Scientist-Recipients Treasure Freedom As MacArthur Fellowships' Biggest Asset

When the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the names of the 36 new MacArthur Fellows this past summer, there were eight scientists included on the list. But according to Kenneth Hope, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, it makes no difference to foundation officials whether this year's recipients are physicists, painters, or poets. "We never make distinctions by field," Hope says. Rather, "individuals who show creativity and promise and who have the potential to make a difference"--in any field--are the types of people who have been winning the prize since the fellowship program began in 1981. Fellowship awards range from $150,000 to $375,000, over five years, plus health insurance. Specific fellowship amounts are determined by the recipient's age, from 21 up to 60. For instance, a 21-year-old MacArthur fellow receives $30,000 a year. The amount increases by $1,000 a year up to age 60. And each year within the five-year span of the fellowship, the amount given per year also increases by $1,000. Fellowships are unrestricted, with no reporting requirements. One cannot apply for a Mac-Arthur fellowship; one must be nominated. Nominations are made by a committee of more than 100 members who serve anonymously for one year. They never meet as a group; rather, they review information and pass it on to Fellows Program administrators. All nominations are reviewed by a 13-member selection committee, with final approval given by the foundation's board. Besides the fellowships, the MacArthur Foundation funds a Health Program, which focuses on research into mental health and parasitic disease; a Peace and International Cooperation Program, aimed at strengthening the field of international security studies and increasing public understanding of security issues; a World Environment and Resources Program, which supports the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C.; an Education Program, which focuses on literacy among children aged four to 14; and the Special Grants Program, dedicated to fostering cultural and community activities in the Chicago area. Last year, speculation abounded that the foundation would stop giving the prestigious MacArthur Fellowships to scientists, fueled by reports that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, a MacArthur board member, had doubts that the program was valuable to scientists (The Scientist, Feb. 6, 1989, page 14). But Hope maintains that there currently are no plans to discontinue the fellowship program in the sciences, and that there never was any serious talk of doing so. "Nothing is changing in the program," Hope says. "This was never the case. Perhaps a garbled remark by a board member was misconstrued by the media." Moreover, says Hope, it is inappropriate to refer to the fellowship program by its commonly used nickname, the "genius awards." According to Hope, "the term isn't official; it's one fabricated by people who write headlines." Geniuses or not, the scientists who receive MacArthur fellowships are grateful for the honor and the funds that go with it. Hope remembers being told by a scientist fellow that every dollar of a MacArthur fellowship is worth $10 compared with any other type of scientific grant because of the opportunity for freedom in research afforded by the MacArthur money. And indeed, the scientists who won MacArthur fellowships this year agree that freedom is truly the grant's biggest asset. Mimi Koehl, 1990 MacArthur Fellow and professor in the department of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, says her $260,000 fellowship was a godsend. "What I do is nonstandard," says Koehl, 42, who uses techniques from engineering to study biological questions. "Often I work on a question other people have looked at and approached from different points of view. This ranges from the evolution of wings in paleozoic insects to the fluid mechanics of how zooplankton swim and feed to the mechanical design of wave-swept organisms and how they manage not to break." Her work often requires collaborating with other scientists who have complementary expertise in mathematics, oceanography, and biochemistry. Although in the past she has received notable grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Science Foundation, finding funding is always a challenge, Koehl says. "For people like me, who are in between fields, it's often very difficult to get funded. Wacky, interdisciplinary projects just fall through the cracks." Koehl says she'll most likely try something new within her area of interest with her MacArthur funds--she's just not yet sure of what. Unlike Koehl, 1990 MacArthur Fellow John Christian Bailar III conducts his research strictly as an individual, rather than a member of a team. Bailar, 58, who received a $340,000 award, is a physician and statistician by training, and now is a professor of epidemiology and biology at McGill University in Montreal and science adviser to the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in Washington, D.C. While Koehl calls herself "interdisciplinary," Bailar describes himself as "nondisciplinary." His goal is "improving the ways that scientists learn and report their findings," he says. The pressure to publish and to write successful grant proposals may be contributing to the spread of unethical practices and will ultimately hurt science, Bailar says. "Distorting inference and misleading other people" are becoming more widespread, he laments. "Many people see this as part of the game. "I'm interested in the science, methods, and processes of drawing inferences, as well as professional thinking and conduct," Bailar says, adding that he is very "concerned about scientists who mislead others without actually lying"; for instance, "not discussing all the soft spots in one's data or analysis." Bailar began his investigation of these issues by mailing a questionnaire to all members of the Council of Biology Editors, a Bethesda, Md.-based association of active and former editors of life sciences journals, which, according to Bailar, is "an organization interested in these [ethical] issues." Bailar says he plans to use his MacArthur funds to write a book on these issues, possibly for use in courses on professional conduct for graduate students. Having the MacArthur money available will enable him to set aside the time to write such a book, he says, adding that such support is ideal for work like his, "which appears useful but doesn't fall into any existing categories within the funding structure of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation." Margaret Geller, 42, 1990 Mac-Arthur Fellow and professor of astronomy at Harvard University, is not as willing as Bailar to discuss her plans for her $265,000 fellowship. Having the ability to keep one's goals to oneself, she says, is "the intent of the award; it's up to me to decide." One reason for Geller's adamancy about privacy is her feeling that today there is "much more emphasis on promise rather than production in science." People announce grand plans, but they never obtain sufficient results to support their theories, she says, adding that the plans get a lot more press than they deserve. Geller, who is internationally recognized for mapping the distribution of galaxies, was part of the team that discovered the structure of 1,700 galaxies that is popularly known as "the Great Wall." This structure, the largest known structure of galaxies, spans more than a trillion billion miles. She agrees with Koehl and Bailar that the MacArthur fellowships allow "a kind of freedom that's really very special." Geller is interested in projects that demonstrate the beauty of science. "Science is really visually appealing," she says, "and we shouldn't leave it to others [nonscientists] to bring it to life graphically." Geller says she believes that "we [scientists] won't continue to be supported unless we show the public what we're doing." Explaining science in a visually exciting way will bring it closer to people, she says. "The MacArthur fellowship is nice because it leaves you free to change what you want to get into," says 1990 MacArthur Fellow Nancy Kopell, professor of mathematics at Boston University. Kopell, 48, says she plans to use her $290,000 fellowship to further the work of a research team--or, as she calls it, "a center without walls"--that she has pulled together for the purpose of studying neural control of rhythmic motor behavior based on mathematical principles. Kopell is a mathematician by training with an interest in biology. Other members of her team are either mathematicians or biologists. They develop methodology to understand the relationship between structure and function in the central nervous systems of simple organisms. The group differs from other teams studying similar subjects because they "are less interested with simulations and more interested with trying to develop large, overall frame- works," Kopell says. Like Koehl, Kopell says the MacArthur fellowships are a boon to interdisciplinary researchers. "For those of us who work in interdisciplinary groups, it's often a battle for funding," which can make research plans very unstable, she says. Kopell says she hopes her MacArthur fellowship will build recognition for scientists like her, who don't fit into specific, conventional categories. According to Hope, that's one of the goals of the MacArthur fellowship program: to offer recipients an opportunity to build awareness of their research beyond their peers and into the mainstream public. "People have told me that the MacArthur Fellows have brought recognition of people in science to the public," Hope says. "That recognition is something to be very proud of." Lisa Simon is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

Scientist-Recipients Treasure Freedom As MacArthur Fellowships' Biggest Asset

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