Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Thomas Friedman gets it exactly right

Tom Friedman nails it in his op-ed piece in today’s NY Times. His comparison of Hong Kong’s modern airport to JFK mirrors my own experience last week leaving Munich and arriving at Dulles with its antique mobile lounges and confused immigration lines.

But his most important point is about how the the rescue package for the US economy gets spent:

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely. 

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

Jim

Honey bees and their reward system

Gene Robinson at the University of Illinois has found that honey bees, when they are high on cocaine, exagerate.

Money quote from the press release:

Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they’ve found high quality nectar or pollen, and only when the hive is in need. They do this by performing a dance, called a “round” or “waggle” dance, on a specialized “dance floor” in the hive. The dance gives specific instructions that help the other bees find the food.

Foraging honey bees on cocaine are more likely to dance, regardless of the quality of the food they’ve found or the status of the hive, the authors of the study report.

Robinson believes that the cocaine-effect is evidence of an insect-brain reward system. The full report is in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Obama’s scientific team

Last week, the President-elect filled out his scientific team. He had already named Nobel Laureate Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. The new picks include Harvard’s John Holdren as Presidential Science Advisor, well known within the climate-change community but also include two outstanding molecular biologists to co-chair the PCAST (President’s Council on Science and Technology). Varmus, also a Nobel Laureate for his seminal work on oncogenes with Michael Bishop, was director of the NIH during my post-doctoral years when I trained in Bethesda; Lander is director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

These choices represent a qualitative shift towards depoliticizing science and science policy for the new Administration. And that’s a good thing. The challenges that we face, are too complex and daunting for ideologues.

Snowy in Munich

I was walking back to my hotel yesterday evening past Sankt Anna church that sits on the block through the snow and the Christmas decorations–it’s very much appropriate for the season here. We had an excellent meeting at the headquarters of the Max Plank Society yesterday afternoon. The conference room was five stories above the Hofgarten below–an impressive view.

I have a great deal of respect for what the MPS does in Germany and its new international ventures, particularly in Florida. The notion of stable funding for PI directed basic and applied research is extremely attractive. In some ways, it’s directly complementary to the US model of extramural grants and some hybrid approach might be an interesting variation for new scientific investments in the States.
Jim

Off to Munich

There’s a Financial Times columnist named Tyler Brûlé–yes, I know the name is a bit far fetched–who writes a regular Saturday piece called “Fast Lane“. Perhaps his favorite topic (other than men’s handbags) are airports. When he’s not penning yet another indictment about Heathrow, he often puts out endless column inches about the world’s best terminals–I recall that he’s fond of Tokyo. Well as far as I’m concerned, Munich is probably the best European airport these days–well laid out, clean (what a concept) and fully integrated with rail rapid transit. I bet even Tyler agrees that it’s not a bad place to transit through. In any case, that’s where I intend to be early tomorrow morning. I have a couple of scientific meetings over the weekend–one related to the European Decade of the Mind initiative.

I hope to be blogging from the road tomorrow.

Jim

Science of Science Policy

I’ve been at a meeting on the Science of Science Policy the past two days. The subject matter refers to the notion of grounding decisions on science policy more firmly in empirical data along with the notion that there might be some underlying social science theory as to how science policy decisions affect such things as national competitiveness . At the end of the day and a half, I was left with the opinion that while certainly it would be extraordinarily useful to harvest the data on federal investment in R&D across all of the agencies, it’s much harder for me to believe that we can somehow glean the rule set for making the right policy decisions from such data (although clearly heuristics might make themselves apparent). 

One idea that was floated was the notion of an investigator-specific ID number that might be given at the beginning of graduate school and that would allow for better outcomes research. Imagine that you can track all of the papers, grants, patents and products that are connected to any one scientists across their entire career–independent of institution. Putting aside privacy concerns for a moment, such tracking would facilitate the assessment of where and under what conditions early investment (e.g. graduate student fellowships) resulted in massive return on investment.
Jim