How I Learned the Fine Art of Collaboration

Collaboration “to work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.” So says Mr. Webster. In practice, however, we all know that collaboration involves the art of getting credit for someone s work, an intellectual effort that can leap continents and disciplines in a single bound. I didn’t realize that during my first attempt at collaboration. Several years ago I spent some time using the Dodge procedure to produce ghosts from pig red blood cells. This entails lysing the blood cells in a dilute solution and separating the ruptured plasma membranes from the cell contents, particularly the red hemoglobin, by repeated washings and centrifugations until they are as white as ghosts. I then shipped these ghosts to Buffalo, N.Y, where researchers used them in experiments on glucose transport mechanisms. Since the Dodge procedure is a well established and published method that is used in numerous labs throughout the world (and since if you can read, you should be able to cook), the only reason I could conjure up for manufacturing pig blood cell ghosts in Missouri and shipping them to Buffalo is that there must be no pigs in New York. Now, this will no doubt label me as living pretty far out in the brush, but I admit I’ve never been to New York; Akron, Ohio, is the closest I’ve been. Thus, I have no firsthand knowledge of the presence or absence of pigs in New York. However, a good friend of mine lives in an apartment on West 79th Street in the Big Apple and he reports never having seen a pig in that neighborhood. In addition, my wife spent a couple of hours at JFK airport one day, and later two weeks in Syracuse, and she confirms the lack of pigs in New York. Since she is a professional biologist, I regarded this as conclusive proof of my pig hypothesis. Thus I was satistied that I had collaborated in Webster’s sense of the word—I’d provided an essential service for scientists in pigless New York that justified the expenditure of time and money in my lab. My next experience began to raise some doubts in my mind. I became involved in biochemically fractionating retinal pigment epithelia of human eyeballs and shipping those fractions to New Orleans for experimental work. Naturally, I drew the same conclusion about humans in Louisiana as I had about pigs in New York. Then I recalled attending a scientific meeting in New Orleans once, and I remembered seeing humans there, some of them sporting eyeballs. My wife, the biologist, had also visited New Orleans and verified that eyeballed humans do live there. I admit I was puzzled. But, this retinal work helped me see the light: I began to understand the art of collaboration, especially when I began appearing as a junior author on research papers written by people I had never met describing results I had never collected from experiments I had never considered. As I grew more experienced at the art of collaboration, I grew to appreciate it as an effective mechanism for increasing one’s publications list without additional personal expense, such as purchasing costly equipment, hiring costly technicians to operate the costly equipment, and so forth. You simply let other scientists do that while you provide simple and cheap goods and services. For example, in spite of the fact that I co-authored several papers in which NMR techniques were used to examine some sort of gobbledygook, all I know about NMR is how to spell it. But I do know where to get rat livers, rabbit gall bladders, spider venom glands, and chick biventer cervicis muscles, and I have sent those items to Cincinnati, Miami, Los Angeles and Seattle. Folks there sent them on to San Francisco, Tucson, Boston and Montreal. I had become a collaborator par excellence. One collaborative technique I'm just starting to explore involves travel to strange and exotic places in order to acquire research materials. One associate of mine is forced to make annual trips to Australia to perform physiological experiments on the duck-billed platypus and spiny anteater. “They couldn’t do those experiments without me,” he solemnly proclaimed one day. I nodded, and complimented him on his splendid tan, something we don’t often see in Missouri in January. Another friend has a collaboration that demands his presence in Colorado each winter. “It’s the only time the snow is just right for my research,” he assured me. “I thought you were working on butterfly migrations,” I said. "I am. And in February I must study the effects of the snow cover on butterfly migration with my colleagues in Boulder.” “Can’t they do that themselves?” I asked. “Where would they get the butterflies?” “Don’t tell me. No butterflies in the Rockies, I bet.” “Certainly not THESE butterflies.” He produced a couple of shoe boxes full of the delicate creatures. I suggested mailing them to Boulder. “And have them freeze and/or starve to death in some post office!” he exclaimed. “But won’t they freeze and/or starve to death in Colorado in February anyway?” I asked, noticing that some of the butterflies were already not breathing too well and that a few others appeared to be flying belly-up. “So when did YOU become the expert on butterfly migration?” he huffed as he left to catch his plane. I may not be an expert on butterfly migration, but I’m becoming increasingly proficient at collaboration. In fact, I’m now writing a grant proposal that involves a considerable amount of travel money. If it comes through, I plan to visit New York and conduct my own personal search for pigs. Preferably with my colleagues somewhere in the Adirondacks. If the grant doesn’t come through, Moran, a researcher in the department of medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine, can be found at Route 2, Box 332, Fulton, MO.

How I Learned the Fine Art of Collaboration

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