Dispatches From The AAAS

SAN FRANCISCO--Something new was happening at this year's edition of the AAAS annual meeting. In recent years, the paucity of attendees had turned it into something of an embarrassment. This year, scientists turned out in droves - 5,100 paid attendees showed up in San Francisco between Jan. 14 and 19, up from the 4,570 who attended the 1988 meeting in Boston. And there appeared to be more action in the meeting rooms and corridors of the mazelike, megasized Bay City Hilton. Perhaps it was the supercharged Bay Area science environment. Perhaps the speakers were more alluring. Whatever it was, scientists often jammed rooms to overhear provocative views. Stalking the hallways and conference rooms, The Scientist's reporters bagged some of the more intriguing - or just amusing - exchanges. Chaos reigned in San Francisco: Sessions on applying chaos theory to everything from heartbeats to the stars were so popular that conference attendees sat in the aisles and spilled out into the hallways. But what the earnest multitudes of the scientific press seemed not to hear (judging from published accounts in the dailies) was chaos' implicit challenge to one of the central dogmas of modern science - the idea that the universe or even the nervous system can be understood simply by studying its component parts. The challenge surfaced briefly in a press conference on chaos in biological systems, where Arnold Mandell of UC, San Diego, and Walter Freeman of Berkeley used the word "miracle" so many times that they sounded like a pair of evangelical preachers. A cure for AIDS might be found and the mysteries of high-temperature superconductivity may be unraveled before scientists find a solution to the difficulties of combining a high-powered position in science with raising a family. Frustration reigned and a few tears flowed at at least two sessions as scientists debated whether career progress - or, rather, the lack of it - was worth the rewards of baby-rearing. One teary-eyed UC-Berkeley Ph.D. student attending the "Marriage, Family, and Scientific Careers" session stood up and said that already she knows she'll never be a successful scientist. She wants to have children someday - and to take off one year with each child - and because of this she fears she'll never reach a tenured position. Ellen Galinsky, co-president of the New York City-based Families and Work Institute, confirmed that most studies show that any break can be a career detriment. Even so, audience members and panelists alike urged the student not to forego scientific study now because of a potential problem later. The difficulties of combining career with kids popped up again at the "Women in Physics - Why So Few?" session a few days later. MIT physicist Vera Kistiakowsky said that, in her opinion, it isn't possible for a woman physicist to "have it all," if having it all means a high-powered position and a family and a lifestyle that includes two hours a day available for exercise. "There are very difficult aspects to [a career in physics] and you cannot paint it in glowing colors," she said. "So how do you paint it realistically and attractively?...How do you convey the excitement of finding the Z0 [subatomic particle]? I don't really have any answers." The audience, which clearly found Kistiakowsky a most worthy role model, seemed disappointed by her lack of answers. But another speaker in the session, psychologist Jackie Eccles of the University of Colorado, Boulder, commiserated with Kistiakowsky's difficulty. She said that some women graduate students working with her end up leaving psychology because "they look at my life and say, `No way do I want to do that.' " Sound familiar? "Science took a crucial turn early in this century by choosing Einstein and Freud instead of Poincaré and Jung," explained neuroscientist Mandell after the press conference. But the resulting reductionism fails when it comes to understanding complex and irregular systems, he said. The behavior of a lynch mob or a brain, for example, can't be predicted by just knowing everything about each person or neuron; what's needed instead is some higher level of information about how systems behave as a whole. In the past, scientists viewed much of this complex collective behavior, such as irregular patterns of brain waves or heartbeats, as random "noise" to be filtered out in order to find an underlying regularity. But chaos theory demonstrates that there often is no underlying pattern, and that the real information in the system lies in the "noise" itself. (In fact, reported Harvard's Ary Goldberger, a regular heartbeat, rather than a chaotic one, may be a symptom of serious heart disease.) More importantly, the theory offers a tool for actually finding the meaning in the "noise," explained Mandell - and therein lie the "miracles." Bench scientists electing their lab heads? Outstanding researchers eligible for bonuses? Is this the latest in democracy combined with advanced management techniques? Whatever it is, it's happening in Mother Russia, according to Soviet scientists who participated at a AAAS press conference on January 14. Perestroika, it seems, is revolutionizing Soviet science. In fact, the science bureaucracy has taken the lead among all sectors of Soviet society in Gorbachevian reform. Academician Konstantin V. Frolov, vice president of the USSR's Academy of Science, told western journalists during a AAAS press conference that democratic elections had overturned the leadership of more than 100 of the 250 Soviet science institutes. Furthermore, many of the editors of the USSR's science journals have also been replaced, said Frolov, with new science editors dedicated to more open discussion. Then, as if not to be outdone, Nikolay S. Kardashev, deputy director of the Soviet's Institute for Space Research, boasted that his institute is currently discussing "broadening the process" by which individual lab heads are chosen - perhaps to permit the participation of lab members in that process. Even bonuses for exceptional performance are being considered, he added with apparent enthusiasm. So has perestroika boosted Soviet science firmly to the forefront of national pride? Not quite. Despite the brave words at the AAAS meeting, only days later the Soviet scientific establishment failed to nominate reformers Roald Z. Sagdeyev, the recently retired head of the Space Research Institute, and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Andrei D. Sakharov for seats in the new national Congress of Deputies. In the New York Times of January 21, 1989, Sagdeyev was quoted as characterizing the vote as "a shameful event" that confirmed his fear that the USSR is becoming "a dictatorship of mediocrities." Sagdeyev's worst fears might well have been foreshadowed by a closing comment from Science Academy vice president Frolov during the AAAS press conference. After expressing his approbation of the changes in the Academy electoral process, Frolov added a caveat: Change that is too quick, he feared, might create an inexperienced generation of scientists and administrators unprepared for leadership. Said Frolov, "It's not possible yet to say how successful this will be. More time is needed. We still have a lot of paper and bureaucracy." Westerners, the ultimate test of perestroika on Soviet science may be: Who wins - the geniuses or the bureaucrats? Just before the curtain fell on the final day of the AAAS meeting, startled attendees of the session on "Evolutionary Theory, Economics, and Political Science" heard a surprising paper that claimed to find differences in brain size, sexual activity, intelligence, and temperament among blacks, whites, and Asians. When these races are ranked according to a multitude of criteria - including brain size and intelli- gence - Asians outperform whites who, in turn, outperform blacks, said J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. The two dozen reporters who squeezed into the room were the only members of the audience not surprised by Rushton's remarks. The Canadian psychologist had left a press release - on AAAS letterhead, no less - in the press room before the session. The press release made clear what Rushton was going to say; his published abstract didn't. In fact, the abstract said nothing about race. "Population differences...reveal an interesting pattern" in such variables as brain size, intelligence, and so forth, said the abstract of his paper, which was titled "Evolutionary Biology and Heritable Traits." Walter Massey, the outgoing president of the AAAS, defended Rushton's presence at the meeting by saying, "We don't attempt to review individual papers." Massey stood squarely behind Rushton's right to speak. "I'm skeptical of the conclusions he's drawn, but the best way to treat this is to have it exposed," Massey explained. As to the matter of Rushton's press release appearing on AAAS stationery, Massey said, "That's quite inappropriate." Flabbergasted members of Rushton's audience were polite but highly critical of his findings, asking a number of pointed questions. Rushton defended his assertions and said that it was up to others to determine the social consequences of his findings. When questioned about his research support, Rushton said he has received money from the Pioneer Fund, an organization devoted to research in eugenics. Mathematician Mary Beth Ruskai of the University of Lowell thinks the general public finds scientists unappealing - controlling, domineering, and unemotional. She lectured a packed room of scientists gathered for the "Women In Physics - Why So Few?" session with the news that not only does the average Joe feel a chill when he spots a scientist, it's the scientist's fault! The dilemma: What to do about it...assuming you believe Ruskai, of course. "Scientists have to work harder to introduce into the mainstream these notions of creativity, intuition, and an emotional sensibility," she said. To fight negative stereotypes of research, and to attract more youngsters to science, scientists should volunteer time to schools, museums, and scout troops. Ruskai also urged companies that employ scientists to give their employees time off to pursue such activities, and she encouraged her colleagues "to heed my plea to interact with more nonscientists." Someone in the audience asked Peter Carlson, chief scientist at Crop Genetics (Hanover, Md.), how he could be so sure his firm's "InCide" recombinant microorganism - a microorganism intended to "vaccinate" corn against the corn borer - would work. (Carlson's presentation was part of the special three-day session on plant molecular biology, and the precise phrasing of the question was: "How much is fantasy and how much is reality?") Without missing a beat, Carlson said EPA and USDA regulations had forced the company to conduct its field tests with InCide at 1/10th strength and so, of course, no corn borers died. Princeton mathematician William Thurston ventured the opinion during a session on future funding for the academic physical sciences, that the human genome was more worthy of support than the superconducting supercollider. Nobel Laureate Burton Richter, who heads the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, responded: "Congratulations, you've just made a decision based on ignorance of both fields." Richter added that scientists should leave such political decisions to Congress. Christopher Hill of the Congressional Research Service studies industrial collaboration by academics. Speaking at a session on interdisciplinary research, Hill told his audience that the subject is much more complicated than we'd imagined. There are no less than five types of collaboration, explained the former MIT electrical engineer. "The first three are noncompetitive, precompetitive, and postcompetitive collaborations, '' he said. ``Then I added a fourth category, uncompetitive research, for firms trying to catch up with foreign competitors. And later I realized that there is a fifth category, which I call hopeless collaboration, for those firms who aren't prepared to develop and market products in their field." Disagreement over how best to handle the scourge of proliferating antiscience activists broke out at one AAAS session. Syracuse University sociologist Allan C. Mazur said: "Let it lie," and Larry N. Horton, Stanford associate vice president for public affairs, offered precisely the opposite advice: "Fight back." Several members of the audience, some of whom described their own brushes with antiscience opposition, challenged Mazur's hands-off attitude. The session devoted to examining those who oppose biomedical research began with a sociological disquisition by Mazur, who concludes that this plague on the scientific community is spread by two closely related sub-species: the NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard activists) and the LULUs (Locally Unwanted Land Use organizers). Like twin varieties of African locusts, they've multiplied and flourished in the last 20 years, thanks to the confluence of a number of favorable conditions, according to Mazur. First, it has become less acceptable to locate potentially controversial construction in lower-class neighborhoods, where protest is typically weak and unorganized. Projects placed in middle-class neighbors tend to meet with more opposition. Second, new environmental laws since 1969 have made it easier for activists to block or delay new construction. Third, protesters have become a familiar sight, and those looking for ways to bring attention to their particular grievances have plenty of examples to draw from. Fourth, the civil rights movement and the well-publicized work in animal behavior by such researchers as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Francine Patterson has lent animal rights activists ammunition. Stanford's Horton concurred: "This pattern may yet be another California export," he added. And scientists aren't the only ones who should be worried - ``serious en-vironmentalists'' should be concerned that laws passed to protect the land are being "manipulated" to serve special interests, he said. So what's a scientist to do? Here's where the speakers took widely divergent paths. Not much, said Mazur. Educating the public in the hope of nipping potential activists in their larval stages won't work, he said, because protesters are typically well schooled. Teaching them about the value of scientific research will not change their resolve. Confronting activists only escalates the fight and keeps it in the public spotlight. So the best course of action, according to Mazur, is to do nothing. "Be quiet," he said. "These things come and go. Right now is not a good time for you." Not for Horton, however. "Our leaders have failed to lead and our spokesmen have failed to speak," he said, referring to university presidents and industry heads. Legislators cannot help if the debate is one-sided, he added. His solution: Speak out. "I believe that when the problem is recognized by those general leaders...solutions will swiftly come forward." The burgeoning field of risk assessment has created ways of explaining hazards that are confusing at best. The greatest offenders are those explanations that create false dilemmas, such as the one Chris Whipple described at a session on risk communication. "I once read a statement that proclaimed, `The risk of contracting the HIV virus from one heterosexual contact is less than the risk of driving 10 miles,' " said Whipple, who works at the Electric Power Research Institute. "Great! The problem is that people don't choose to either have a sexual encounter or to drive 10 miles. So the comparison is worthless as a way of explaining the relative risks." In some industry science and technology circles, Robert Cutler is an unpopular man. The senior staff associate at NSF believes that U.S. scientists should make greater efforts to collaborate and exchange information with their counterparts in Japan. But because U.S. companies "don't take Japanese research seriously," he said at a AAAS session on Japan, they worry that such collaboration would be all give and no take. "Managers tell me, `You're trying to give the store away,' " Cutler said after the session. But that attitude is dead wrong; "in fact, the store is over there," he said. It is true, he added, that Japanese scientists don't publish very much good research. But top-notch science is evident in the country's products - and that's the expertise that U.S. companies need to tap, he said.

Dispatches From The AAAS

The Scientist Staff

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