Carole Goble spoke at EGEE'06. Image Courtesy Owen Appleton, EGEE

Having worked closely with scientists, specifically in life sciences, Goble said that our understanding of the true motivations of scientists is essential for the development of Grid technologies. "We're not building infrastructures for e- science, we're building them for e-scientists," she explained.

Goble presented the controversial viewpoint that while scientists are motivated by advancing the frontiers of science, this is not necessarily the principal motivation. Instead, she suggested, they are motivated in large part by getting the best results first, in order to gain, among other perks, more funding.

This "selfish scientist" concept, a term coined by Robert Stevens from the University of Manchester, suggests that scientists are not eager to openly distribute their data around Grid communities, which contrasts somewhat to the Grid idea of "sharing." Goble quoted Mike Ashburn from the University of Cambridge when she said, "Scientists would rather share their toothbrush than their data." She views scientists as being altruistic, but protective. "They are happy for other people to have their data and share their workflows, but only after they've had it published."

"We must therefore enable scientists to publish data at the right time in their lifecycle," insisted Goble. To do this, she suggested paying more attention to when people share data and who gets to see it, so that scientists can preserve privacy and control over their work.

Goble is currently developing a project entitled "myExperiment" to attend to this problem. myExperiment is a collaborative research environment that has been influenced by social networking programs such as Wired and Flickr, and is based on the mySpace infrastructure. myExperiment creates an environment for scientists to adopt Grid technologies, where they can define when they share data, with whom they share it and how much of it can be accessed.

Goble also highlighted the potential of tagging the data, similar to the process of social bookmarking currently used to catalog photos on Flickr. This would allow simple cataloging of data so that there is no need to use "command lines," which, she laughed, "can make your eyes glaze over."

The myExperiment interface would be specific to each institution that uses it and may mean that scientists won't notice the difference between the Grid and the Web. "In the same way that you don't see any HTML protocol when searching for the Radio Times, you will not need to see any of the Grid processes working on your data," said Goble.

Goble's speech evoked a good deal of discussion throughout the conference, and the developments of myExperiment will be followed with great interest.

This article, by Helen Thomson of GridPP/GRIDtoday, originally appeared in GRIDtoday as part of a series of dispatches from EGEE'06. Click here to read the full series.

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