Viral Geneology

  • Hack Title: Viral Geneology
  • Hack Details: Amateur open scientists are working with professional biologists such as Dr. Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Together they are using openscience and crowdsourced peer-review in the study of the genetic family tree of the Covid-19 corona virus. The rate of mutations helps us understand how this virus spreads.https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/02/covid19-open-science.html

    https://nextstrain.org/ is a public website Dr. Bedford developed for scientists. It provides animated maps of viral evolution.

    https://www.gisaid.org/ is an online repository where labs from all over the world post new genomic data.

    The publications go to this crowdsourced peer review site:
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/780627v1

    How can we help?
    1) By providing additional peer review

    2) By providing additional analysis and visualization of the public data.

    3) By tracking down and reporting/removing the viral misinformation being spread based on scientific misunderstanding and outright deceit.

    This project could consist of 2 teams:
    1) Use science to help in the understanding of how COVID-19 is spreading and mutating.

    2) Use web data-mining, social networks, education and cat memes to search and destroy (blacklist?) the roots of fake science.

  • What you need to make it happen?: I have a laptop, some python and data visualization skills and a passion for replacing fake science with the real McCoy. I need experts in biology, bioinformatics, biochemistry, machine learning, data science, sociology, educators, communicators, dictators,
    taters…
  • Name: Brian Nitz
  • Twitter/website: http://opensourcemechanic.com