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We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

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Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#221

Post by aaai »

nitrogen wrote: post #195
oefrha wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientific articles on Wikipedia aren’t written for laymen, although some could be understood by laymen as a side effect. For example as a physicist/mathematician I expect precise and physically/mathematically accurate statements rather than hand-wavy analogues that the average Joe might be able to make sense of, and that’s how I edit. Now, it’s okay to also include more approachable explanations, but they’re not a m…

I know Wikipedia has evolved considerably from its original intent, but isn't one of the quintessential goals of an encyclopedia to have an approachable summary of every topic?

"Approachable" means that it might require some effort from the reader (eg. in worst case scenario, a reader not familiar at all with the domain would have to look up the definition of every word in a sentence and do that recursively a few steps, until he/she gets some domain familiarity by reading the equivalent of a few hundreds pages or less), but you can approach it, and in exchange it gives precise and rich information!

I like Wikipedia as it is, let's not make it into IdiocracyPedia for the sake of accessibility... if you're not lazy and you're willing to put some focus and time into your research you'll be able to understand quite unfamiliar subjects from Wikipedia, there's nothing blocking you, as opposed to eg. lots of academic articles that may contain un-google-able jargon and unexplained/unmentioned domain specific assumptions.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#222

Post by C4stor »

a123b456c wrote: post #217
C4stor wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, 21 hours after making this remark, noone cared enough to edit the article to include the "great description". Wikipedia isn't magical. If you don't care enough to edit it, it won't include the information you'd like to see.

Author called it a dumbed-down description. Are you sure that belongs on wikipedia?

Sure, why not ? Let's consider for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linezolid , it's quite clear what it's used for but if you dive in the "Interactions" paragraph for example, it's definetely not a dumbed down article overall.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#223

Post by C4stor »

SkyBelow wrote: post #213
nitrogen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Wikipedia has evolved considerably from its original intent, but isn't one of the quintessential goals of an encyclopedia to have an approachable summary of every topic?

Wouldn't this be what the simple version is for? One is to be informative to people who know nothing, the other is to be informative to the people who want to learn about it at depth.

This a the fallacy of choice in action. People who want to learn about a subject at depth are still helped by simple and accessible descriptions. Simple doesn't have to mean wrong, but can rather mean "a human invested a lot of thoughts producing those words so that all others don't have to". This is in my opinion the great way of doing simple, and it definitely has its place on wikipedia.

If you're not convinced, even professional scientists themselves regularly publish and read "review papers" which are pretty much papers doing no research other than summariing and simplifying the current state of the research in their field.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#224

Post by l33tman »

xg15 wrote: post #102
kccqzy wrote: post #22

Remdesivir is an analog of adenosine, one of the four building blocks of RNA. Just look at the main structure and you'll agree they look similar. It turns out the mechanism of action of this drug is that it's supposed to be confused with adenosine, so that the viral RNA replication process uses remdesivir instead of adenosine, which later breaks the RNA†. Our body, or really, all biological processes can synthesize i…

Out of curiosity: We seem to have a very good understanding how synthesis in biological processes works (from DNA to the eventual molecules), we are able to create DNA/RNA molecules with arbitrary content and we're increasingly able to simulate what molecule a particular nucleotide sequence would produce. So, putting the three together, would it be possible to use actual biosynthesis for designed molecules by basical…

Yes, this is already being done (since long) by many different research groups and industrial companies with various levels of ambition (it's normally not needed nor feasible to design everything completely from scratch though).

If you want an easily accessible jawdropping intro David Baker's youtube briefs here are pretty cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrAwWx7meTk

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#225

Post by munificent »

oefrha wrote: post #180
koboll wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a great description. Compare how Wikipedia describes the same process [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine#Research ]: > The adenosine analog NITD008 has been reported to directly inhibit the recombinant RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of the dengue virus by terminating its RNA chain synthesis. This interaction suppresses peak viremia and rise in cytokines and prevents lethality in infected animals, ra…

Scientific articles on Wikipedia aren’t written for laymen, although some could be understood by laymen as a side effect. For example as a physicist/mathematician I expect precise and physically/mathematically accurate statements rather than hand-wavy analogues that the average Joe might be able to make sense of, and that’s how I edit. Now, it’s okay to also include more approachable explanations, but they’re not a m…

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_artic...:

> Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia. People who read Wikipedia have different backgrounds, education and opinions. Make your article accessible and understandable for as many readers as possible. Assume readers are reading the article to learn. It is possible that the reader knows nothing about the subject, so the article needs to explain the subject fully.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#226

Post by acqq »

leetcrew wrote: post #210
acqq wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a textbook, but I'd argue that having a more accessible first paragraph or summary section on every topic could help all uses I'm curious how you would rewrite that first paragraph then: "In mathematics and computer science, currying is the technique of translating the evaluation of a function that takes multiple arguments into evaluating a sequence of functions, each with a si…

from a certain perspective, it's hard to talk about currying without talking about sets. "function" itself is defined as a special type of relation between sets. imo, the first paragraph does a good job introducing both the formal and practical meaning of currying to people who have enough background to find the topic useful. simple wikipedia does take your approach though: > Currying is a technique used in mathemati…

I still believe that naming the sets in the paragraph I've quoted is completely superfluous in the sentence I've quoted. It just sounds more "mathy" but I'm quote sure that either it doesn't convey more useful information or it is not formal enough to be exact enough, so to me it looks it fails both ways.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#227

Post by SkyBelow »

C4stor wrote: post #223
SkyBelow wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this be what the simple version is for? One is to be informative to people who know nothing, the other is to be informative to the people who want to learn about it at depth.

This a the fallacy of choice in action. People who want to learn about a subject at depth are still helped by simple and accessible descriptions. Simple doesn't have to mean wrong, but can rather mean "a human invested a lot of thoughts producing those words so that all others don't have to". This is in my opinion the great way of doing simple, and it definitely has its place on wikipedia. If you're not convinced, ev…

>People who want to learn about a subject at depth are still helped by simple and accessible descriptions.

I don't see this as being always true. For example, scientific papers are written in such a way that normally you need a great deal of understanding in a field to read them. Making them accessible would mean either removing or explaining all domain specific knowledge in each paper. Expecting the reader to acquire the knowledge elsewhere and then read the paper with the knowledge makes a group of papers more accessible than if each paper did either of the options making them simple.

In the same way, the wikipedia page on integration by parts does a better job of explaining what it means than if it took the time to explain what a function is, what a variable is, what an integral is, what a product is, what an antiderivative is, or what the common notation it uses. I bring these up because these are all assumptions made before you even get to the table of contents of the article. If the article was simple enough that someone who didn't know any of those concepts could understand the same information presented in the first paragraph, you would have a significant introduction to mathematics that would slow down those who have some basic calculus knowledge seeking to refresh or get a summary of what integration by parts is.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#228

Post by fg6hr »

mardifoufs wrote: post #14
fg6hr wrote: post #11

That's some really complex mess. How much do these chemists get paid?

In research? Usually not much and thats if you can even manage to find a job. But Chemical engineers are usually well paid and can easily get a job out of college. Though maybe that is changing since the oil industry is usually a big part of the job market. And with most of the energy sector currently on the brink of collapse...

I don't get it. The Big Pharma makes some serious money and it needs qualified chemists to make new drugs. The complexity of making these drugs is so high that there should only few chemists good enough for the job.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#229

Post by VSerge »

Oh the pain of biochemistry! Thanks to the author for making this available to everyone, and reminding these of us who ran screaming from the labs why our decision is not among the ones we might regret. Joking aside, I hope this molecule can be synthesized efficiently, and that it can be preempted from Gilead somehow, as this company has a history of price gouging of the worst kind. They are down there with the oxy makers, the worst of the worst, causing deaths through their pricing policies, and resulting lack of affordable treatment. The ideals of medicine mean nothing to these, and public health should take precedence over the interests of such despicable companies.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#230

Post by C4stor »

SkyBelow wrote: post #227
C4stor wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a the fallacy of choice in action. People who want to learn about a subject at depth are still helped by simple and accessible descriptions. Simple doesn't have to mean wrong, but can rather mean "a human invested a lot of thoughts producing those words so that all others don't have to". This is in my opinion the great way of doing simple, and it definitely has its place on wikipedia. If you're not convinced, ev…

>People who want to learn about a subject at depth are still helped by simple and accessible descriptions. I don't see this as being always true. For example, scientific papers are written in such a way that normally you need a great deal of understanding in a field to read them. Making them accessible would mean either removing or explaining all domain specific knowledge in each paper. Expecting the reader to acquir…

But the integration by parts article still starts with a very simple sentence, and has a nice colored graphic for comprehension. This is a clear example of "simple and accessible".

It quickly helps forging an intuition of the new concept, using phrases like "Thus integration by parts may be thought of as deriving the area of the blue region from the area of rectangles and that of the red region." which are not very mathematicallish.

All the while, it's a good article for maths people.

Once again, in a great article, what should be simple and explained is not prior knowledge, but the new concept introduced.

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