Blacks Assail NIH's `Plantation' Mentality

Minority scientists say that the agency must do more to hire, promote, and reward them in the lab and in administrative jobs BETHESDA, Md. -- The voices of black scientists at the National Institutes of Health are filled with pride, anger, and frustration. Pride in working hard at jobs that they love. Anger that there are so many obstacles in their path and so few people willing to help them. And frustration that the situation has changed little over the past 30 years and isn't likely to get better for a long time to come. Ask microbiologist and clinical researcher George Counts why he left the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle last year and took a newly created position as chief of the AIDS clinical research management branch at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and his answer touches on the close relationship he sees between race and duty. "I knew that there were no blacks at decision-making levels in the AIDS program," he says. "That was one factor in my decision to take this job. Another was the realization that I was probably the senior black infectious disease person in the country and I wasn't doing anything to combat this epidemic, which is having such a devastating effect on minorities. That made me uncomfortable." Ask biochemist Ida Owens about her nearly 20 years as a research scientist in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and her voice quivers as she talks about a double standard. "There's a certain amount of thinking that still exists around here that blacks are not well enough prepared," she says. "You hear senior scientists say, `Hey, you're not ready, you don't know.' And they are much more likely to say it to a black scientist." With the scientific community worried about a pending national shortage of researchers, increasing attention has been paid to attracting those groups who have long been underrepresented. And U.S. blacks represent one of the largest untapped pools of talent, earning only 1.1 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded last year in the natural sciences and engineering. Despite that recognized need, the number of black scientists who work at NIH is only slightly higher than their proportion in the overall scientific community. And only a relative handful have stayed long enough to have an impact on NIH's policies and practices. For some black scientists, the issue is simple: NIH doesn't really care. "They manage to attract top-notch whites. So why can't they attract blacks?" says Kenneth Olden, director of Howard University's Cancer Center and a former NIH intramural scientist. "Ask the top 10 black scientists in this country how many of them have been offered positions at NIH as lab chiefs or section chiefs, with more space and more people than they are now managing. I don't think you'll find a single one." Others see different factors at work. One reason, say both black and white scientists, is the competition for the tiny number of blacks who are earning M.D.'s and Ph.D.'s from the nation's medical schools and graduate universities. In 1989, for example, only 52 U.S. blacks earned Ph.D.'s in the life sciences, a number that has been declining for the past decade. "My impression is that we haven't increased the pool because they [blacks] are going into other areas," says Charles Lowe, assistant to the director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), who was involved in an active outreach program in the early 1970s to attract black scientists to the institute. "I don't think it's anyone's fault," says Lowe, who is white, "but financial rewards are very important to young blacks, and they go where the dollars are." The economics argument applies on two levels, say black scientists. The high cost of training prevents many blacks from attending graduate and medical school. And the relatively slow payback for their efforts--long years of apprenticeship and modest salaries even after a scientist becomes established--pushes many black scientists out the laboratory door. "I gave up on trying to make ends meet. I was just trying to hold both ends together," says Philip Browning, an intramural scientist in Robert Gallo's tumor cell biology lab, about his life as a postdoctoral fellow at NIH from 1984 to 1988. "The bill collectors don't care. They see an M.D. after your name and they come to collect." Other factors also loom large. One problem is the disproportionately small number of black teenagers, relative to whites, who say they are planning to study science in college. Further down the line, there are a lack of role models at NIH for black scientists considering a position there. A third factor, especially for intramural scientists, is the extremely remote chance of winning a permanent position. "Most blacks would not like to put their energies here if they have examined history," says Sidney McNairy, a former chemistry professor at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., who came to NIH in 1975 and now directs the Research Centers in Minority Institutions program. "Until we have meaningful involvement of black people in leadership roles, and people who have enjoyed the benefits of being well-trained in the NIH system and having advanced within it, it seems to them like an ill-fated voyage." Another obstacle, say many black scientists at NIH, is the persistence of attitudes that subtly discourage blacks from remaining by making it harder for them to get the resources, training, and support that they need to succeed. "Getting publications is the name of the game for promotions," says NICHD scientist Ida Owens. "But if you work alone, as I've always done, that's very difficult. I've been asked to perform, but I don't get the technical assistance that some of my colleagues get. I don't know why." And then there's the natural tendency, say some black scientists, for people to hire and promote those most like themselves in background, training, and attitudes. That inclination serves to perpetuate a nonminority status quo. "The problem for blacks in the extramural program isn't mobility, it's getting into the system in the first place," says Tony Rene, a cell physiologist who came to NIH in 1973 and who is an administrator in the Minority Biomedical Research Support program, which provides grants to strengthen minority institutions. "You have to look pretty good on paper, because the competition is so fierce. And blacks don't appear as qualified, at least on paper, as many nonminority candidates." In addition to these obstacles, any force for change is blunted by the autonomy of the 13 institutes. Top NIH officials acknowledge that the director's office has limited influence on how individual institutes spend their money. That autonomy means, for example, that a successful program on minority recruitment, retention, or promotion at one institute may never spread to other institutes. "Even if you have a good idea, it still has to fit into the budgets of each institute in order to take effect," says Barbara Bynum, who came to NIH in 1961 as a technician and is now director of extramural affairs for the National Cancer Institute. She says that even programs that cut across institutes, like a two-year-old program to give grantees additional funds if they agree to add minority scientists to their NIH grants, must pass muster within each institute. "If you look at the number of minority supplements [being awarded], you'll see that the heart, cancer, allergy, and diabetes institutes have made a significant commitment to this effort, while the other institutes have made what I would describe as a token commitment." Change is also made harder by the invisible line that separates the intramural and extramural programs. While most scientists say that opportunities for blacks are greater in the extramural program, NIH's reputation for excellence rests largely upon the work of its intramural scientists. And extramural officials have scant influence on shaping policies and budgets that could improve conditions for black scientists in the intramural labs. "They have no special clout with the intramural program," says Owens about those on the extramural side. "Any change would have to come from the top--the scientific directors at each institute. But they have to want to do it; most intramural scientists are only interested in what will help them do better science in their lab." --J.M. And when Elward Bynum, who has run NIH's Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) program since its inception in 1975, talks about the future, his cynicism is rooted in his 32 years on the NIH campus. "I kept waiting for equal opportunity to come. But equal opportunity never arrived," says Bynum, a biochemist, who spent eight years at the bench before moving into the extramural program. "At one time I thought a few people could change what was happening here. But there are so many people who don't want to change that the message never got through." This series is based, in part, on face-to-face interviews with some two dozen black scientists with either Ph.D.'s or M.D.'s who work at the nation's premier biomedical research institution. NIH officials say that description fits 107 people out of a total scientific staff of more than 3,500. A check found that number to be overstated, as several individuals included in it are not black or hold other professional degrees. Some of the black scientists at NIH work at desks in the huge extramural program--cogs in the machine that will pump out nearly $5 billion in grants this year to scientists around the country. Others sit at the bench in the much smaller but prestigious intramural program, those laboratories on the NIH campus that have housed several Nobel laureates and such present scientific luminaries as Robert Gallo and Steven Rosenberg. The reasons for the paucity of black scientists on the NIH campus, say those who work here, range from their low numbers in the overall scientific pool to a subtle prejudice against minorities (see story on page 10). Top NIH officials, in general, agree that more needs to be done to attract and retain black scientists, but most say that the institutes are on the right track. (The second part of this series, in the next issue, will examine what is being done at NIH, including a look at some of the key scientists who are involved in bringing about change.) Nevertheless, many black scientists at NIH feel that their status and welfare are of little concern to their nonminority colleagues. And they say that their potential contributions go unappreciated. They offer the following evidence: * No black scientist has ever served as the chief of a laboratory or branch within the intramural program. That is also true for higher positions, such as scientific director of an institute's overall intramural program or director of the institute itself. * This summer saw the first black M.D. scientist receive tenure in the history of the intramural program. That distinction, attained by fewer than 10 percent of all the scientists who join NIH as staff fellows or clinical associates, went to Griffin Rodgers. He came to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in 1982 to work under Alan Schechter in his laboratory of chemical biology. The second person expected to do so, sometime next spring, is Eddie Reed, a cancer researcher who does both basic science and clinical studies involving ovarian cancer. Reed arrived in 1981 and interrupted his research to serve for two years as a special assistant to Bruce Chabner, head of the division of cancer treatment, in setting up the institute's AIDS drug development program. * Seven of the 13 NIH institutes--with a total budget of $1.5 billion--have no more than one black scientist on their extramural staffs. Four of those institutes--the ones that focus on aging, deafness, environmental health, and eye research--have none, and three other institutes, including the $500 million-a-year National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, have one black scientist on board. * None of the 90 or so intramural scientists who stand at the top of the pay scale--part of the elite Senior Executive Service (SES) created during the Carter administration--is black. Moreover, only three of the 65 science administrators in the extramural program who are part of that same service corps are black. * Blacks have benefited little from a highly selective program to lure talented working scientists to NIH and train them to become top science administrators, and not at all of late. Only 13--7 percent of the 178 participants in the 28-year-old grants associates program--have been black, and only one black has participated since 1979. In addition, NIH scientists say the black graduates, with the exception of Thomas Malone, former NIH deputy director, and George Brooks, former deputy director of the eye institute, both of whom trained in the early 1960s, have not attained positions of authority comparable to those reached by other graduates. But numbers are only part of the story. The impressions of these scientists, although they may be unscientific, are equally striking. For example, several scientists refer to the 300-acre wooded main campus in this affluent Maryland suburb as "The Plantation" because of the typical relationship between most whites and blacks who work at the government agency. "What do you see most blacks doing as you walk around here?" asks intramural scientist Philip Browning, who grew up in an East Chicago, Ind., ghetto and dropped out of college to work in a factory before reenrolling at Fisk University and becoming a chemist. "They're doing service jobs--picking up the trash, taking care of the grounds, cleaning out the animal cages." Given that setting, it's not surprising that black scientists who come to NIH get the impression they are stepping back into a place and time in which the white "massah" is lord of all he surveys, says Browning, who works in Gallo's tumor cell biology laboratory. MARC's Bynum knows first-hand how hard it is to break out of that system and gain one's professional freedom. MARC, which provides college juniors and seniors at predominantly minority institutions with research training experiences to prepare them for a career in medical research, is widely seen as a model program for increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in science. MARC's budget will grow by 25 percent to $13.4 million this year. Early in his career Bynum worked in the labs of two Nobel laureates, Julius Axelrod and Carleton Gadjusek. That was quite a treat, he says, for someone with only a bachelor's degree who had been a high school science teacher in Rocky Mount, N.C., and who came initially to NIH on a summer fellowship. Axelrod offered him a permanent slot, and he accepted gladly. However, eventually he found his upward mobility blocked. And he was never sure how much was due to his professional background and how much because of his race. "You came in as a GS 5 [a civil service rating] and you could move to a 7, and then a 9. But a 9 was normally the top," Bynum explains. "To go to an 11, you really had to have published some important papers. And once you made it that far, as a minority, you were made to feel that you were really at the top of the heap." Even those small steps up the ladder were a struggle, recalls Bynum: "At one point my lab chief told me, `You don't need a promotion because you and your wife are both working.' [His wife, Barbara Bynum, is director of extramural activities for the $1.6 billion-a-year National Cancer Institute.] Here was an educated person, with both an M.D. and a Ph.D., telling me that we shouldn't ask for too much." Bynum acknowledges that it's difficult for anybody, regardless of race, to move up in the intramural world. "That was one of my reasons for switching [to the extramural program]," he says. "The opportunities for advancement were so much better." Still, he believes that the deck was--and still is--stacked against a minority scientist. "For each promotion, we had to go up before the scientific directors of the NIH. That's nonsense--if everybody had to do it, they'd be meeting all year. We weren't smart enough to know that not everybody had to go that route; it was just part of the additional scrutiny that blacks faced," he says. The problem goes back to the beginning of a scientist's career at NIH, he says. "It starts with opportunities being presented to whites and hardly any opportunities being provided for blacks," says Bynum. "As a minority, you're asked to do more. We used to have professional people come into the lab, and they'd spend months and months in the library. It is unthinkable that I, as a minority, would have been given that opportunity." Levon Parker, equal employment officer for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), became troubled about the lack of opportunities for blacks soon after he arrived at NIH in 1962 as a research biologist. "I didn't see any black scientists when I first came," he recalls. "In fact, I didn't see blacks in most positions. The only black people that I saw were in research support, service positions, lab technicians, and so on. If you went to a meeting of lab or branch chiefs, there were no minorities. Nor did I see any effort being made to do anything about it. Maybe some people at NIH were concerned about it, but it was never seen as something that needed to be changed." His frustration led him to apply for the new position of EEO officer for NINDS in 1972, he says. But once on the job, he realized that change would come very slowly, if at all. "The administrators in Building 1 [where the top NIH officials work] dealt with issues as we brought them to their attention," he says. "We at EEO would have a retreat and come back with a recommendation that we'd present at a meeting, and then there would be dialogue. But nobody ever said to us, `I don't like the way things look. What do you think we can do about it?' " Having the chance to do something on a national scale that will benefit minorities is an important reason for taking--and staying with--their present jobs, say several black scientists in the extramural program. Driven by their commitment to the cause, they have nurtured fledgling NIH efforts to increase the number of minorities in biomedical research. "I've turned down the chance to move into the [better-paying] Senior Executive Service," says Bynum, "because it would have meant leaving MARC and everything that we're trying to accomplish." NIAID's Counts saw a job at NIH as an opportunity for a black scientist to play an important part in trying to understand the unfolding tragedy of AIDS. With minorities constituting 42 percent of those who have died of the disease, Counts knew that AIDS was having a disproportionate effect on the nation's black population. And breaking new ground wasn't a problem. In 1985 he became the first black to be named a full professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Some 30 years earlier, in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision, he was part of a half-dozen black students who banded together to integrate the University of Oklahoma. "NIH was trying to attract senior minority scientists to its AIDS program," Counts says. "They also recognized that there was a need to increase minority representation in clinical trials [none of the current group of 47 trials funded by NIH is headed by a black scientist], and I suppose that they felt if they could get a black to manage the program, so much the better. I don't know what my impact will be, but it stands to reason that one of the ways to ensure that all viewpoints are raised and addressed is to have people from those [minority] groups sitting there at the table." Being there wasn't enough for oncologist Kenneth Olden, director of the Howard University Cancer Center, who left NIH in 1979 shortly after receiving tenure in the intramural program. He would like to return to NIH, he says, but only in a scientific position of sufficient authority and one in which "I feel welcome." And he's dubious about his chances. Olden says he was the leading candidate several years ago of a committee looking for a new scientific director at one institute until the institute director bypassed him for an in-house, white candidate who had not even applied for the position. And he sees his failure as an example of NIH's harsh attitude toward blacks. "If they want to do something about the problem, they have to go out and do something," he says. "I floated to the top, but what good did it do me? They say that they are looking, but there's something wrong if they can't find any blacks who are qualified. "NIH is not a place for a black scientist who wants to do science. And you're not going to encourage blacks to go there unless you erase that reputation." Maxine Singer, president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., and a former NIH intramural scientist, served on that search committee and calls Olden "a first-rate scientist." And NCI's Barbara Bynum refers to "an unresisting establishment in place at NIH" that may have been a factor in Olden's situation. "When people like Ken, who have the smarts, the credentials, and the will to succeed, don't make it to the top," she says, "then legitimate questions might be leveled at that structure and those who peopled it, both then and now."

Blacks Assail NIH's `Plantation' Mentality

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