The view from a distance: Thanksgiving in the mountains

I was up at the crack of dawn this Thanksgiving morning here on the top of Devil’s Knob mountain in the Virginia Blue Ridge–where our Wintergreen house is located. The two dogs wanted to eat and go for their walk. Out the front door I was greeted by the ruby orb of the rising sun creeping above the purple ridges that stretch out seemingly endlessly to the North. These are the old mountains of North America, their rounded eroded tops in stark contrast to the newer mountain ranges in the West.  Yet their restrained beauty still transfixes me.

Looking out at the view, I was struck by the enormity of my distance at that moment from the news on CNN broadcasting events from half a world away where lives are ripped apart as a result of human anger and presumably ideology–an emergent of our human brains.
There is much still to be thankful on this uniquely North American holiday–to be able to lead an institute of fine inquisitive minds at Krasnow has been a continuous pleasure over the past decade. To ponder the deep questions of how biology embeds into this amazing universe that manifests around us, and better yet to do that for a living–that also is a joy.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Jim

The Economy and our Institute for Advanced Study

It seems that every day recently, the headlines literally scream economic meltdown. I’ve lived a bit more than half a century (I distinctly remember growing up in the 1960’s) and I have to say the recent crisis is unparalleled in my own experience–distinct in its rate of daily change from the economic “malaise” of the late 1970’s.

In that environment, it’s inevitable that the world-wide storm would have effects on this small jewel of an institute for advanced study. And that is certainly the case–as an academic of one of the largest public universities in the Washington D.C. area, we are to some extent dependent upon the generosity of the Virginia taxpayer. But it’s also true that as an academic unit inside a large public university we are to some extent protected from the economic tsunami in a way that our stand-alone sister institutions are not. There is a certain strength that comes from being part of a commonwealth (lower case c intended).
The other positive note that I would think useful is how diversified our sponsored-research portfolio really is. The Institute receives support from multiple federal agencies, international organizations and private sector entities. And I believe, we do excellent science–I would argue that even in the worst of times, the really excellent science will be funded.
On the other hand, we are dealing with real cuts and we expect to see more contraction soon. That is the reality of our current interesting times. I am particularly grateful to our Advisory Board under the current conditions–their continued financial support is more important than ever.
Jim

Chronicle weighs in on Neuroethics meeting

Here’s the take from the Chronicle of Higher Education. We rapped up this afternoon and I think it was a fine meeting.  The key, as was mentioned by many in attendance, was that there were many neuroscientists there–joining the ethicists. So it was truly a trans-disciplinary discussion, which too often is not the case for the field of bioethics in general.

Tomorrow’s the first day of the Society for Neuroscience meeting. It’ll be competing with the G-20 “Breton Woods II” heads of state conference next door to shut down Washington traffic–should be very exciting. I’m taking Metro.
Jim

Live blogging from the First Annual Neuroethics Society meeting

We’re at AAA headquarters here in Washington DC. This is an incredibly eclectic group that ranges from hard-core neurophysiologists to lawyers. In the last session we heard from the CEO of one of the two private lie-detecting companies that purport to have successfully deployed fMRI–I’m pretty skeptical (as was a lot of the audience).

Here’s an interesting piece of data to come out of the meeting: the general public (think juries) tend to trust statements which include “neuroscience jargon” in contrast to those which don’t. So testimony with a neuroscience provenance could actually act to reduce the critical thinking of a jury.
Pretty worrisome.
Jim

More on Obama’s Science Policy: II

I’m at home with a nasty cold today, which gave me a chance to very carefully read the Sunday papers. If you get a chance, check out the review of Irene Pepperberg’s new book on Alex the parrot.

Now back to thinking about the new President’s science policy. Yesterday we visited with the legislative director of one of the big scientific societies here in Washington and both of us agreed that what happens at NIH will be of major importance. The National Institutes of Health have had a long successful history with both sides of the aisle. Democrats and Republicans are in general agreement that NIH basically “works” (in contrast to the rest of the government). Whether or not this meme is true, it’s out there and has played to the agency’s effectiveness over the years. In particular the mix of using approximately 10% of the agency’s budget to support a “high risk, high payoff” intramural campus and 90% to support a rigorously peer-reviewed extramural investigator-initiated grants program has taken on the permanence of received dogma. With the current economic challenges and the resultant chronic decrease in discretionary budget funding, there is a worry that NIH may have lost it’s groove in a more fundamental way. When only 5% of new grants are getting funded, but 30% of them are scientifically worthy of support, deciding who gets the green light begins to be similar to arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
To be fair, NIH is engaged in a deep conversation within and among its external stakeholders about reform, but under the new administration (and particularly with a new NIH director) one might expect this process to become more urgent and potentially more consequential. One major challenge for the agency is how to reward scientific risk-taking more effectively. Currently the existing peer-review system tends to work against the “bleeding edge” which may delay important public health benefits of biomedical research. There’s also the question of how to more effectively promote scientific collaborations between the intramural scientists (on the Bethesda campus) with their colleagues in academia who may be funded by the extramural program. Currently the old “firewall” between the two branches of biomedical research funding is under siege, but the wall hasn’t come tumbling down yet. It probably should.
More fundamentally, the new Administration might consider reducing the number of NIH institutes (I forget how many of them there are, but it’s in the double digits) and figuring out a way to increase coordination among the institutes and between other federal agencies. One way to do this, is to substantially increase the power of the NIH Director at the expense of the individual Institute Directors. The new Pioneer grants undertaken by current NIH Director Zerhouni are a good first step. But more more could be done.
Finally the Bethesda, intramural NIH needs to figure out a way to balance the critical need to maintain transparency in research funding (e.g. dealing with scientific conflict of interest) with equal need to create a pleasant enough employment environment to attract the very best and the brightest. Those individuals don’t need to come to Bethesda to be well supported and to thrive–but we want them to chose to do so. Striking that balance is going to be really important for creating a intramural program that fulfills its mission.
The incoming Obama administration of course realizes, positive changes only comes about when you chose the right leadership team. His choice for NIH director, will give us a very big clue about what will happen, change-wise, with this extraordinary agency.
Jim

President-elect Obama and science policy: I

The Obama administration will face some immediate science policy challenges when it assumes power on January 20. To my mind, first among them is the urgent need to return to the notion that Vannevar Bush put forward mid-20th century that federal R&D investment is dual use: it can improve the national and public health and serve as a primer to the US economic engine. Given the current economic crisis, Keynesian-type government spending might be targeted both at infrastructure (think: mass transportation, green energy, bridges–hopefully to somewhere) and science R&D.

The Decade of the Mind project is a perfect example of how such a priming investment could be implemented. New federal investment across multiple agencies would support cross-cutting initiatives that would heal, model, enrich and understand the emergence of “mind” from brain. The public health aspects of the Project might be centered at the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. One might imagine the the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense playing the central role in supporting research to reverse-engineer brains for better robotics, while the National Science Foundation would aim directly at the basic science questions–with implications for understanding the deep links that extend all the way from physics to intelligence. 
While the “Decade” Initiative might lead to cures for diseases of the mind (such as Alzheimer’s), the technology developed along the way (for example autonomous “intelligent” vehicles or brain-machine interface prosthetics) could serve to prime the economic pump–as those inventions are transferred to the private sector. At the same time, the advances in K-20 education made possible under the Decade Project–as neuroscientists begin to collaborate fruitfully with educators–will improve the “national health” in terms of competitiveness in the global economy.
This is not to say that there aren’t other daunting science policy challenges. Energy and Climate Change will certainly be at the fore. But, as I’ve argued before, many elements of these other challenges thread tightly into a Decade of the Mind project.  Certainly understanding the national security elements at the intersection of Energy and Climate Change requires a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that subserve human behavior. These cognitive mechanisms once understood, can lead to more predictive computational models that may give us better insights into how Climate and Energy-use might lead to mass perturbation of human social behaviors.
Jim

Election Day 2008

Well today we elect a new President. Hopefully we’ll have a clean election and clarity by morning. Here at George Mason, it’s been wonderful to watch the voting shuttle vans taking students to the polling places. You can feel the excitement.

Tomorrow (if the results are clear) we’ll begin to analyze the science agenda of the new administration. We’ll be paying close attention to what information we can glean of the transition team, particularly in the context of the science agenda and how that agenda may play out for the Decade of the Mind initiative.
The economic crisis of course intersects with our scientific agenda and will certainly constrain our new President.
Jim