Protests I: Citizens Hamper Science Progress At Universities

When she came to the University of California, San Francisco, last year, Nina Agabian foresaw a bright future for herself and her lab. A professor of pharmaceutical chemistry with a joint appointment at UC-Berkeley, Agabian headed one of the nation’s leading groups investigating the molecular biology of parasites. And UCSF had promised her a spanking new laboratory in a recently purchased building for her work on vaccines against malaria, schistosomiasis, and other deadly diseases. But Agabian found her lab besieged by a plague it had never studied: a bitter protest by people who resented scientists’ intrusion into the neighborhood, and who claimed that research is dangerous. The protesters filed a lawsuit that has yet to be resolved—one that, if it were to go against the university, could conceivably shut down research in the building. The uncertainty has crippled Agabian’s lab. “We’re doing important work here, and we’re going to get it done,” vows Agabian. But the controversy has clearly sapped her strength and tried her patience. “We’re doing less work,” she admits. “This is consuming the energy and the efforts of scientists, really for naught.” Agabian is not the only scientist suffering from the chilling effects of public protests. After the UCSF case hit the news, the tactic of protesting science on the grounds that it is dangerous quickly spread through the Bay Area. At Berkeley, a coalition of neighbors and animal rights activists has sued to block construction of a new animal facility. And at Stanford, biologists are working under overcrowded conditions because activist groups have delayed the construction of two buildings. “For the department, it’s been devastating,” says Robert D. Simoni, a Stanford biology professor and chairman of his department’s building committee. “It’s screwed up all our new faculty searches. It’s fouled up plans for instrumentation facilities. And it’s absolutely stifled any departmental growth.” Fears of seemingly innocuous basic research have yet to spark similar protests in other states, according to the scientists, university administrators, and associations contacted by The Scientist. Still, some observers worry that these California protests are harbingers of a new, darker era for science in the United States, an era in which universities must battle the public in order to go about their business of doing research. And they say that the only way to head off that bleak future is to do a much better job of educating the general public and allaying its apprehensions. Stanford president Donald Kennedy, for example, argues that scientists and educators are partly to blame for a “disappointing level of scientific literacy” that underlies a deepening public misunderstanding and mistrust of science. “If a substantial proportion of our adult population believes in astrology and the efficacy of pyramids in promoting health, why should we expect thoughtful analyses of problems like these?” Kennedy asks. “We need to produce a generation of voters with at least enough knowledge to avoid being bamboozled by foolishness.” Whatever the source of the public’s apprehensions about science, animal rights activists have been quick to take advantage of the doubts. Rather than simply arguing that research is cruel to animals, the animal rightists have taken to claiming that science should be stopped because it is dangerous. In a recent protest against a proposed center for research on aging in Fairfax, Calif., for example, “they raised every issue you could think of, from radiation to toxic waste being disposed of in creeks,” says Peter Arrigoni, a former mayor of Fairfax who supports the proposed center. “It was so full of misinformation and innuendo. They would say anything to make a point, true or untrue.” These new tactics have turned a harsh new spotlight on universities—and some institutions have come up wanting, much to their chagrin. Take the case of Stanford University, which set out last year to build a new biology building and learned some hard lessons about how to deal with a skittish public. Four stories tall and costing $33 million, the building was designed to roughly double the space available to the severely overcrowded biology department. Since Stanford had previously built several research buildings without full environmental reviews, the university anticipated no particular trouble this time and expected construction to start last winter. Indeed, when the building came up for review by the local government, county planners at first de cided that the building didn’t require a full environmental impact report. But in August 1987, the Palo Alto Humane Society appealed the decision—and persuaded an established citizen watchdog group, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, to throw itself into the fray. Accusing Stanford of sloppy handling of hazardous chemicals and radioactive waste, and questioning the general safety of genetic engineering experiments, the two groups forced the university to do environmental impact reports on the biology building and another new facility for research animals. They succeeded in delaying both projects for at least a year at an estimated cost of $1.8 million. Adding to Stanford’s woes, the protesters’ charges got an unexpected boost in December 1987, when one of Stanford’s top health and safety officials blew the whistle on his department. In a letter of resignation, Jon Moldestad offered evidence of violations, intimidation, and coverups in the department responsible for lab safety and hazardous waste disposal in the university’s labs. The university ordered an investigation, which concluded in August that the lab safety department was plagued with mismanagement and waste. A panel set up to review the investigation reported on September 21 that Stanford’s health and safety organization “is inadequate for prompt and responsible recognition and correction of problems.” Investigators said the most conspicuous problem was a $1.5 million incinerator for destroying biological and radioactive waste. The incinerator had clogged up, exploded, and repeatedly operated with a broken scrubber since its installation in 1986. The report was potent ammunition for the opponents of the biology building. “It bolstered our ar- gument that there needed to be more oversight and community involvement, since the internal stuff had broken down,” says Ted Smith, executive director of the toxics coalition. Recognizing how damaging the problems were to the university’s image, Kennedy said that he will create two new administrative positions to oversee health and safety, with the authority to shut down dangerous operations. Meanwhile, the animal facility has been approved by the county. But the biology building is still under review, and no decision is expected until at least December. “We’re now approaching a year from the original groundbreaking plans, and the prospects are not entirely clear,” says Simoni. No matter what the outcome, Stanford has been forced to change its ways. From now on, “if there’s anything that’s even remotely likely to be subject to intense criticism, we’ll do the environmental impact report,” says Larry Horton, associate vice president for public affairs. “We’re going to be building quite a few facilities over the next several years, and we’re looking forward to environmental reviews on almost all of them.” While the university and its opponents wrangle, Stanford scientists struggle to keep their research going under difficult conditions. Lack of space, for example, has hampered the work of Sharon Long, a molecular biologist who in 1984 was named a Presidential Young Investigator. Each of the researchers in her group has only a few feet of bench space, she says. “People have to work kind of around one another, and it’s awkward to get to the equipment.” In addition, the constraints are for ing Long to turn away dozens of postdocs and graduate students. She gets 40 or 50 letters a year from postdoctoral researchers who want to work with her, she says, “but this year, I’m not taking anybody. I have to tell them all no.” At least Long knows she has a place to work. Thirty miles north, at UCSF, Nina Agabian and her staff have no such assurances. They are waiting for the California Supreme Court decision that will determine whether they can stay in their new laboratories—a decision that had been expected last spring. Not surprisingly, the uncertainty has seriously affected Agabian’s lab; a third of her 30 researchers have left, and replacements have been hard to find. The court has also made life harder for the remaining scientists by banning the use of radioactive isotopes in the building until the case is resolved. As a result, researchers commute to the main campus to perform many experiments. The trouble started even before Agabian moved in. UCSF had bought the 342,000 square foot office building in a residential neighborhood known as Laurel Heights in 1985 to relieve overcrowding on the main campus. But the purchase was controversial. First the neighbors worried about potential noise and traffic. Then they discovered that the building, which the university had promised would be for “academic” use only, would include laboratories for 150 researchers from the School of Pharmacy, working in areas such as parasitology, toxicology, and drug development. The neighbors asserted that the laboratories were unsafe. They pointed out that radioactive isotopes would be delivered by commercial carriers and that fumes from as many as 1,200 chemicals would be released from roof vents without treatment. They also worried that virulent germs or recombinant organisms would escape. And they reminded the university that it had been cited for deficiencies in its handling of radioactive isotopes. “The more we found out, the angrier we got,” says Margaret Verges, a neighborhood activist, “We want them to pack up their bottles and go to an industrial area and do their research there.” As the controversy heated up, the protesters passed out strident fliers warning of toxins and radiation. They shouted down university officials who tried to explain why basic research was important....and safe. They even accused Agabian of performing biological warfare experiments. And to top things off, they sued the university, claiming that the environmental impact report it prepared for the building was inadequate. In July 1987, an appellate court agreed. While there is no law forbidding research in residential areas, the court said, the university must prepare a careful environmental impact report and consider all the alternatives—and this it did not do. Even when viewed in the most favorable light, the university’s actions “appear to have been carried out in a most cavalier fashion,” the court said. In fact, some members of the local scientific community believe that UCSF’s insensitive treatment of the neighbor’s concerns helped turn the initial grumbling into a full-fledged protest. “It was a public relations disaster,” says Joel Shurkin, a Stanford spokesman who deals with the media and the public. The appeals court shut down the Laurel Heights labs. But the university quickly appealed to the state Supreme Court, which allowed the labs to reopen two days later, pending a final decision. UCSF officials say that there is no evidence that their laboratories are hazardous. Environmental sampling indicates that chemical emissions from the main campus are well within safe standards. In June, the university announced that it would also spend $1.6 million to check surrounding neighborhoods for chemical and radioactive contamination—part of a deal with the state Department of Health Services that will allow UCSF to renew its license for using radioactive isotopes. Looking back on the fracas, UCSF Chancellor Julius Krevans says he doesn’t know how it could have been avoided, although he admits that the university should have been more specific about its plans to conduct research in the new building. “Other than that,” he claims, “I cannot think of anything we could have done differently. We had dozens of meetings, did thousands of mailings, and we shared the information freely.” But if UCSF does lose its court battle and is forced to close the labs of Agabian and other scientists in the new building, the decision will have worrisome implications for basic research, says Krevans. “It would raise a question that activities of this kind, which have gone on for 40 years at this institution and at similar institutions throughout the country, are simply not acceptable to society.” A science writer at The San Jose Mercury News, Glennda Chui is currently on leave as a Knight science journalism fellow at MIT.

Protests I: Citizens Hamper Science Progress At Universities

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Glennda Chui

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November 1988

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