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

Psychology departments are being affected by neuroscience

From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education on-line: psychology departments are morphing as a result of the growth of neuroscience.

Money quote:

A generation ago, most research psychologists worked in small teams and with small budgets. Today, large psychology departments typically include big laboratories. The neuroscientists there work and publish in teams with as many as eight members, and their equipment costs can run into the millions. Down the hall, their more traditionally oriented colleagues continue to work in smaller teams, with much smaller budgets, and sometimes at slower paces.

Jim