Supporting Cognition in Systems Biology Analysis
Author Information
Author(s): Mirel Barbara
Primary Institution: University of Michigan
Hypothesis
How can bioinformatics tools be designed to better support scientists' cognitive processes in exploratory analysis?
Conclusion
Bioinformatics tools need to improve their support for scientists' higher order analytical practices to facilitate deeper insights and hypothesis formulation.
Supporting Evidence
- Tools currently support surface-level insights but fail to assist in deeper causal reasoning.
- Scientists expressed a need for better validation and statistical support in their analyses.
- Many scientists reached impasses due to inadequate tool support for complex reasoning tasks.
Takeaway
Scientists need better tools to help them understand complex biological relationships, not just to find data. Good tools should help them think about how things work together.
Methodology
A longitudinal field study was conducted with 15 biomedical researchers using a web-based protein-protein interaction tool to analyze disease mechanisms.
Limitations
The study was limited to a specific tool and a small sample size of researchers, which may not represent all users in bioinformatics.
Participant Demographics
The participants included 12 biomedical experimentalists and 3 researchers from various specialties, including biostatistics.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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