art of bioinformatics methods, algorithms, softwares... Someone in this position should read blogs, forums and scientific papers, interact with the community frequently and attend conferences.

In some sub-areas of Bioinformatics, one year of isolation will surely make you completely outdated.

Soon or later we should admit these defintions 'bioinformatician', 'wet biologist', 'epidemiologist' are obsolete. The development of computers and the subsequent possibility to deeply understand the basic phylosophy and meaning of the quantitative approaches (i.e. the ability to give a quantitative translation to the biological concepts) without entering into the calculus art, allows to anyone to become a 'biologist that knows scientific method and quantitative reasoning'. So any combination (a single bioinformatician in a wet lab, two wet biologists in a mathematical department...) are only transients that are useful in the terms of the overcoming of specialization. I'm used to work with a group made by two engineers, a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist and a biologist with a training in statistics (myself) and, after three years we do not know anymore who is the mahematician, the biologist, the engineer...