Project:

OmniScience is an online portal raw academic science data, methods and product reviews to bring science communication to social media. Scientists collect massive amounts of data and most of those data will never be released to the public. This causes 2 things. 1) A waste of resources (time and money) due labs doing the exact same experiment to generate the same negative date. 2) The data that is published is limited by bias, fragmentation and politics. Collecting and distributing raw data, allows open access to these data and analysis from multiple perspectives. The goal is the progression of science in real time, saving time, money and effort by utilizing current technology to facilitate science.

This project started from my observations as a scientist. I don't know how many times I've said "oh, I wish I knew that before I started" when I was talking to a colleague about an experiment that wasn't working. Scientific journals only allow for positive data, however, when one is trying to do an experiment, many times negative data are way more useful. OmniScience is going to create a venue to share all data (positive and negative) in hopes of using our resources more efficiently.

Also, we spend a ton of money on products. However, we really have no idea if the product works as advertised. In a day and age when you can find reviews for any product, it seems weird that we spend tens of thousands of dollars on bad products. To put this into perspective, a normal tube of toothpaste cost ~$3.50. We have items that are the same size (7.6oz) but would cost $224,000.00 (we buy them in much smaller amounts). Could you imagine buying something so expensive just to find out that it doesn’t work as advertised?!? This is how science labs work, and it’s also why scientific research is so expensive. So, with my company, I’m going to bring a similar concept of Yelp.com to scientists to avoid making these mistakes.

Overall, OmniScience has started to make scientific data collection, distribution, and analysis more efficient. By having users upload their data, their product reviews and their assays that are proven to work, we can take a lot of the guess work out of science and start progressing.

Current Progress: I'm currently working on the website using Drupal 7 as a content management tool. Although I've never done web development in the past, I’m finding that Drupal (and the contributed models) are really awesome and provide a lot of power, even for someone with little experience. I’m having a good time doing it as well!

Clients and users: I currently have my large network of scientists patiently awaiting my launcht. I’m opening the site to a few of them right now and look forward to working with my colleagues to finish this project.

Keith Gonzales

Former hacker, neuroscientist and entrepreneur

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