Politics And Science Mix At AAAS: A Sampler From The 157th Annual Meeting

WASHINGTON--The crowds were bigger than expected at last month's 157th national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And while very little of the substance of this annual scientific smorgasbord made it into the national press, the association managed to bask in the reflected glory of having the president of the United States address its leaders on the biggest news story of the year, the war in the Persian Gulf. Security concerns related to the war had little impact on attendance. But it did prevent several thousand elementary and secondary school students from participating in Public Science Day, as the two large school districts that border the nation's capital--in suburban Maryland and northern Virginia--complied with a wartime policy that bans field trips into the nation's capital. The five-day meeting consisted of the usual mix of policy and hard sciences, along with several sessions devoted to the question of whether the profession faces a shortage of scientists in the next century and, if true, what scientists should be doing about it. Although some stories based on information presented at the meeting appeared in newspapers around the country, many reporters were heard to grumble about the difficulty of getting news about science into papers dominated by coverage of the war. For those who didn't come to Washington, the following is a smattering of what you missed. When Science And Society Collide The president's speech made headlines around the world. But it wasn't because of what he said about science. AAAS officials were delighted when Bush accepted their invitation to address the annual meeting--the only time a sitting United States president had addressed the meeting in person was in 1948, when Harry Truman marked the 100th anniversary of the association. But they took it in stride when White House officials decided at the last minute to instead broadcast the speech live from the Old Executive Office Building on closed-circuit television because the president was too busy to come in person to the Sheraton Washington Hotel. But nobody knew that four hours before the speech, Saddam Hussein would float a proposal that, at first blush, looked like a chance for peace. Although Bush rejected the offer, he used the address as a vehicle to explain his response. And so, he began his speech about science with a short statement about the "cruel hoax" that Iraq on played on the world, before switching to the business at hand. About That Speech . . . Despite the importance of his war message, the remainder of the president's speech was a disappointment to many in the huge audience gathered in the hotel's main ballroom. Although billed by White House and AAAS officials as "a major policy address on science," the 10-minute talk merely highlighted the increases for science and technology that were contained in Bush's 1992 budget request submitted last month to Congress. Officials who sat behind the president on the podium included presidential science adviser Allan Bromley as well as Secretary of Energy James Watkins and NASA administrator Richard Truly. Where were representatives of the two federal agencies--the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health--that fund most basic academic research in the U.S.? Bromley says that they were invited but could not attend. Acting NSF director Fred Bernthal was in Irvine, Calif., for the February meeting of the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation. And Louis Sullivan, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, of which NIH is a part, was speaking to a business group in Dallas. Shift The Strategy In a plenary address given as the recipient of the association's Philip Abelson Prize for public service on behalf of science, Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.) spoke bluntly about the need for scientists to stop pleading for favored treatment and to argue instead for how science benefits all of society. "If we are going to justify continued funding of science," Brown told his sizable audience, "we must base our case not on the unhappiness of faculty but on the welfare of the nation." His comments were a reference to a recent report by AAAS president-elect Leon Lederman (The Scientist, Feb. 4, 1991, page 3), which surveyed 250 scientists at large research universities. Those researchers complained of insufficient funding and the increasing amount of time they must spend writing grant proposals rather than doing science. But in Brown's view, "to argue that optimal funding should be determined largely on satisfying the needs of university faculty borders on the tautological." The Lies Within Humans aren't the only creatures that lie. The bitter truth is that a cold's sniffles are the sign of a duped immune system. And the dreaded herpes virus is nothing less than an imposter that tricks the body into thinking it's not dangerous. Indeed, most biological organisms practice deception on a molecular, morphological, behavioral, or tactical level, according to scientists speaking at an AAAS symposium on the subject. "It's a fundamental dynamic in the process of evolution," says Loyal D. Rue, a philosophy professor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Deception is an interactive process. It requires both a detection system that is capable of making an error and a deceiver--an organism that intends to trick that system. Even so, says Ursula W. Goodenough, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, "we believe that the intent doesn't have to be of conscious design." It seems that a herpes virus may have evolved so that it latches onto an important growth hormone to sneak through the body untouched. And a strain of the adenovirus that can cause colds is able to invade a cell and deactivate the process by which the cell would alert the immune system that it had been infected. Fast Nerves, Quick Thinking In their quest to quantify and characterize intelligence, researchers now say that the speed of nerve signals may be one of the factors that determine how smart a person can be. At one session on intelligence, psychologist Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California, Berkeley, reported that he and T.E. Reed from the University of Toronto had found a correlation between the speed at which nerve signals were transmitted and scores on IQ tests. The scientists measured neural conduction velocities between the eye and the cortex in 147 male college students and found those with faster nerve signals tested better in general mental ability. "We think it must be causal," says Jensen, who theorizes that faster signaling allows for more efficient processing of information. The researchers found that the capacity of working memory and neural oscillation, the periodic tendency for nerves to briefly cease to respond to input, are also important factors. The Price Is Right--For A While Guess which science-related profession is the only one in which women earn larger starting salaries than men? Engineering. That fact doesn't surprise Betty Vetter, executive director of the Washington, D.C.- based Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. "It's not because women are intrinsically better engineers," says Vetter about the fact that women with bachelor's degrees in engineering historically have been slightly higher paid than men. "It's because the women have been filtered so much already that, by the time they come out with the degree, they are truly an elite group." Unfortunately, says Vetter, men's salaries begin to pass those for women by age 30, suggesting that prejudices are still alive in this male-dominated profession. Non-Essential Advice Scientists continually complain about how hard it is to influence public policy on issues that affect their profession. Jose Goldemberg, Brazil's secretary of state for science and technology, thinks he knows why that is. "Not many people listen to what scientists have to say," Goldemberg said at a session on advising national leaders. "And that's because what most scientists say is not relevant to their [most people's] lives." The Brazilian official also reminded his colleagues that science is a peripheral issue to most policymakers. "The average politician in my country is a shopkeeper who became involved in local politics and then rose to the national level," he explained. "And they look upon support for science as they would a symphony orchestra. You'd like to have a good one, but you don't really pay much attention to it, because it doesn't really affect your life." The Passing Of Perestroika? Last year at the annual AAAS meeting in New Orleans it was nearly impossible to attend a session without running into some Soviet researcher or science administrator who was eager to talk about the vast changes under way in the USSR. This year the Soviets were conspicuously absent. Why the sudden change? While AAAS officials say that no large delegation was planned for this year's meeting (a few attended a symposium on arms control), others speculate that the real reason lies in the current crisis within the Soviet government. Soviet Academy of Sciences vice president Yuri Ossipyan pulled out of one session, AAAS treasurer and session co-organizer William Golden explained to a disappointed audience, because "Yuri is coming to the United States for another event next week, and he felt that he couldn't afford to be away from the Soviet Union for two weeks in a row." Even those already in town failed to show up. One veteran policy analyst remarked that, for the first time in his memory, no officials from the Soviet embassy in Washington had come to the AAAS convention. Maybe Only Women Need To Work On It The panel for a workshop on overcoming barriers to women in science faced a room crowded with women. A lone man was seated in the front row. Then organizer Margaret Lobnitz, director of environmental compliance for ICF Kaiser Engineers, in Universal City, Calif., spotted another man lingering in the doorway. She scanned the audience, then pointed down front. "You can come in," Lobnitz said. "There's another gentleman right down here." Are We Talking About The Same Career? College and university faculty may see a rosy future for precollege math teaching in the federal education initiatives that are under way. But that's not how it looks to those in the trenches. Speaking at a session on mathematics education, University of Maryland physics professor and chancellor emeritus John Toll said those initiatives will make it possible one day for mathematics professors to begin steering their "brightest students towards teaching, a career which is going to be increasingly inviting." But another panelist said it can't start soon enough. Los Angeles Board of Education president Jackie B. Goldberg said that midyear school budget cuts, worsening socioeconomic conditions for children, and a "culture that has not yet elevated to value the disciplining of the mind" have combined to create an oppressive climate for teachers. "Even those of us who have worked with kids for over 20 years have never seen anything like it," said Goldberg, a veteran teacher. "If we don't start putting our money where our mouth is, we're going to be in big trouble." Get The Number Of That Data Bank Meta-analysis is a set of statistical methods by which scientists analyze data from independent studies to arrive at a cumulative conclusion. While some researchers marvel at its analytic powers, its potential is limited by the availability of relevant studies, says Ingram Olkin of Stanford University, Calif. "How do you search for them?" Olkin asked. "Journals don't publish papers that say, `We found nothing.' For your conclusion to be valid, you may also need to look at all the unpublished papers that negate the findings of the published ones." After Ingram spoke, one audience member asked, "Are there any places where people are encouraged to send unpublished studies for collation?" Ingram was stumped, but an answer soon floated up from the crowd: "Try the Journal of Irreproducible Results." U.S. Biotech's Guinea Pigs: The Third World? Are U.S. biotechnology companies using Third World countries as a "dumping ground" for testing genetically engineered organisms? That's what African and Latin American scientists were wondering at a symposium on the safety aspects of this emerging global industry. What's needed, they said, are better regulatory infrastructures in their countries to monitor both internal and international recombinant DNA activity. "Because of the lack of regulatory programs in Third World countries, it is hard to know if some companies are doing [testing] without authorization," said Walter Jaffe of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperative Agriculture in Costa Rica. By law, he noted, U.S. companies must get approval from their own government and the host country before they conduct any work involving releases into the environment. Jaffe believes that any serious effort by developing nations to formulate a policy regarding biotechnology would pay rich dividends. "Resources and expertise are scarce," he said at the symposium, "but oversight could create a better environment for foreign investment and maintain public confidence in science." There's Money in Seed Oil Greater production of rapeseed in the United States would both boost the nation's economy and enlarge the market for biotech companies, according to Roger Salquist, chief executive officer of Calgene Inc., an agricultural biotechnology company in Davis, Calif. Calgene and other firms are currently working on genetically engineering rapeseed. Edible rapeseed strains produce canola oil, one of the latest, trendy unsaturated dietary oils, said Salquist at a symposium on international biotechnology. And inedible rapeseed oils are being used increasingly by industry as alternatives to petroleum-based oils. Yet despite this growing demand, says Salquist, little of it is currently planted in the U.S. The bulk of the rapeseed used in the U.S. is imported from Canada, Europe, and China. But that could change soon. The 1990 Farm Law makes it worth a farmer's while to plant both edible and inedible rapeseed instead of winter wheat. And Calgene and other biotech companies hope that the provision will translate into money for biotechnology companies by creating a market for their genetically engineered seeds. These reports are based on material gathered by Marcia Clemmitt, Robin Eisner, Jeffrey Mervis, and Elizabeth Pennisi.

Politics And Science Mix At AAAS: A Sampler From The 157th Annual Meeting

The Scientist Staff

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