Record Keeping’s Role

• Needs of science vs quantified self = Sharing

• Science - public process of knowledge generation

• Quantified Self - Private process of knowledge generation

Tuesday, August 7, 12

Record Keeping’s Value

• Aid in reproduce-ability, recall, & basic conduct of research activities

• Documents Intellectual Property

• Defense against false allegations of research misconduct

• Things written down seem authoritative

NIH Guidelines for Scientific Record Keeping in the Intramural Research Program at the NIH

Writing the Laboratory Notebook, Howard M. Kanare, American Chemical Society

Tuesday, August 7, 12

Problems with Record Keeping

• Problems around Recording Data

• Sampling vs Complete Capture

• Time cost, opportunity cost

• Use tools that make it easier to sample, or completely capture (Paco - shameless plug)

• Undocumented experimental process detail

• Leads to lack of reproduce-ability

• May lead to unnoticed experimental error

Tuesday, August 7, 12