The Research Parasite Award is an honor given annually at the

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) is an annual multidisciplinary scientific meeting co-founded in 1996 by Dr. Teri Klein, Dr. Lawrence Hunter and Sharon Surles. The conference is to presentation and discuss research in the theory and a ...

to recognize scientists who study previously-published data in ways not anticipated by the researchers who first generated it. The tongue-in-cheek name of the award refers to a ''

New England Journal of Medicine ''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one. Hist ...

'' editorial that coined the term "research parasite" to disparage such work. The idea was first suggested on Twitter by

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the n ...

researcher Iddo Friedberg shortly after the editorial was published, and was then brought to life by Casey Greene, a pharmacologist at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. Two Research Parasite Awards are given to recognize scientists who have made outstanding and rigorous contributions to analysis of secondary data in biology. Recipients must reuse data generated by someone else to extend, replicate, or disprove a research study in a reproducible manner. The junior parasite award recognizes an outstanding contribution from an early career scientist such as a postdoctoral, graduate, or undergraduate trainee. The senior parasitism award recognizes an individual who has engaged in exemplary research parasitism for a sustained period of time. Since the launch of the award in 2017, a travel grant to attend the

has been provided to the junior parasite award winner by

GigaScience ''GigaScience'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 2012. It covers research and large data-sets that result from work in the biomedical and life sciences. The editor-in-chief is Scott Edmunds. Originally, the journal wa ...

. Starting for the 2019 award year the awards are supported in part by an endowment housed at the

The Research Symbiont Awards, inspired by the Research Parasite Award, was founded by J. Brian Byrd, a physician-scientist at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. Recognizing exemplars in the practice of data sharing, they are given to scientists working in any area of study who have shared data beyond the expectations of their field. Unlike a parasite, naming the data sharing award after

symbionts Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasit ...

helps stress that this process can be mutually beneficial to the data producing "host" because it increases the scientific impact of their investigators. From 2021 the award has been sponsored by the

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

and Dragon Master Foundation. The 2021 winners of the General Symbionts prize were Zhang Yongzhen and

Edward C. Holmes Edward Charles Holmes (born 26 February 1965) is a British evolutionary biologist and virologist, and since 2012 a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia Fellow and professor at the University of Sydney. He is also an ...

for their sharing of the sequence of the first SARSCov2 genome.

Nomination and selection procedures

Recipients self-nominate using a letter that references their published manuscripts that exemplify data reuse in a manner that enhances reproducibility. These published manuscripts should describe original scientific research that involves data re-use, or the secondary analysis of shared data and that extend, replicate, or disprove the results from the original manuscript describing the data. The nomination materials are reviewed by the Selection Committee, which is made up of at least 3 four-year term positions as well as the past two recipients of the Sustained Parasitism award.

Award laureates

2017 *Kun-Hsing Yu – Junior Parasite *Erick Turner – Sustained Parasitism 2018 *Uri Ben-David – Junior Parasite *Julie Dunning Hotopp – Sustained Parasitism 2019 *Claire Duvallet – Junior Parasite * Rafael Irizarry – Sustained Parasitism 2020 *Ayush Raman – Junior Parasite * Kelley Harris – Sustained Parasitism 2021 * Nicolás Nieto – Junior Parasite * Jordi Paps – Sustained Parasitism 2022 * Jack Pilgrim – Junior Parasite * A. Murat Eren – Sustained Parasitism

References

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External links

The Research Parasite Awards

The Research Symbiont Awards

PSB Home Page
American science and technology awards Science and technology awards Research awards

Nomination and selection procedures

Award laureates

See also

References

External links