United States of Research

There are different avenues of research in biological, behavioural, and social sciences. The avenues are basic research, applied research, clinical research, and translational research. Basic research is driven by a scientist's curiosity or interest in a scientific question (science for science). Applied research is designed to solve practical problems of the modern world. The main motivation is to expand man's knowledge , not to create or invent something. Translational research is a way of thinking about and conducting scientific research to make the results of research applicable to the population under study and is practiced in real life. Clinical research is the research conducted on human subjects or on human material such as tissues, with the aim of shedding light on disease mechanisms or the outcome of human intervention.

The focus of biological, behavioral and social research is vastly different and different research approaches utilize different methods. However, as of 2010 all the research avenues lead to one place. All the roads lead to Rome, to computational power. If one needs to do basic research on DNA, the data is stored and processed in computer systems. If someone performs applied science, the experimental outline should be formulated in such a way that the results are organized and stored in computers. If you are eager to perform translational research you need to feed the basic research results in to computers and crunch the data to conclude about the possible application. Clinical research models should organize and process vast amounts of data on populations with dependent and independent variables again in computers.

Classical research outlines and research policies such as approval and licensing are slowly changing to fit into the digital world.

What will happen when all the data is in silico, in the computer ? Well, this will open the door of cross-disciplinary data transfer. If you feed the computer with social research results on a disease, you can combine it with basic genetic research of the same disease and the next day you have the population effect of the genes.

Data management, data monitoring, data auditing, and statistical evaluation are computerized processes and are irreplaceable for universal research

How data should be stored, monitored, retrieved, compared across different research ecoles should be regulated by an international concortsium.