One of the characteristics of excellence for a scientific organization is a steady increase over the years in the typical metrics for success (e.g. publications in high impact journals, sponsored research). Another as important characteristic is that excellent scientific organizations build and retain a culture of intense scientific interaction among and between P.I.’s, their trainees and students that at one level manifests as a collegial environment, but more importantly as a place of intense scientific foment. Scientific foment of the type, I’m describing, is to discovery as yeast is to sourdough bread.

So, how to create and sustain that scientific foment?

By experience, it’s become clear to me that first and foremost, there’s the necessary but not sufficient condition: a light-touch management style. Foment is a bottom-up process, and no amount of strategic planning can force it to happen. Deeply entrenched in the scientific DNA is a tendency to question authority along with a healthy skepticism of pronouncements from on high. Hence, simply telling investigators to go forth and foment hasn’t worked (to my knowledge) and is unlikely to be a successful approach.

Secondly, foment doesn’t arise in an environment that is overly burdened with bureaucratic concerns. Take the environment of a driver’s license exam office and you’ll likely not find the seeds of the next advance in cell biology. So an approach by management to actively decrease what is now arcanely termed “paperwork”, is likely to begin to set the initial conditions for success.

Thirdly, there must be a meritocratic culture. Rewards (of all kinds) ought to be meted out by management both for scientific success, but also for the taking of scientific risk–because the greatest scientific successes, always entail some significant amount of scientific risk. In other words, we are against rewarding the minimal publishable unit ramped-up, rather we reward distinct, identifiable discovery that’s made on the basis of experimental (in vivo, in vitro or in silico) research success.

Fourthly, scientific jargon, should be frowned upon–in general. I have lately become of the opinion that such jargon operates in some ways as the secret rituals of fraternities, to exclude those who haven’t been initiated. There are great opportunities for foment at the fracture zones between disciplines, where the important questions often haven’t been posed, much less tested experimentally. To have foment across the disciplinary fracture zones implies checking one’s jargon “heat” at the door.

Finally, none of this can happen if management lacks scientific credibility. Management, need not conduct the experiments, but management certainly needs to be part of the foment, at every step of the way. For an institute like ours, one with frontiers of exploration in domains ranging from molecular to human social behavior, there then must be a scholarly curiosity about many fields (not just one) from the leadership.