Wisdom of the Antibody Crowd:Data Sharing and Consensus Building Guide Abcam's Antibody and Assay Validation Efforts

摘要

"Take nobody's word for it." This motto has inspired scientists ever since it was adopted by the Royal Society in 1660. It emphasizes the centrality of experiments and facts—verifiable facts. But what if you try to verify facts and fail? What if youcannot even take your own "word for it" ? That's the predicament faced by many life sciences researchers who rely on antibodies, which have been known to vary from lab to lab, from supplier to supplier, and even from batch to batch. To get around the problem of antibody variability, antibody tools supplier Abeam suggests that researchers consider another approach: take everybody's word for it, provided "everybody" means a networked community of antibody-sawy scientists.