Thank You, Mrs. Woodrow

Tonight I will continue the recent trend of punching these out on some magical date.  Now, I usually have some sorry excuses for my erratic writing, but for once I actually have something bordering on reasonable.  Just after writing about Oxford Nanopore, my confidence in my skiing skills exceeded my actual skills, resulting in my femur taking on my tibia.  Here for sure, size matters, and the tibia lost horribly..

Announcing the Omics! Omics! Sequencer Evaluation Program

A serious issue which has been raised often both by myself and commenters is the challenge of properly evaluating sequencer performance prior to widespread commercial availability of a platform.  A number of roads have been frequently taken, but each have their issues.  Data generated by a company is always met with suspicion.  Alpha releases are often to academics connected to a company, which has the advantage that they are likely the most passionate about proving its worth, but the downside these users may not be viewed as fully objective.  Beta (or early release) sites are often less connected to a company, but by the time they publish their results through peer-reviewed journals it is long since commercial launch.  Conferences such as Marco Island help shorten the cycle time, but not entirely.  Early users are sometimes also suspected of having agreements which give the platform makers the power to squash bad data.   So how can a manufacturer gain "street cred" for their instrument