Following the "successful" debate on the definition of bioinformatics and its elusive scope. It might be time to look for a more appropriate name to cover the many forms it takes.
So far, none of its subgroups, such as computational biology, data mining, mathematical modelling or biostatistics, manages to encompass its entirety.
Should we coin a new term that relies less heavily on the "informatics", which is now more a side tool than the real expertise of most bioinformaticians ?
The first one coming to mind would be "bio-Analytics" as all this is essentially the analysis of biological data. Unfortunately this term seems to be already taken by a rather different field.
What would you suggest?
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Define_Bioinformatics
I must say I never was a big fan of the term bioinformatics. I was a practicing software/data engineer in the 1990s when the term 'informatics' started to be widely bandied around, and I thought then that I would never regard myself as an 'informatician'. Thankfully, the term informatics largely died a death, and software engineers continued describing themselves as such, but then I started dealing with biological software and data and suddenly there's the dreaded i-word again!
Perhaps we 'bioinformaticians' might be best described as engineers - bioinformatics seems to me to be largely a 'practitioner'/'toolmaker' discipline, rather than any kind of science, and is focused on integrating mathematical, statistical and computational tools to build practical analytical tools, and employing those analytical tools to address scientific questions.
So I am left proposing a name that goes something like biodata engineer or biosoftware engineer.
I must say I never was a big fan of the term bioinformatics. I was a practicing software/data engineer in the 1990s when the term 'informatics' started to be widely bandied around, and I thought then that I would never regard myself as an 'informatician'. Thankfully, the term informatics largely died a death, and software engineers continued describing themselves as such, but then I started dealing with biological software and data and suddenly there's the dreaded i-word again!
Perhaps we 'bioinformaticians' might be best described as engineers - bioinformatics seems to me to be largely a 'practitioner'/'toolmaker' discipline, rather than any kind of science, and is focused on integrating mathematical, statistical and computational tools to build practical analytical tools, and employing those analytical tools to address scientific questions.
So I am left proposing a name that goes something like biodata engineer or biosoftware engineer.
I agree that bioinformatics is a broad term. Inside the same bag you can find bio-data analysts, software engineers, biostatisticians, sequence curators and more. In the same it can produce some wrong interpretations of the skills and knowledge that you may have for specific bioinformatic "topics". For example, you may develop software and create biological databases using GMOD and still don't know anything about genome assembly. Still I think that it is something that it is being correcting, for example, if you search a "bioinformatic job" it is becoming more a more common, to see the use of specific terms such as "Bioinformatics Software Engineer", "Genomic Data Analyst" ...
My proposition, the use specific terms to define the "bioinformatic" work such as "Biological Software Engineer", "Genomic Data Analyst", "Sequence Curator", "Biological Database Developer", "System Biologist"... in the same way that as Dr. Moore wrote none use "Informatician" term anymore.
There does seem to be one area that the term might actually be more appropriately applicable.
If it turns out that biological processes may be identified as being distinct from other types of process and/or other types of 'machine', then it is possible that the distinction might lie in the unique way in which information, energy and structure work together in living processes.
This is most certainly true of the Fractal Catalytic Model of living processes.
Chris
Talking about the change of name of the field "bioinformatics", which found to have more than 25 years of history is not easy because it might have entered in more than millions and millions of records in today's shrinking world.
I am totally agree with Dr. Moore and Dr. Davia . Bioinformatics is very broad term includes software engineer , mathematician, chemist , biologist , statistician and people of different subjects and they work in their expertise area which is just a part of a term "BIO-INFORMATICS" .. so its really very nice idea to define particular task like biological software engineer, sequence curator, Biological Database Developer, Bio data analysis etc.
I have not seen any better suggestion than bioinformatic. To change this term should have a good proposal and sustainable
Dears,
i am totally agreed with the term bioinformatics because it is fully justified with all the tools under its shadow, even-though the number of subgroups are so large and diverse but the Term Bioinformatics is comprehensive than any other term or name. if need to do some things is its subgroup of this term. be happy
Dear all,
Thank you for your contribution.
I am happy to see the consensus about the problem.
However I am disappointed not to get much alternatives proposed.
What to you think of Bio-Analysis?
Thanks
It is a very odd discussion. What struck me is that the objections arise from the area being broad, and can be viewed as comprising of a dozen or so of fields and specializations. So what? Think about chemistry? scores of specializations.... physics -- similar story, and they cannot talk properly to each other across specialization boundaries (well, some people are better than that, and some people migrate from one domain to another over their career, which happens at any intellectual domain).
The situation in mathematics is even more extreme (hundreds of subfields?), and who wants to discard the name of the field?
The only true good objection: SIX syllables. And one does not even need to use all of them (how do you call a beginning bioinformatician? a bioinfant).
Dear M Hofri,
The problem lies in the perception of what Bioinformatic is:
Unlike food chemist, physical chemist, etc. there is no accepted common umbrella.
Most computational biologists, System biologists, Biostatisticians, etc will not agree to be labelled as Bioinformatician.
However someone peripheral to the field(s) will indeed put any of them under the same banner which is not representative.
The question is to find a name that would satisfy most of computational biologists, System biologists, Biostatisticians, Bioinformaticians, etc.
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