THE SCIENTIST
VOLUME 7, No:9 May 3, 1993
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
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NEWS
WATSON'S SUCCESSOR: Researchers involved with the Human Genome
Project say they are breathing easier now that a worthy successor
to James Watson as director of the National Institutes of
Health's component of the international effort has finally been
selected--University of Michigan geneticist Francis Collins
Page 1
MEDICAL INFORMATICS: The information needs of clinical and bio-
logical researchers have given rise to powerful computer-based
tools to gather and manage scientific data and communications of
all kinds. One result has been the emergence of the field of
medical informatics, which underscores ties between computer
science and the life sciences
Page 1
COMPETING SOCIETIES: Their organizers claim that two recently
formed molecular evolutionary biology societies will prove to be
of great benefit to their respective memberships in general;
however, the groups' appearance seems to have been spurred in
large part by a publishing battle between the societies'
journals. Nevertheless, researchers from both sides say the
competition is healthy for the discipline
Page 1
STANDARDS PROCEDURE: Substantial progress has been made in a
National Research Council-led effort to develop standards for
science education and educators at the primary and secondary
levels. But the massive response and interest in the enterprise
does have a downside--pushing the arrival date for the standards
back about a year
Page 3
ACADEMY AWARDS: The National Academy of Sciences honored 20
researchers for their achievements in a wide variety of
scientific, humanitarian, and educational areas. Some of the
prize winners are practically household names at scientific
awards ceremonies, while others were quite unexpected
Page 8
OPINION
JOBLESS SCIENTISTS: Unemployment is a tough pill for anyone to
swallow, but there are ways in which jobless scientists can ease
their pain and forge on with their research if they are
resourceful and dedicated enough, says Catherine Reed, an
entomologist at the University of Minnesota, who speaks from
experience
Page 11
COMMENTARY: While outgoing director Bernadine Healy's tenure at
NIH raised the agency's importance in the eyes of the public and
Congress, Brown University associate professor Ken Zaret hopes
her successor will make a stronger effort to persuade lawmakers
and taxpayers of the importance of basic research in alleviating
public health problems--and reverse a trend toward funding mostly
targeted research
Page 12
RESEARCH
HOT RESEARCH CITIES: An analysis by the newsletter Science Watch
of the geographical origins of papers published in 1991 reveals,
among other things, that, despite its political and economic
troubles, Moscow led the list of top-25 cities in terms of
research paper output
Page 15
HOT PAPERS: A molecular biologist discusses his study of the p53
gene in cancerous tumors
Page 16
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
HELP IN ACQUIRING DATA: Scientists requiring substantial amounts
of data acquisition are finding programs using Microsoft Windows
generally a help, but sometimes a hindrance, to their studies
Page 17
Builders of Windows-based data-acquisition software
(see also the Scientific Software: Data Acquisition directory on
page 23)
Page 18
PROFESSION
MATH GRADS' SALARIES: Salaries and job prospects in general for
newly graduated mathematics Ph.D.'s fell in 1992, a reflection of
generally poor economic conditions and their effect on academia,
the major employer of these scientists
Page 19
LAWRENCE M. KILLINGSWORTH, new president-elect of the American
Association for Clinical Chemistry, is calling for a nationwide
mentoring program in his discipline
Page 21
SHORT TAKES
NOTEBOOK
Page 4
CARTOON
Page 4
LETTERS
Page 12
CROSSWORD
Page 13
OBITUARY
Page 21
SCIENTIFIC SOFTWARE: DATA ACQUISITION DIRECTORY
Page 23
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Medical Informatics: Where Life Sciences, Computer
Science Converge
Researchers who are trained in both areas of expertise
are contributing to new, more effective biomedicine
AU : FRANKLIN HOKE
TY : News
PG : 1
A decade or more ago, it may have been accurate to view computer
science and the life sciences as distinctly separate research
pursuits, with their practitioners most often possessing totally
different skills, interests, intellectual inclinations, and
research objectives.
Today, however, the two pursuits have become tightly--even
inextricably--interwoven. Biological researchers now must have a
strong grasp on the sophisticated hardware and software tools of
information science, and computer scientists who focus on the
problems of manipulating biomedical information are among the
leaders in their discipline.
Progress in the flourishing field of medical informatics
underscores the close ties that have developed between these
formerly disjunct pursuits. In this field, computer scientists
have worked together with clinicians since the 1970s toward the
development of expert systems for patient diagnosis and care.
And, during that same time, data from biological sciences
research--in genetics, molecular biology, and other areas--has
virtually exploded. Here, too, the work of allied information
scientists has been pivotal in effectively gathering, organizing,
and making available to researchers massive data sets and
bibliographic databases.
Today, these broad categories of information research are
progressively overlapping. One result is that a kind of
interdisciplinary, mutually supportive information space, as some
express it, is emerging.
"A central theme of the biomedical enterprise is collaborative
work," says Mark E. Frisse, library director and associate dean
at the School of Medicine of Washington University at St. Louis,
Mo. "Much of what we do in medical informatics really surrounds
retaining what I call artifacts of our conversations, records of
what we think and say to each other, be they in printed form, in
databases, or in electronic mail. To me, medical informatics
shares with other fields the goal of making those conversations
as effortless and effective as possible."
To a degree, the convergence of information resources reflects
corresponding scientific developments in biomedicine, according
to some scientists.
"The science and the clinical sides are coming closer together in
the real world," says Perry L. Miller, director of the Center for
Medical Informatics at Yale University. "It makes sense for them
to come closer together at the level of the informatics support."
Miller cites the field of neuroscience as an example, in which
people are gathering data at many different levels--at the level
of genes, biochemistry, physiology, cellular activity, behavior,
and anatomical structure. To understand what is going in their
field, neuroscientists must integrate information from all these
levels, he says. And their information resources must be able to
mirror this need.
"In all areas of biology, we're starting to gather massive
amounts of data at a number of different levels," Miller says.
"The only way we're going to be able to understand what it all
means and how it relates to the processes of life is with a
computer."
He adds: "There seems to be a very rapidly accelerating set of
activities, on both the clinical and the biological sides. Part
of it is that everybody is starting to be networked. Part of it
is the graphical interfaces that let you interact with the
[information] easily. And part of it is that computers now are so
ubiquitous, so cheap, and so powerful that some kind of critical
mass has been reached."
Different Names
The best research in medical informatics necessarily draws on
many types of training, and, perhaps for this reason, it
sometimes goes by slightly different names.
"Some of the labs around the country that do similar things to
what we do would call their labs biomedical engineering," says
Nunzia Giuse, a research assistant professor of medicine at the
University of Pittsburgh.
"Or they would call it artificial intelligence in medicine. You
also find informaticians, people who have degrees in information
science and library science. These are closely related, as well
as computer scientists. But they're all doing the same thing."
And it is clear that medical informatics has become a field of
advanced research in itself. Graduates of medical informatics
training programs are now involved in several commercial software
research and development efforts, according to Frisse, some of
which have no biomedical component. Alumni of the Stanford
University medical informatics program, for example, now are
contributing to computer science research efforts for Microsoft
Corp., Redmond, Wash. And Donald A. B. Lindberg, director of the
National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md., where a great deal
of biomedi-cally related computer science research is conducted,
has been appointed to head the group coordinating the High-
Performance Computing and Communications ini- tiative.
"We consider medical informatics to be a significant area of
independent interdisciplinary research," says Edward H.
Shortliffe, a professor of medicine and computer science at
Stanford, "with ties to a variety of biomedical areas including
clinical medicine and molecular biology."
Certainly, the skills of computer scientists are central to the
evolution of this informational enterprise. But their
contributions must be melded with solid understanding of the
biological sciences, say several medical informatics researchers,
to ensure that the tools developed will best serve the research
community.
In this regard, writing the needed software is very much like
other forms of writing, says James M. Ostell, chief of the
Information Engineering Branch of the National Center for
Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of
Medicine, Bethesda, Md.
"One of the things that makes for a good writer is to understand
the subject," Ostell says. "I could study books about war, but
unless I've been a soldier, I'm not going to really get the feel
of it. The same is true for molecular biologists."
Perhaps for this reason, medical information scientists are often
twice-trained--once in a biologically oriented discipline, and
then again in computer science, or, sometimes, vice versa.
John Wilbur, a senior scientist at NCBI, for example, is a board-
certified internist with experience in molecular biology. He also
has a Ph.D. in mathematics.
"We do research on medical and molecular biology kinds of
databases," Wilbur says. "And, certainly, my expertise in the
area of biology has been a big help in constructing test
databases, allowing me to make an analysis of the failures and be
able to judge what's going on. At this point, my background has
been mostly used in that way, though it's quite crucial in that
way."
A test database, Wilbur explains, is a set of documents and
queries along with a set of answers as to which documents answer
the queries.
The information resources that scientists are developing draw
from two broad approaches to information problems. Many people
working in the medical informatics field are developing
artificial intelligence (AI) systems, also known as knowledge-
based or expert systems. Underlying these systems, often, are
probabilistic programming tactics. Statistically based programs
access the majority of the searchable bibliographic databases
found in libraries and elsewhere, whether in an online, CD-ROM,
or diskette format.
While AI approaches are strongly connected with medical
informatics, generally, and statistically based approaches with
literature and gene-sequence databases, strategies are mixed and
matched for optimal results.
"I'm looking at knowledge-based methods, which can work with
statistical methods in a kind of synergistic way," says Wilbur.
"Probabilistic methods form the basis for what we call document
neighboring, where we go through the whole database and find all
close neighbors of all documents. We then store this. This turns
out to be a very useful way of finding new documents, and is, in
fact, more successful than a lot of the other methods that people
have used."
Document neighboring has been incorporated into a product from
NCBI called Entrez, available in several formats. According to
Ostell, Entrez offers a merge of all available DNA and protein
databases as well as a subset of the biomedical literature
database Medline. His group also is now in the process of
including a database developed at the Brookhaven National
Laboratory, Upton, N.Y., that will give users access to three-
dimensional crystal structures of DNA and protein molecules.
In addition, a client server version is now in final beta testing
and will be available online via the Internet soon, according to
Ostell. This version lets NCBI provide a "generic back end," he
says, consisting of the several basic data files, while search
software on the client's end can vary. That software may be the
tools package provided by Entrez, or it may be customized
software created by the client.
"That means that we can take advantage of the creativity of the
entire programming community," Ostell explains. "So, we can let
many flowers bloom at the client end. Entrez is but one flower--
it happens to be our flower--but we would expect and encourage
many other styles of using that information to develop without us
changing what we're doing at this end."
Information scientists working in the biomedical arena point out
that their emerging research discipline is not so much a separate
entity somehow servicing the biomedical community--it is, in
fact, an integral part of that community.
"I would hate to give the impression that the role of the medical
informatics professional is to build tools for use by the more
traditional biomedical research community," says Stanford's
Shortliffe. "Medical informatics researchers are biomedical
researchers, albeit in a specialized interdisciplinary area that
requires them to have broad familiarity with biomedical
application domains as well as the underlying computer science
and decision science topics."
David Gelernter, an associate professor of computer science at
Yale University, puts it this way:
"The basic premise of medical informatics is that there is such a
thing as the body of medical information and that this huge,
amorphous, and constantly expanding body is a topic worthy of
study in its own right."
The Information Space
The concept of a collaborative workplace created by and
consisting of scientific communications raises subtle questions
about the nature of information and of the user's relationship to
it.
Ostell speaks of "being able to traverse a very heterogeneous,
linked information space."
As he describes it: "The way we envision working in that area is
that you don't actually attempt to put all these different things
into, say, a single monolithic database that you then query.
Instead, what you do is you build a set of linked databases and
data analysis tools that each have their own unique properties
but share a way of hooking themselves together. That way they can
each have the properties that are appropriate for them to have,
but you can move among them as your needs change. We are building
that kind of a system."
"And there are all the issues of navigational views," adds Frisse
at Washington University. "How does one get about in that space?
When one has a book or a library, one has a large number of
visual cues that can tell you where you are in the space, whereas
when one is scrolling through a screen or popping up windows, one
can easily get lost and not know where one is within an
information space."
Diana E. Forsythe is an anthropologist at the University of
Pittsburgh who has worked within the medical informatics
community for several years, helping to change the view of what
constitutes relevant medical information.
"One thing anthropologists do is simply pick out assumptions,"
Forsythe says, "and it struck me that [medical informatics
researchers] were defining information in a narrow way, as stuff
that's written down in books and journal articles.
"It's a classic library approach, which is not wrong, but there's
a lot of informal knowledge, local knowledge, specific knowledge,
that isn't in textbooks. I started documenting that and feeding
back to people in medical informatics that there were information
needs that they weren't thinking about that might also be
supported through the use of automation."
"In order to understand how to support collaborative work in
information management," Frisse says, "one must surf across a lot
of different kinds of waves. It's not for the faint hearted. It
really isn't."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Scientists Express Relief As Francis Collins Is Named New
Director Of NIH Genome Project
Investigators foresee the agency's program taking on a
strong disease-gene focus under his leadership
AU : SCOTT VEGGEBERG
TY : News
PG : 1
Scientists associated with the Human Genome Project seem relieved
by last month's official appointment of Francis S. Collins to
head the National Institutes of Health's component of this
enormous international undertaking. Collins's selection as
director of the National Center for Human Genome Research brought
to a close an unexpectedly protracted search for a successor to
former genome head, the charismatic James Watson.
Among those who effusively praised the appointment was Michael
Gottesman, the project's former acting director. "No one is
happier than I am," he told The Scientist just before the April 7
news conference formally announcing the selection of Collins as
head of the NIH project.
Gottesman has good reason to be pleased: Former director Watson
had vacated the post last spring after tangling with NIH director
Bernadine Healy over gene patenting policy (Scott Veggeberg, The
Scientist, May 25, 1992, page 1). And what Healy subsequently
predicted would be a six-month search for a new director dragged
on to a year, with Gottesman balancing his acting genome director
role with responsibilities as chief of the Laboratory of Cell
Biology at the National Cancer Institute.
Moreover, according to Gottesman, although Collins's appointment
by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala had been
considered a virtual fait accompli by many genome scientists for
at least the past six months, there had been rumors circulating
almost to the day of the announcement that Collins would not be
coming to NIH.
But in the end Collins finally did agree to come, to the relief
not only of Gottesman, but of others who want to see the NIH
genome sequencing program back under the purview of a permanent
leader.
"It will be really refreshing and wonderful to have somebody over
there who can make decisions that have long-term effect," says
David Galas, who directs the Department of Energy's human genome
program, with $66 million in funding for fiscal year 1993, most
of which goes to centers at national laboratories. The
counterpart NIH program received $106 million in funding and is
primarily an extramural program.
Also heartened by the appointment is Helen Donis-Keller, the
Washington University geneticist who edited the recently released
human genetic linkage map. "I've been concerned about the
direction and the drift and a lack of a clear policy in this
interim," she says.
But Collins says he doesn't see any major problems that the
interim period has wrought. Thanks to the continued efforts of
genome scientists during this time, the project is in a state of
"vigorous health," Collins says, with a physical map of the human
Y chromosome having been produced, in addition to the Donis-
Keller led development of a genetic linkage map of the entire
human genome.
Collins has left his position as a Howard Hughes Medical
Institute investigator at the University of Michigan and will
bring about half of his current staff to occupy laboratories on
the NIH campus. In addition, he says, he has tentatively
recruited seven other independent investigators, including two
from Michigan. Taken together, these researchers will form the
core of a newly established intramural component of the NIH
genome program. The intramural program is currently being funded
via $10 million from an NIH director's discretionary fund, but in
the next funding cycle NIH officials hope that Congress will
allocate $25 million specifically for this component of the
program.
Collins says he plans to have a total of about 20 independent
investigators at NIH by 1995. The new intramural program,
combined with the existing extramural grants program, will also
get a new monicker: the National Institute of Genomics and
Medical Genetics.
As director of the genome institute, Collins says, his style will
be one of "building consensus and seeking advice, and then making
firm decisions."
Collins is certainly a noteworthy scientist, having, at age 42,
already received the Gairdner Foundation International Award and
the Young Investigator Award of the American Federation of
Clinical Research, as well as honorary degrees from Yale and
Emory universities. He also has some degree of household-name
recognition, having been profiled in popular publications such as
Time (Sept. 17, 1990, page 11) and USA Today (July 24, 1990, page
1D). He is most noted for his codiscovery--along with Lap-Chee
Tsui, a geneticist with the Hospital for Sick Children in
Toronto--of the defective gene responsible for cystic fibrosis
(B.S. Kerem, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 87:8447, 1990). In fact, CF is one of the first
diseases that gene therapists are trying to ameliorate by using a
viral vector to carry in functional copies of the defective gene.
In addition, Collins has been a major contributor to successful
efforts to find the gene for Huntington's disease and
neurofibromatosis.
Collins brings a diverse background to the NIH genome project,
having started his scientific career with a Ph.D. in physical
chemistry from Yale University, moving on to an M.D. degree at
the University of North Carolina, and then returning to Yale to
pursue human genetics and pediatrics. He joined the University of
Michigan in 1984, became a Howard Hughes assistant investigator
in 1987, and was made a full investigator in 1991.
"You could argue that my whole career has been spent training for
this job," he says.
Despite uprooting his lab and taking on the directorship of the
new genome institute at NIH, he says, "I'm absolutely determined
not to lose my edge as a scientist." But, he acknowledges, "it
will be a difficult thing to balance," especially with the genome
project offices essentially right next door to his lab. He says
his penchant for 90-hour work weeks will help make his dual role
a working reality.
Once his laboratory group gets set up in its new quarters at NIH,
he says, "We'll continue to chase disease genes, and then figure
out how they work once we find them." Their current pursuit is of
a defective gene carried by 1 in 200 women, which imparts an 85
percent chance of getting breast cancer.
In fact, he says, chasing disease genes will be the primary
thrust of all the intramural researchers, with the development of
"better diagnostics and human gene therapy" the goal. Efforts to
sequence and map the overall genome will be concentrated in the
extramural centers, such as the one at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, he says.
Donis-Keller, is concerned about Collins's possible overemphasis
on disease genes and about his ability to be as open to input
as former director Watson, who had long ago given up direct
laboratory work. "Watson seemed to take input well and had no
agenda from his own research," she says.
At the time of Watson's departure, Salk Institute molecular
geneticist Glen Evans told The Scientist: "I think his leaving is
tragic, to say the least. Without his support and vision, the
project wouldn't be going today."
But today, Evans says the genome project has found a worthy
successor to Watson, and he is confident that Collins can keep
the program cohesive. "Francis is one of the few people I know of
who has the ability to draw this program along as Jim Watson
did," he says. And he says there can be no better spokesperson
for the project than Collins, who is "perhaps the most well-known
geneticist in the U.S. right now."
DOE's Galas says that now that Collins is on the job, his top
priority is to work with him toward "getting a really serious
planning process in place for the joint project."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Is Emergence Of Two Molecular Evolution Societies A Sign
Of Progress Or A Journal Publishing Face-Off?
AU : RON KAUFMAN
TY : News
PG : 1
Early this year, the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
(SMBE) was officially established to provide molecular
evolutionary biologists with information about their field. Just
two months later, a different group of scientists formed the
International Society of Molecular Evolution (ISME) with a
similar mission.
While both societies claim that the advancement of their
discipline was an important motivation for their formation, the
two sides also acknowledge that a significant reason for their
existence is the promotion of their respective scholarly
journals--a publishing, rather than scientific, matter. But some
molecular evolutionists view the situation as a sign of healthy
competition that ultimately will assist in the maturation of this
still-evolving field.
"I would never have started the Society for Molecular Biology and
Evolution if Springer-Verlag [New York Inc., sponsor of ISME and
publisher of the Journal of Molecular Evolution (JME)] would have
done what we wanted in the first place and lowered their
journal's subscription price. The only reason [Springer-Verlag is
backing ISME] now is because we exist," says Walter Fitch,
president of SMBE and the editor of the society's journal,
Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE).
In January, Fitch, head of the department of ecology and
evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine,
officially activated SMBE. The society had existed since the
start of the journal in 1983, but in name only, since its sole
members were the 44 participants on the MBE editorial board.
Fitch says that adding the journal's 600 subscribers to its
membership base will eventually make the society a "leading
international organization for people who are interested in
comparative DNA sequence analysis, which is molecular evolution."
The society's first meeting will be held at the University of
California, Irvine, July 8-10. Molecular evolutionary biologists
from Japan and Australia as well as the United States are
expected to attend.
The bimonthly MBE was started to provide those studying molecular
evolution with an affordable alternative to the higher-priced
JME, says Fitch. Becoming a member of Fitch's nonprofit
organization, and thereby subscribing to MBE, costs $54 for
professionals and $43 for students.
Fitch's society is being funded through a five-year, $60,000
grant from the New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The
publisher of the society's journal is the University of Chicago
Press, which also provides funding support for the publication.
Meanwhile, Springer-Verlag, the sponsor of ISME, publishes the
22-year-old JME, a monthly journal with subscriptions costing
$740, generally affordable to only large institutions or
libraries. The company, founded in Berlin in 1842, claims it is
the world's second-largest publisher of scientific periodicals.
In February, according to Shawn Morton--a Springer-Verlag
assistant journal editor--the publishing company made inexpensive
personal subscriptions to JME available for $99 through
membership in ISME. The group gained 100 members in its first
eight weeks of existence, society officials say.
The acting president of ISME is Giorgio Bernardi, a molecular
biologist at the Laboratoire de Gentique Moleculaire in Paris.
Its organizers expect ISME to be incorporated by the year's end;
at that time an official governing body will be voted on by the
members.
Fitch says the journal rivalry that spawned the two societies
represents a pragmatic concern for researchers in the
discipline as well as a difference in approach to servicing
molecular evolutionary biologists.
"A scholarly journal is something that should be designed not for
libraries, but for scholars," says Fitch, who will resign his
post as editor of MBE in July and concentrate on his role as
president of the new society. Fitch was an associate editor of
JME from 1976 to 1982. He quit, he says, because he became
disillusioned with the subscription pricing policies of Springer-
Verlag.
"We started this whole journal as a basis for making the field
approachable at a reasonable price to the members and
practitioners in the field," Fitch says. He also asserts that
Springer-Verlag's creation of ISME two months after he officially
established his society shows "they are clearly worried about
us."
Data in the Journal Citation Reports published by the Institute
for Scientific Information in Philadelphia show that papers
published in Fitch's MBE are, in fact, cited at a higher rate.
In 1991, the last year of available statistics, MBE's impact
factor--a ratio calculated by dividing the number of citations in
a given year by the number of papers published during the
previous two years--was 4.13. The impact factor per article for
the competing JME was 2.97.
But Emile Zuckerkandl, editor-in-chief of JME, contends that a
harmony between the two groups can be found. "The creation of
this second society [ISME] was not done in the spirit of
competition with the existing society," he says. "On the
contrary, it is hoped there will be collaboration of the two and
the subscribers can very well be part of both."
Yet, he also maintains that the ideal situation for molecular
evolution would be to have one journal.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : NRC Digests Critiques Of Its Science Education Standards
AU : RON KAUFMAN
TY : News
PG : 3
Participants in an elaborate National Research Council (NRC)
program aimed at establishing national K-12 science education
standards are currently reviewing hundreds of critiques of the
program's progress to date. The evaluations have been solicited
during the past six months from scientists, scientific societies,
and a broad range of other interested individuals throughout the
United States.
As initially conceived more than two years ago, the final version
of the curriculum standards--basic descriptions of what both
students and teachers in grades K through 12 should know about
science--was slated for publication at the end of 1994.
It now appears, however, that the thoroughness with which the
project participants are conducting the evaluation phase may
delay publication by as much as a year.
Says Bruce Alberts, incoming director of the National Academy of
Sciences, which oversees NRC activities: "The critique and
consensus part is important if we're going to get people to buy
into using the standards, but it makes the process very
difficult. I think we're on the fast track.... So I'm not sure if
the time schedule is realistic."
Alberts, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the
University of California, San Francisco, who will take over the
NAS helm on July 1, adds: "The quality of the effort is the main
thing. I would much rather see it done well and released at the
end of 1995 than to have it done in a mediocre way and out at the
end of 1994.
"If I have anything to say about it, we won't issue [the
standards] till we're happy with them."
Explaining the need for receiving extensive comments on the
proposed standards, Elizabeth Stage, director of the Critique and
Consensus Program, says: "When the final version of these
standards is published, implementation [will be] entirely
voluntary. So we feel very strongly that a consensus must be
achieved; it has to be evident that everybody was heard and
everybody's views got consideration."
The council hopes the standards will be used by school
administrators to provide guidance in science classrooms on a
national scale. The project was conceived nearly two years ago by
the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and NRC--the
principal operating agency of NAS (Ron Kaufman, The Scientist,
July 6, 1992, page 3).
Stage's Critique and Consensus Program began six months ago, when
a document presenting a first draft of the proposed education
standards was distributed to science education societies and
concerned individuals across the U.S. The document, entitled
"National Science Education Standards: An Enhanced Sampler,"
contained a rough version of the standards' general framework--
the result of 12 months' work in Washington, D.C., by nearly 100
scientists and educators.
In the seven weeks following the release of the first sampler in
November, the Critique and Consensus Program office was showered
with more than 500 responses. Three months ago, a second sampler
was published, this time incorporating in its text the solicited
opinions. The project's coordinators say they are receiving
responses from this second update at an even faster rate.
In addition to the suggestions provided by individuals, more than
135 different science societies have assigned liaisons to
critique the NRC project. They include groups with a broad
membership base, such as NSTA and the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, as well as those representing women
and minority populations.
"We're proactively going out and soliciting the opinions of
groups who have been historically left out of mainstream science
education," says Stage, a science and math education professor on
leave from the University of California, Berkeley. Such groups
include the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native
Americans in Science, the National Alliance of Black School
Educators, and the Association for Women in Science.
What Are Standards?
"One of the best metaphors to explain these standards is that
they're criteria that allow a local school district, teacher, or
state to judge their curriculum--but not to replicate it as their
curriculum," explains Harold Pratt, a retired high school science
administrator from Colorado and a consultant to the NRC project.
In the 12 months since the first meeting of the NRC National
Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment (NCSESA),
what Pratt calls "a rough and starting outline for standards in
the physical and biological sciences" has been written.
Each scientific category--the standards will eventually be
composed of at least seven--has been divided into three
developmental stages for primary and secondary education: grades
K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. The standards then define "Fundamental
Understandings" recommended to be achieved at each stage. These
"understandings" include basic scientific facts, theories, and
modes of inquiry.
For example, in a section called Life Sciences, at the K-4 stage,
students need to learn the basic information that all species
vary and that green plants make their own food, according to the
sampler. The 5-8 stage advances to discussions of simple cell
biosis and photosynthesis. And in grades 9-12, the standards say,
required knowledge includes a more complex understanding of how
DNA can mutate and how cells create energy.
Pratt says the project's working groups have drafted two-thirds
of the standards' final science content. They still need to
compile standards for the physical and space sciences, as well as
standards for the basic knowledge teachers should possess and the
resources that need to be provided by the school districts.
Though the next full meetings for the members of the NRC working
groups are not scheduled until June and July, the Critique and
Consensus Program will continue to request comments and
incorporate them into the standards.
Some of those involved in the process of creating the standards
hope federal lawmakers will see their efforts as justification
for pumping more money into precollege science education.
"Every school needs a science materials center like it needs a
football team," says Alberts, a leader of the City Science
Program, a project designed to reeducate elementary science
teachers in San Francisco over a four-year period. He says along
with the standards, a major public relations campaign must be
waged to influence the federal government to support more science
education in the U.S.'s 16,000 school districts.
Sandra Mclain, a first-grade teacher at the Joseph Keels
Elementary School in Columbia, S.C., and a member of the
standards project, agrees. "Yes, it's going to take money," she
says. "The teacher can no longer have just one Bunsen burner and
the whole class watches. The children must experience these
things, not only for science. Conducting classroom experiments
teaches higher-level thinking skills and problem-solving."
She says that for decades, science has taken a back seat in
elementary education. She hopes the construction of national
standards will make science more important to individual teachers
as well as provide ammunition for greater funding requests of the
federal government.
However, Paul Saltman, a professor of biology at the University
of California, San Diego, believes neither standards nor money
will make an impact. "Without good teaching, there isn't an
educational enema around that can shove the knowledge into the
kids," he says.
For example, Saltman claims that 92 percent of elementary
teachers in San Diego have not had one full year of college
science. "It's easy to set standards. What's hard is putting it
together and seeing that the teaching is good. . . . The key is
improving the richness of the knowledge of teachers."
He says the education of teachers is a deeper and more
complicated problem. Productive efforts include Alberts's in San
Francisco and Saltman's similar summer teacher reeducation
program in San Diego, called the Science Institute for Elementary
and Secondary Teachers (Judy Berlfein, The Scientist, Oct. 16,
1989, page 19).
Mclain, however, expresses optimism that the standards' release
will start a chain reaction in U.S. schools: "Educators are
hungry for these standards. We are hungry for change and want to
know how to change things. We're hungry to know about the good
methods. We're hungry for the ability to allow children to
experience science this way.
"And we're looking to this as a vision for the future."
To receive a copy of "National Science Education Standards: An
Enhanced Sampler," write to the National Science Standards
Project, Critique and Consensus, NRC, 2101 Constitution Ave.,
N.W., HA 486, Washington, D.C. 20418; or call (202) 334-1399 or
fax to (202) 334-3159.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : NOTEBOOK
TY : News
PG : 4
It's Official
At its members' meeting on April 13 in Research Triangle Park,
N.C., the Association of Biotechnology Companies (ABC) voted
unanimously to merge with the Industrial Biotechnology
Association (IBA), forming a new group called the Biotechnology
Industry Organization (BIO). The merger becomes official July 1.
IBA members had also unanimously endorsed the merger at their
meeting in February (Notebook, The Scientist, March 8, 1993, page
4). "I expected a strong vote, but I never expected unanimity,"
says BIO president Carl Feldbaum. "This gives us enormous
momentum in getting the merger done and moving forward as one
unified organization." Though the two groups had held opposing
positions on several matters (Barbara Spector, The Scientist,
Feb. 22, 1993, page 1), Feldbaum says, "We've resolved 99 percent
of the issues that had divided the two organizations."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
Going To Market
Another topic near and dear to the hearts of ABC constituents--
financing--was addressed at the meeting as participants heard a
pitch from the chairman of the American Stock Exchange to look to
his organization as a source of backing for biotechs in the
future. James R. Jones pointed out to his audience that an
expected change in the tax code supporting savings and investment
will make low-cost capital available to biotech firms. Jones said
the AMEX market is an improvement over venture capital,
commercial bank lending, attempts at mergers with pharmaceutical
and health care companies, and even other stock exchanges, citing
such attributes as: a relatively stable trading environment;
allowances AMEX provides to companies that make heavy early-stage
investments in R&D; the creation of an Emerging Company
Marketplace for companies too small to qualify for a regular AMEX
listing; and Corporate Focus and Security Analyst Forums that
bring young companies to the attention of the worldwide
investment community. "Clearly the equity markets are the way to
go. For many of you, it will ultimately come down to which market
can best serve your needs," Jones said.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
Popularity Pole
Last December, Penn State astrophysicist Aleksander Wolszczan won
the highest scientific honor from his native Poland, the Prize of
the Foundation for Polish Science. One month later, the citizens
of Torun, Poland, participating in a poll conducted by a local
radio station, voted him its third most popular person for 1992.
Wolszczan lived in Torun, the birthplace of astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus, for 15 years prior to emigrating to the United States
in 1982. Wolszczan made headlines in January 1991 when he
published in the journal Nature (355[6356]:145) the first
discovery of planets revolving around a pulsar outside our solar
system.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
Burying The Hatchet
The bitter, two-year battle between the prestigious Philadelphia-
based Wistar Institute and longtime director Hilary Kaprowski,
who brought the biomedical institution to prominence over three
decades, is over. According to published reports, a lawsuit filed
by Kaprowski against the institute was settled April 7, minutes
before the trial was to begin in United States District Court in
Philadelphia. Kaprowski brought the suit in February of last
year, alleging that age discrimination led to his ouster as
director of the institute after 34 years, and his replacement by
former Wistar associate director and cancer researcher Giovanni
Rovera in March of 1991. Kaprowski also charged that Wistar
officials harassed and retaliated against him after his removal
as director. Wistar officials maintained that Kaprowski refused
to cooperate with the board of directors in their attempt to
implement changes to deal with a mounting financial crisis at the
institute. The argument reportedly engulfed the staff of the
institute in an internal battle that threatened its future (Jean
Wallace, The Scientist, March 2, 1992, page 1). Both parties
refused to discuss terms of the settlement, according to the
reports, and Rovera will continue as director and Kaprowski as a
researcher at the institute. Under the famed virologist and
immunologist's direction, the 101-year-old institution created
the first vaccine for German measles, developed improved vaccines
for rabies, and helped develop monoclonal antibodies as
diagnostics and therapeutics. During his tenure, the institute
grew from about six laboratories and five senior scientists to
about 50 labs and 70 senior scientists with an operating budget
of approximately $30 million.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
Change At USGS
Dallas Peck, the 11th director of the 114-year-old United States
Geological Survey, resigned April 13 and will pursue full-time
field research for the agency. Peck, 64, had been USGS director
since 1981 but now says, "It is time for me to return to active
research." His specialty is volcanology and the geology of
California and the Pacific Northwest. During his tenure at USGS,
Peck emphasized what he calls "the science of global change,"
which is the long- and short-term changes and processes of the
Earth's ecosystems. He received his Ph.D. in geology from Harvard
University in 1960. The director's post is appointed by the
president for an indefinite term, traditionally on the
recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences. At press
time, a successor to Peck was yet to be selected.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : The Envelope, Please ... 1993 National Academy Awards
AU : BARBARA SPECTOR
TY : News
PG : 8
The National Academy of Sciences presented 17 awards on April 26,
honoring 20 individuals for their outstanding contributions to
science. Several of the honorees, whose accomplishments have been
celebrated time and again in the scientific community--such as
Gairdner Award winners Bert Vogelstein and Stanley Prusiner--are
old hands at accepting such prizes. But one awardee, who is more
comfortable discussing barnacles than buckyballs, says he was
"very, very definitely surprised" to learn that NAS had selected
him to receive an award.
"I don't consider myself a scientist. I never had good academic
training," says Olin J. Stephens II, who received the Gibbs
Brothers Medal and a $5,000 prize from the academy for
outstanding contributions to naval architecture and marine
engineering. Nonetheless, he notes, "scientific knowledge has
contributed a great deal to sailing boat design."
Stephens's yacht design and brokerage company, New York-based
Sparkman & Stephens Inc., which he cofounded in 1929, designed
six winners of the America's Cup, including two vessels that won
the title twice. He retired from the company in 1978.
"A lot has come to the yacht-designing fraternity from the
aeronautical field," the octogenarian Stephens notes. While in
the past, yacht designers tested their creations by using small
models, the advent of the computer and the use of computational
fluid dynamics have resulted in a transformation of the art, he
says.
Stephens attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
1926-27 and then dropped out. His nautical successes began with
Dorade, a vessel he designed for his father that was sailed by
Stephens and his brother Rod, who later joined the company.
Dorade won a 1931 transatlantic race and the Fastnet Race in 1931
and 1933.
Highest Honor
The academy's highest honor, the National Academy of Sciences
Public Welfare Medal, was presented to Jerome B. Wiesner,
president emeritus and Institute Professor, emeritus, at MIT. The
award, a bronze medal with no cash prize, honors his "devoted and
successful efforts in science policy, education, and nuclear
disarmament and world peace."
Wiesner, 77, joined MIT in 1942. During World War II, he was a
leader in the development of radar. In 1945, he worked at Los
Alamos National Laboratory, returning to MIT in 1946. From 1961
to 1964, Wiesner was special assistant for science and technology
and chairman of the President's Science Advisory Committee under
Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He was named
MIT's provost in 1966 and president in 1971. In 1973, he was
instrumental in founding the Office of Technology Assessment. He
retired in 1980.
"The most important thing that I've done in public service,"
Wiesner says, "is to fight against nuclear weapons." His activism
for this cause almost cost him his job as Kennedy's science
adviser, he recalls: "A lot of people told him he shouldn't hire
me because I was active in disarmament--and he said that's why he
hired me."
Wiesner laments the fact that since the 1960s the power to make
recommendations concerning the military has not been included in
the presidential science adviser's charter. "That has been the
most important thing that has needed to be done," he says. "Now
that we're cutting back on the military, we have to do the right
things so we get more bang for the buck. We can no longer afford
to do crazy things like the B-2 bomber."
Because expenditures for military R&D have been so high, Wiesner
says, without the ability to give counsel to the president on
military matters, the office of the science adviser is "almost
irrelevant." Ill-advised military spending has contributed
significantly to the problem of the deficit in the United States
budget, he says. "The best example of wasted work was when
[President Ronald] Reagan started Star Wars without any
consulting with scientists. Even his science adviser [George A.
Keyworth II] didn't know he was going to start it. It was a
terrible waste of billions and billions of dollars; no science
adviser would have ever okayed it."
Although Wiesner suffered a stroke in 1989, he is still active;
earlier this year, a booklet, Beyond the Looking Glass: The
United States Military in 2000 and Later, which he wrote along
with MIT physicists Philip Morrsion and Kosta Tsipis, was
published by MIT's Program in Science & Technology for
International Security.
Where Credit Is Due
Also recognized by the academy were two contributors to the Big
Bang theory who, some observers now believe, were unfairly
overlooked for the Nobel Prize. Ralph A. Alpher, Distinguished
Research Professor of Physics at Union College, Schenectady,
N.Y., and Robert Herman, L.P. Gilvin Centen- nial Professor,
emeritus, at the University of Texas, Austin, received the
academy's Henry Draper Medal and split the accompanying $10,000
award.
In the 1940s, Alpher and Herman--now 72 and 78, respectively--
developed a theoretical relativistic model of the evolution of
the universe. They predicted the existence of a microwave
background radiation left over from the Big Bang in a 1948 paper
(R. Alpher, R. Herman, Nature, 162:774, 1948), followed up by a
series of articles that received little attention. "We personally
tried to get people in our areas to measure [the radiation], but
they said it was beyond their capabilities," says Alpher. "By
1955, we sort of gave up. We were disappointed to be told over
and over that it was not possible to detect this radiation with
state-of-the-art technology. In retrospect, some people suggest
it probably might have been."
Then, in 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson of AT&T Bell
Laboratories accidentally detected the radiation--for which they
could not find an explanation--while working on a radio dish.
Meanwhile, a group of Princeton University researchers led by
Robert H. Dicke and James Peebles learned of Penzias and Wilson's
discovery. In back-to-back papers in the Astrophysical Journal
(R.H. Dicke, P.J.E. Peebles, et al., Astrophys. J., 142:414,
1965; A.A. Penzias, R.W. Wilson, et al., Astrophys. J., 142:419,
1965), the Bell Labs group reported on the discovery and the
Princeton group reported on its significance--without reference
to the papers by Alpher and Herman. In 1978, Penzias and Wilson
received the Nobel Prize for discovering the cosmic background
radiation, but, as Dennis Overbye points out in Lonely Hearts of
the Cosmos (New York, HarperCollins, 1991), "nobody got a prize
for predicting it."
Alpher and Herman wrote in Physics Today (41[8]:24-34, 1988) that
".<|>.<|>. we have derived enormous pleasure from the creative
process, considerable pain from lack of appreciation of our work,
and some measure of satisfaction and pleasure from realizing that
at long last some scientific colleagues view our early
contributions as meritorious."
Editorial Excellence
Among this year's NAS honorees, the only woman was Janet Taylor
Spence, Alma Cowden Madden Professor of Liberal Arts and Ashbel
Smith Professor of Psychology and Educational Psychology at UT-
Austin. She received the National Academy of Sciences Award for
Scientific Reviewing, a prize of $5,000.
Because more effort now is being expended to encourage women to
go into science, Spence, 69, speculates, "we'll see more women
getting awards in the future, simply because there'll be more to
choose from." If this doesn't happen, she says, "we'll have to
look strongly at what we're doing."
Spence, a former president of the American Psychological
Association, is being honored for "her pervasive and generative
influence upon virtually all of the contemporary scientific
literature of psychology as editor, author, and policy-maker."
She says the increasing abundance of journals is partially "an
inevitable consequence of the growth of science--there's a lot of
very useful science going on by more and more scientists, and we
need more and more outlets." But skyrocketing journal prices
result from the appearance of more specialized journals that are
targeted toward a small audience, she says, and eventually, cash-
strapped libraries will be forced "to pick and choose among the
ones that they absolutely need."
Noting that her award is cosponsored by the Philadelphia-based
Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), along with the Palo
Alto, Calif.-based Annual Reviews Inc., Spence says that
libraries may have "to drop obscure publications that have very
little influence as determined by citation counts," ISI's area of
specialization. Acknowledging that such specialized publications
contain "the very occasional article that's just what somebody
needs," she says that the wave of the future may be to "make the
information available by other means, like an online set of
abstracts" with the option of obtaining a full document. "That
may have to be the way to go," she says.
Spence apparently does not need to worry about the possibility
that her own work will fall into obscurity. Her book Masculinity
and Femininity: Their Psychological Dimensions, Correlates, and
Antecedents, written with R.L. Helmreich (University of Texas
Press, 1978), has been identified by ISI as a "citation classic,"
having been cited in more than 700 publications.
Oft-Honored Scientists
Adding NAS awards to a long list of prizes they have already
earned for their scientific achievements were Stanley B.
Prusiner, a professor of neurology at the University of
California, San Francisco, School of Medicine; and Bert
Vogelstein, director of the molecular genetics laboratory at the
Johns Hopkins Oncology Center at Johns Hopkins University Medical
School. The two share the Richard Lounsbery Award, consisting of
a vermeil medal, a $50,000 prize, and a $20,000 travel stipend,
honoring their extraordinary achievements in biology and
medicine. The award is presented in alternate years to
researchers from the U.S. and France to stimulate scientific
exchange between the two countries.
Vogelstein, 43, is the discoverer of a series of genetic changes
that are responsible for the formulation and progression of
colorectal cancer. His collection of prizes includes the Gairdner
Award in 1992 and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for
Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research in 1990. Prusiner,
50, is being honored for his work on genetically transmitted
neurode-generative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and
Huntingdon's. The Gairdner Foundation recently announced that
Prusiner will receive a Gairdner Award in October. Last year, he
garnered a Charles A. Dana Award.
Another familiar face among the honorees was that of F. Sherwood
Rowland, Donald Bren Professor of Chemistry at UC-Irvine. Rowland
delivered the Robertson Memorial Lecture of the National Academy
of Sciences, focusing on his work, the day of the award ceremony;
the lectureship was accompanied by a $7,500 prize. Rowland, 65,
chairman of the board and past president of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, is renowned for his
1974 discovery that chlorofluorocarbon gases deplete the ozone
layer of the stratosphere. Among his many honors are a Dana Award
(1987) and the Japan Prize (1989).
Other Awardees
In addition to the frequently touted Vogelstein, Prusiner, and
Rowland, the academy singled out for recognition the work of the
following ground-breaking researchers:
* John A. Simpson, Arthur H. Compton Distinguished Service
Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi
Institute, received the academy's Arctowski Medal, as well as a
$20,000 prize and an additional $60,000 to go to an institution
of his choice. Simpson, 76, has built scientific instruments for
31 spacecraft, including the current Ulysses mission to the poles
of the sun.
* Hiroo Kanamori, John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of
Geophysics and the director of the seismological laboratory at
the California Institute of Technology, was selected for the
Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship. The 56-year-old recipient of
the $20,000 prize is expected to give four to six lectures at the
institution of his choice. At press time, Kanamori had not yet
decided where he will give the lectures, although he had
indicated that he plans to discuss the development of seismology
over the past 20 years.
* R. Eric Betzig, 33, a member of the technical staff in the
semiconductor physics research department at AT&T Bell
Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., received the $15,000 National
Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research, given to
recognize innovative young scientists. Betzig developed a near-
field scanning optical microscope, "which extends the resolution
of optical microscopy far beyond the diffraction limit to
dimensions as small as one-fortieth of an optical wave length,"
according to the award citation.
* Erwin L. Hahn, an emeritus professor of physics at UC-Berkeley,
and Charles Pence Slichter, a professor of physics and chemistry
at the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, shared the $20,000 Comstock Prize, awarded for an
important investigation in electricity, magnetism, or radiation
energy. Hahn, 71, was cited for his discoveries in magnetic
resonance and coherent optics. Slichter, 69, was singled out for
his contributions to the application of magnetic resonance in
condensed matter.
* Nick Holonyak, Jr., 64, John Bardeen Professor of Electrical
and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, took the $25,000 National Academy of
Sciences Award for the Industrial Application of Science for his
work on semiconductor materials and light-emitting diodes.
* Boris Magasanik, 73, Jacques Monod Professor of Microbiology at
MIT, received the $5,000 Selman A. Waksman Award for his research
on catabolite repression, amino acid metabolism, and regulation
of nitrogen metabolism in bacteria. The award honors excellence
in microbiology.
* Richard H. Holm, 59, Higgins Professor of Chemistry at Harvard
University, got the National Academy of Sciences Award in
Chemical Sciences, a bronze medal and $10,000 prize, for his
research on metal clusters and metalloproteins, "unifying the
fields of inorganic and biological chemistry," according to the
award citation.
* Harold S. Johnston, 72, a professor of chemistry at UC-
Berkeley, garnered the National Academy of Sciences Award for
Chemistry in Service to Society, accompanied by $20,000, "for his
pioneering efforts to point out that man-made emissions could
affect the chemistry of the stratosphere."
The $35,000 Troland Research Award, honoring work in experimental
psychology, went to 38-year-old Steven Pinker, a professor of
cognitive science at MIT, for his research on visual perception
and the acquisition of language.
Another MIT researcher, Peter S. Kim, 35, an associate professor
of biology at the school as well as a member of the Whitehead
Institute for Biomedical Research and an assistant investigator
of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, took the National Academy
of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, a gold medal and $20,000
prize, for his work "that has elucidated both the pathway of
protein folding and mechanisms of macromolecular recognition."
The National Academy of Sciences Award for Behavioral Research
Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War, a $5,000 prize, went
to septuagenarian Thomas C. Schelling, Lucius N. Littauer
Professor of Political Economy, emeritus, at Harvard and
Distinguished Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the
University of Maryland, College Park. Schelling was honored "for
his pioneering work in the logic of military strategy, nuclear
war, and arms races."
The awards were given at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., during
the academy's 130th annual meeting. At press time, the ceremony
had not yet taken place.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : To Jobless Scientists: Don't Give Up... You Can Pursue
Your Research
AU : Catherine Reed
TY : Opinion
PG : 11
Editor's Note: Like many in the science community,
ecologist Catherine Reed is deeply concerned about
current problems hampering the careers of researchers
throughout the United States: the job shortage, the
difficulty of securing adequate funding, limited
opportunities for professional advancement, and so forth.
However, while lamenting the existence of these problems,
Reed--a research associate in the department of entomology
at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul--believes that
even the most painful situation of all, joblessness, need
not prevent a dedicated, resourceful researcher from
pursuing her or his scientific mission. In the following
essay, which appeared originally in the Bulletin of the
Ecological Society of America (73:4, December 1992), Reed
advises jobless scientists on ways in which they can
continue their investigations. She says that her advice--
directed especially at those who are not totally dependent
on elaborately equipped labs--is drawn from her personal
experience.
The number of people trained for and committed to doing
scientific research continues to increase, while the number of
research positions in academia, industry, and government
continues to decline. Thus, many qualified scientists are unable
to find jobs that include any research at all.
Many people have left science for more promising fields, but
others still hope to make lives in science for themselves, and
continue to work on the margins. Here is some advice for those
who want to continue research, but have no job.
* Find at least one institution and one individual to facilitate
your work. You will need some kind of title and letterhead, a
library, the use of computers, and the advice and encouragement
of other scientists in order to apply for grants and continue
research. Apply for a nonposition, such as research associate,
and plan to find your own funding. Emphasize what you can do for
the institution. You may be rejected for reasons unrelated to
your qualifications, but as professors continue to retire and are
not replaced, there will be more space available at colleges and
universities. Support your institution by helping your coworkers
and saying good things about them. The institution, of course,
receives credit for your excellent work.
* Develop a long-term research project and keep working on it as
much as possible; don't just go from grant to grant. Follow the
attraction; choose a project you love, even though it may not be
the trendiest. The marginal worker is in an ideal position to do
work that is outside the mainstream or crosses disciplinary
boundaries.
* Develop a cheap project. Do your research locally and make it
applicable to local conservation, agricultural, or educational
concerns. In the field of ecology, for example, there is a major
need for projects that bring together theory, long-term
observations, and practical approaches to human-environmental
relationships. Look around for data that have been collected but
not analyzed, and integrate these with your original work. As you
begin work, ask around for supplies and equipment before
considering buying anything.
* Look for alternative funding sources, including local agencies
and foundations whose actions may be influenced by the results of
your work. Your state department of natural resources, as well as
native plant societies, conservation groups, and clubs, may
benefit from scientific input, and their members are valuable
sources of information about local plant and animal communities,
environmental issues, and study sites. Applied projects may
receive funding from commodity producers' groups. If your project
has an educational application, this, too, may tie into some
funding source.
* Develop alternative labor sources. Especially for summer field
projects, you may be able to get help from summer programs for
science teachers or high school students. Volunteers may be
recruited from environmental groups. Another possibility is labor
exchanges with other workers, including graduate students, if
your busy seasons don't overlap.
* Maintain your graduate school contacts. Develop new contacts by
writing and calling people and organizing meetings locally. Seek
out people who respect you. Speak to local groups. Attend
expensive national meetings only if you have a specific goal that
can be met solely in this way.
* Model your life on the artist's life. Many people throughout
history have supported their main interest or obsession with
part-time jobs. Computer-related tasks, scientific writing and
editing, consulting, or other science-related work may bring in
enough income to keep you going. There is always a need at
colleges and universities for people to teach courses the regular
faculty don't want to teach (usually the big, non-major survey
courses). Or follow Darwin's example: Let your spouse support you
(which is still easier for women than men).
* Keep your expectations low. Getting grants will not be easy. An
adjunctship will not lead to a faculty position; a courtesy
position will not lead to a regular job; a faithful volunteer
will be kept as a volunteer, not offered pay. If an opening does
come up at your institution, it will go to someone "better
qualified" (has a good job already) or with "higher potential"
(just finished a Ph.D. and hasn't been unemployed yet). Don't
expect anything special because you're a woman or a minority;
although there are many programs to increase the number of women
and minorities in science, very little money goes to aid them in
their research. Instead, the money goes to institutions and
administrators working to increase the enrollment of female and
minority students.
* Keep your self-confidence high. It's easy to become bitter
seeing others no smarter or harder-working than you ensconced in
seemingly secure positions in academia or industry--but don't let
this destroy your pleasure in your work. There are many more
serious environmental questions than there are scientists to
solve them, and anyone who is willing to work can make valuable
contributions to both theoretical and applied ecology. Work at
whatever level is possible for you. Respect yourself for your
devotion to science. "Never complain, never explain" is a good
motto. Don't commiserate with your professional colleagues--save
this for family and friends. Maintain your spirits with anti-
establishment rituals such as resume burnings and by partying with
people who enjoy life. It is a rare privilege to study a part of
the natural world thoroughly and intimately; appreciate this.
Catherine Reed is a research associate in entomology at the
University of Minnesota, St. Paul.
Copyright 1992 Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America.
Reprinted with permission.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
COMMENTARY
AU : Ken Zaret
TY : Opinion
PG : 12
TI : How Healy's Successor Can Maximize The Harvest Of
Advances From NIH.
Many scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health would
agree that Bernadine Healy has done a superb job of increasing
the awareness of the agency's importance among Congress and the
public. Now that she is departing, however, many scientists hope
that the high-profile position of director will be filled by
someone with views different from hers about how to achieve
spectacular advances in health research.
Scientists have been accused in the recent past of failing to
answer the "billion-dollar" question of how best to apportion the
NIH budget. However, many of us feel that the major problem is
that spending policy is becoming dictated ever more by what makes
good politics rather than by what makes good science.
The public continually expects fundamental advances in the
prevention and treatment of disease, which leads NIH
administrators to ask: What is the most effective way to
distribute funds for basic biomedical research? Top-level
administrators who work hard to solicit funds for NIH from
Congress--and who also determine how the money will be spent--
have not liked the answer that the basic research community
gives. That is, experience proves that investigator-initiated,
untargeted research provides the greatest strides forward,
establishing paths that are obvious for targeted research to
follow.
Moreover, key NIH officials and certain members of Congress and
the executive branch have been rejecting this advice--despite the
fact that basic research scientists are the ones expected to
provide biomedical advances. Instead, they prefer to target far
more spending on specific health problems that exist today, and
on technologies that would enhance the current economic climate.
No one would dispute the importance of these concerns, but those
of us who perform basic research are sounding the alarm that the
overemphasis on these priorities will create a dangerous deficit
in the wellspring of fundamental discoveries needed to solve
biomedical problems of the future.
NIH-funded basic scientists have told the administrators that $1
billion is currently necessary to maintain untargeted research,
and we have balked at shortsighted attempts to target research
funding. The government's response this past year was to cut tens
of millions of dollars from the National Institute of General
Medical Sciences, which sponsors the most fundamental research
performed by NIH.
The political appeal of seeking funding support tied to specific
biomedical objectives is obvious; Congress and the public will
believe that the most pressing issues are being addressed,
although future progress will suffer. I suggest that this
approach cynically underestimates the sensibility of many voters
and taxpayers in the United States.
When I am asked about the research in my laboratory, which is
funded by NIH, I respond that we study basic mechanisms of cell
differentiation and gene regulation. Those who inquire further
discover that we use liver cells as a model system, and are
surprised that I don't describe our research as liver-disease-
oriented. However, virtually every lay person I have talked to
has been able to understand how important it is to learn more
about fundamental aspects of how cells work before we can develop
dramatic new breakthroughs in the treatment of disease. Medical
doctors understand this point; their professional associations
pay keen interest to basic research laboratories, inviting
principal investigators to give major talks on their findings at
annual meetings.
Surely, members of Congress and the executive branch can
understand the necessity of investigator-initiated research, but
only if they hear about it from the top administrators at NIH, as
well as from scientists at the bench. Explaining untargeted
funding takes extra effort and patience, but it is essential if
we want to solve health problems.
Ken Zaret is an associate professor in the section of
biochemistry of Brown University's Division of Biology and
Medicine, Providence, R.I. His views on NIH biomedical funding
have also appeared in the New York Times (Nov. 24, 1992, page
A14).
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
LETTERS
TY : Science Dropouts
TI : Opinion (Letters)
PG : 12
I was amazed to read the news story on the science
dropout rate (Franklin Hoke, The Scientist, Jan. 25,
1993, page 1) and find no discussion of the relation to minority
and female participation. Yet, as far as the future is concerned,
this is the center of gravity of the problem.
While the educational pipeline leading to technological careers
has never had more than a fraction of the minority and female
candidates needed, in recent years this fraction has declined
drastically as the candidate population has become increasingly
minority-female. The phenomenon of dropouts has always been
greatest among minorities and continues to increase.
As the gender-race composition of the student population changes,
we face the alarming prospect of a continual increase in all
levels of science dropout and a continual decline of college- and
graduate- level science students. As these trends become
entrenched, basic science will be hardest hit and American
science will face a major decline. No doubt, this process,
already under way, will be well advanced early in the 21st
century.
What can be done about this? To my mind, Draconian measures are
necessary on at least two fronts. First, science education has to
begin earlier and become more intense earlier; we must have many
more elementary science teachers and new, more effective teaching
approaches. Second, beginning immediately, we must improve the
presentation and teaching of science in minority colleges and
high schools and for women students.
Consider, for example, Afro-American students studying science at
historically black institutions and community colleges--at least
two-thirds of the science candidate pool. These students receive
their science primarily from non-Ph.D. sources and from very few
instructors active in research. Thus, all the other factors
currently depressing interest in science are further confounded
by the circular, negative effect of the lack of role models. This
only strengthens the TV-articulated, socioculturally elaborated
mythology excluding minorities and females from white-male-
dominated science.
What will we do in 2010 or 2020, when white males are the least
numerous group in the student population? Now that the Cold War
has ended, can we transfer science/technology personnel and
technology dollars to science education? Can we do an essential
and massive reconversion of military science-related human and
financial resources to peacetime, education-related science?
AU : ROBERT J. RUTMAN
Professor Emeritus
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
University of Pennsylvania
School of Veterinary Medicine
Philadelphia PA. 19104
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : Electronic Publishing
TY : Opinion (Letters)
As clearly stated in articles in the Feb. 8, 1993, issue of The
Scientist by Joshua Lederberg [page 10] and Eugene Garfield [page
12], "the future is now." Increasingly, publishers are
discovering that the use of paper and ink for the publication of
scientific information is no longer the only vehicle for
communication. Both nonprofit and for-profit publishers are
exploring electronic media.
For the American Physiological Society (APS), that search has
resulted in the publication of the society's journals on the
National Research and Education Network (NREN)/Internet. Using
the Gopher protocol, APS has established an information server
that posts the tables of contents of the society's journals up to
four weeks in advance of the publication date. Similarly, plans
are moving forward to post the abstracts of these articles at the
same time as the table of contents.
The use of NREN/Internet will improve the scientific community's
access to the literature, allowing scientists without direct
access to the printed journal to have the scientific literature
at their fingertips. The future might even allow them to request
reprints of the posted articles at the time of publication--
"reprints on demand."
AU : Martin Frank
Executive Director
American Physiological Society
Bethesda, Md.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
WHERE TO WRITE:
Letters to the Editor
THE SCIENTIST
3501 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
U.S.A.
Fax: (215)387-7542
Email: garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu
71764,2561@compuserve.com
THE SCIENTIST welcomes letters from its readers. Anonymous
letters will not be considered for publication. Please include
a daytime telephone number for verification purposes.
================================
NEXT:
RESEARCH
TI : Citation Study Reveals Moscow As Leader In Research
Paper Publishing
TY : Research
PG : 15
Editor's Note: In 1991, the Institute for Scientific Information
(ISI) indexed nearly 600,000 scientific papers that had been
published during the course of that year. Subsequently, editors
of the ISI newsletter Science Watch, in an effort to determine
where in the world all this productivity was coming from,
analyzed the author addresses on all the papers indexed and came
up with a number of interesting conclusions, geographically
speaking.
Science Watch found, for example, that more than 150,000 of the
papers published that year were generated in only 25 cities
around the world. Furthermore, it discovered that the No. 1 city
worldwide in terms of sheer numbers of research papers produced
was not, as one might expect, in the scientifically preeminent
United States. Nor was it in Japan, or even in Western Europe. It
was Moscow that led the pack, despite the chaos in Russian
politics and economics that, in 1991, was rapidly mounting and
posing well-publicized threats to the former Soviet Union's
scientific establishment.
That Moscow has remained so strong in its research paper output--
at least through the end of 1991--is perhaps attributable to the
strict centralization of scientific facilities in the Soviet
Union. Although St. Petersburg may run a distant second, Moscow
is where the vast preponderance of Russian science is done. Note
in the accompanying table that no other Russian or former Soviet
Union cities made the top 25, while the United States had 14
cities, the United Kingdom and Japan each had three, and Canada
had two cities on the list.
In its analysis, Science Watch also compared each of the 25
cities' scientific publication output with its 1981 record. It
found that the Japanese city of Osaka, while ranking 10th on the
1991 list, had made the largest gain among the leading cities in
productivity during the 1980s--its total of 5,408 papers was up
by 57.3 percent over its 1981 total.
Following is the Science Watch report, published originally in
the newsletter's December 1992 edition, and presented here with
the permission of Science Watch and ISI.
Science Watch surveyed all papers indexed in the Philadelphia-
based Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI's) Science
Citation Index during 1991 and determined the 25 cities that
produced the most papers. For these 25, Science Watch calculated
the percentage increase in their output of research reports from
1981 to 1991.
Production of most things in Moscow has been falling lately, but
scientific papers seem the exception. Moscow turned out the
greatest number of papers worldwide in 1991--nearly 15,000 of
them. Close behind was London, with just over 14,000.
Boston/Cambridge, Mass., came in third, Tokyo was fourth, and New
York took fifth place.
In this analysis, Boston/Cambridge, as well as San Diego/La
Jolla, Calif., and Stanford/Palo Alto, Calif., were treated as
single municipalities, although, speaking legally, they are, of
course, separate entities. Science Watch decided that if two
cities had contiguous borders, the two should be counted
together. City boundaries are, after all, artificial units of
division when it comes to scientific research. Regions are no
less artificial but are perhaps even harder to define.
Of the 25 areas identified as the top producers, 14 are U.S.
cities, three are British, three are Japanese, two are Canadian,
and one each is located in Russia, France, and Germany.
In terms of growth, the rising star among the nations represented
is Japan. Papers from Osaka increased 57.3 percent from 1981 to
1991, while those from Kyoto rose 43.0 percent and those from
Tokyo shot up 41.1 percent during the decade.
Other big movers among the group were Oxford, England (+47.1
percent), Baltimore (+44.7 percent), Ann Arbor, Mich. (+43.9
percent), and Montreal (+41.3 percent).
Finally, the skewed distribution of this data set should be
noted. These 25 cities account for approximately one out of every
four research papers indexed by ISI in 1991. This illustrates the
impressive concentration of scientific activity on the planet in
a very small number of locations.
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : THE WORLD'S RESEARCH-RICH CITIES
TY : Research
PG : 15
RANK CITY 1991 PAPERS PERCENT CHANGE
1981 TO 1991
1 Moscow 14,541 + 7.3
2 London 14,051 +11.4
3 Boston/Cambridge, Mass. 12,480 +18.4
4 Tokyo 11,582 +41.1
5 New York 8,551 + 6.8
6 Paris 7,964 +11.4
7 Los Angeles 6,601 +13.6
8 Bethesda, Md. 6,233 +13.3
9 Philadelphia 6,183 +19.0
10 Osaka, Japan 5,408 +57.3
11 Washington, D.C. 5,388 + 1.4
12 Chicago 5,174 - 0.9
13 Baltimore 4,933 +44.7
14 Houston 4,911 +27.9
15 San Diego/La Jolla, Calif 4,740 +32.3
16 Stanford/Palo Alto, Calif 4,201 +16.3
17 Seattle 4,055 +22.8
18 Berlin 4,040 +15.0
19 Ann Arbor, Mich. 3,907 +43.9
20 Montreal 3,895 +41.3
21 Toronto 3,887 +32.2
22 Cambridge, U.K. 3,850 +30.4
23 San Francisco 3,773 +20.2
24 Kyoto, Japan 3,679 +43.0
25 Oxford, England 3,597 +47.1
SOURCE: Science Watch/ISI's Science Citation Index, 1991
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : HOT PAPERS
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
TY : Research
PG : 16
J. Bartek, J. Bartkova, B. Vojtesek, Z. Staskova, et al.,
"Aberrant expression of the p53 oncoprotein is a common feature
of a wide spectrum of human malignancies," Oncogene 6:1699-1703,
1991.
David Lane (Cancer Research Campaign Laboratories, Dundee,
Scotland): "One in three people will develop cancer, and one in
four will die of the disease. While much progress has been made
in treatment of certain relatively rare types of cancer, there
has been little improvement in the survival of adults who have
the common types of solid tumors. One of the difficulties in
trying to imagine how to develop novel agents that might have
general application in the treatment of cancer has been the
diversity of cell types and sites in which the disease develops.
This diversity has also been reflected in the molecular changes
found in cancer cells. The recent discovery that mutations in the
p53 gene occur at high frequency in all the common human solid
tumors has, therefore, generated great interest. One of the
surprising features of the p53 system has been the unusually wide
spectrum of mutations found. Most tumors show loss of one p53
allele and a point missense mutation of the other allele. This is
consistent with loss of wild type function of p53 in tumors, but
the high levels of expression of mutant p53 in tumors has also
suggested that the expression of the mutant protein may provide
an active growth advantage to the tumor.
"Our study has provoked a lot of interest because we were able to
show that altered expression of p53 protein is a common feature
of many tumor types and that this could be detected in routine
histological material with suitable anti-p53 antibodies. Several
recent studies have suggested that those tumors that show high-
level expression of p53 have a worse prognosis than those that do
not, making p53 expression a potentially important marker and a
target for therapy. Recent interest in p53 (D.P. Lane, et al.,
Nature, 358:15-6, 1992) has centered on a growing understanding
of its biochemical properties as a DNA-binding protein, combined
with biological studies that suggest it may act as a tumor
suppressor gene by arresting cell division in cells exposed to
DNA damage. These discoveries inspire hope that the p53 protein
and the biochemical pathways it controls may provide excellent
targets for the development of a whole new range of anti-cancer
agents of great specificity and broad application."
(The Scientist, Vol:7, #9, May 3, 1993)
(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)
================================
NEXT:
TI : HOT PAPERS
PLANT SCIENCE
TY : Research
PG : 16
H. Barbier-Brygoo, G. Ephritikhine, D. Klambt, C. Maurel, et al.,
"Perception of the auxin signal at the plasma membrane of tobacco
mesophyll protoplasts," The Plant Journal, 1:83-93, 1991.
Hne Barbier-Brygoo (Institut des Sciences Vegtales, CNRS, Gif sur
Yvette, France): "The plant hormone auxin regulates developmental
processes by controlling cell division, cell elongation, and cell
differentiation. Although several auxin-binding proteins (abp)
have been described, their functional analysis has been limited
by the lack of suitable assay systems. We showed that auxin
induces variations of the transmembrane electrical potential
difference of isolated protoplasts (naked plant cells after
removal of their pectocellulosic wall). This cellular assay of
auxin activity is used in this paper to investigate the
perception of the hormonal signal. We demonstrate that the
membrane response involves tobacco auxin-responsive proteins
located at the outer face of the plasma membrane. These proteins
were antigenically and functionally related to ZmER-abpl, the
major auxin-binding protein from maize coleoptile. This brought
evidence for a possible receptor function of ZmER-abpl. But, at
the same time as this abp bearing a C-terminal KDEL sequence was
supposed to reside in the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum,
this raised puzzling questions as to the organization of the
auxin perception unit at the plasma membrane.
"This paper proposes a working model whereby a functional auxin
perception unit at the cell surface would be formed by the
association of a secreted abp with a transmembrane protein
essential for the transmission of the auxin signal. This model is
currently being further explored by several groups, including
ours, along two complementary lines. The first one is to `fish'
for the putative transmembrane protein interacting with abp. The
second one is to investigate a possible escape of a fraction of
ZmER-abpl from ER retention and, thus, its passage to the plasma
membrane through the secretory pathway. Since the paper appeared,
new developments consisted of exploring the function of different
domains of ZmER-abpl. In cooperation with M. Venis (Horticultural
Research International, East Malling, U.K.), we could show that
an antibody to a short region of ZmER-abpl exhibited auxin
agonist activity in our membrane response (M.A. Venis, et al.,
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