Bioscience Make-Over

Echoing the centuries-old debate among scientists over how to organize and name Earth's species, authors of National Research Council (NRC) reports rating research-doctorate programs have also struggled over the "taxonomy" of disciplines within the biosciences. Allan Cartter, in his 1966 report An Assessment of Quality In Graduate Education (Washington, D.C., American Council on Education), observed that grouping programs within the biological sciences represented a challenge, owing to the variability in their administrative organization. Almost 30 years later, the diversity is even greater, as a result of the "important changes in the underlying knowledge base [in the biological sciences] in the last decade," according to NRC's 1995 report, Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change (M.L. Goldberger, B.A. Maher, P.E. Flattau, eds., National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.). "There's been enormous growth in the biosciences and enormous changes as new technologies and new fields have emerged," asserts Pamela Mellon, a professor of reproductive medicine and neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, and an NRC report committee member. "The main point that I think is important to remember about the evolution of the biosciences is that it is in a sense driven by the great leap forward that the science has made in redefining itself. The old lockstep definitions no longer apply because we're all using new technology to approach questions that cross boundaries that were artificial to begin with." NRC's 1982 study, An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States (L. Jones, G. Lindzey, P.E. Coggeshall, eds., National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.) included six fields in the biosciences: biochemistry, microbiology, cellular/molecular biology, botany, physiology, and zoology. The committee found that as a result of changes in the types of doctoral degrees received since the 1982 report, three disciplines that weren't specifically named in the earlier document -- neuroscience, ecology, and human and animal pharmacology -- exceeded zoology in the number of Ph.D. degrees awarded between 1986 and 1990. Zoology and botany were at the low end of the biological disciplines in the 1982 report. Because of this change, and after consulting with bioscience professional organizations, the 1995 report committee shifted around some of the old categories and devised entirely new ones for the biosciences: biochemistry and molecular biology; cell and developmental biology (including microbiology); molecular and general genetics (including human and animal genetics); neurosciences; pharmacology (including human and animal pharmacology, and toxicology); ecology, evolution, and behavior (including zoology and botany); and physiology. The relatively new field of biomedical engineering was also included in the 1995 report for the first time. The report states that the reorganization created difficulty for some institutions because their departments didn't fall within the new designations. "It was one of the most difficult [parts of the study] to deal with," Mellon recounts. "It was the only area that changed that much." Marvin L. Goldberger, dean of the natural sciences division at UC-San Diego and cochairman of the NRC committee, labels the process "neuralgic." He remembers that during discussions about how to reorganize the bioscience section, there was a great deal of concern within the committee and the life-sciences community. "We wanted, on the one hand, to try to live with the categories established in the 1982 study," he says. "At the same time, we had to also be responsive to what we were hearing about the fact that those earlier designations were no longer in favor. On top of this, we were also faced with a situation where there is no uniformity among what institutions call particular endeavors." Paul Isaac, associate dean of the graduate school at Ohio State University from 1986 to late 1994 -- which coincides with the period when the NRC study was conducted -- and now associate dean of the graduate school at Kansas State University, speculates that some of the concern over the bioscience section stems from confusion over how to assess the data. By contrast, he notes, "in areas other than biology, it is fairly easy to identify a graduate program that correlates to the field." For example, programs in physics are generally closely identified with particular departments, he explains. "Whereas, in contrast, when you get into the biosciences, there was a good deal of variability in how individual institutions reported who in fact was part of, say, their biochemistry and molecular biology program," Isaac remarks. Some institutions submitted names of faculty members from an individual department, whereas others reported all the individuals that work in a particular bioscience discipline. "The result is that you will get an evaluation of that cluster of faculty, but it doesn't necessarily correlate to a department. So if you're a student applying to a particular institution, you don't know whether you're applying because it's a collection of faculty getting a good or poor rating or because of an individual program. It's hard to tell how to assess those numbers." -K.Y.K. (The Scientist, Vol:9, #20, pg.6 , October 16, 1995) (Copyright © The Scientist, Inc.)

Bioscience Make-Over

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