"Hard Days on the Endless Frontier" Revisited

^a Professor, Nutrition and Biological Chemistry, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

August's LSF article, "Hard Days on the Endless Frontier," by Robert Pollack, generated a number of responses. The following letters are published, along with Dr. Pollack's replies, in order to continue the dialogue on morale in the biomedical sciences. VTM

I am pleased to respond to Dr. Marchesi's request to comment on the perspectives developed by Dr. Robert Pollack in his essay, "Hard Days on the Endless Frontier." I was asked to respond in part because of my current position as President of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences, and as a scientist whose research activities bridge both medicine and agriculture at a public university. In this regard, I share Dr. Pollack's concern that morale is low in the scientific community.

As the readers of this series of letters know, Dr. Pollack developed a model to aid in describing the basis for our low morale. What I wish to do is add additional components to Dr. Pollack's model and expand on several of the points he makes. I would assert that dealing with 1) informational technology and automation, 2) academic administration, and 3) what is often labeled as postmodernism, particularly in the context of educational philosophy, are major contributing factors to low morale.

I include informational technology and automation because both have shortened the time lines we must give ourselves to remain competitive and work at the cutting edge. The scope of our work has forced many of us into difficult choices, choices that have had a clear impact on morale. For example, to address questions in modern biology, it is often necessary to use a team approach. The team approach, however, puts many of us in the awkward position of deciding how to negotiate `control', i.e., we often have to give up some level of our personal autonomy or privacy. Another factor is `research focus': we are asked to narrow our activities much more than we may wish in order to remain competitive.

The changes brought on by advances in informational technology and automation have also been accompanied by changes in administrative structure and styles of management. Academic administration has become more corporate in nature and structure. Although this change has some virtues, it is associated with the need to make a number of difficult accommodations and transitions. As an example, consider the privatization of medical schools in order to accommodate HMOs, or the accommodations that occur when an academic department in agriculture services a given commodity group. Increased emphasis has also been given to bringing in grants and gifts. In this setting, morale is not enhanced when the limited resources that are accessible are utilized to bring in an `academic superstar' rather than develop or sustain an established academic program.

Regrettably, the concept has evolved that the conduct of science and its administration can be separated. At many institutions, the administration of science, once delegated to the scientifically proven or, in some instances, elite, is now left to those with marketing skills or to those who no longer wish intellectually to explore Pollack's "frontier." It is difficult to maintain high morale when leadership defines academic success relative to a business ledger, or follows the corporate model of moving on in order to move up the administrative ladder. I also concur with Dr. Pollack that our enthusiasm is compromised by the constant necessity of having to deal with complex regulations. Our administrative infrastructures have made it essential to acquire licenses and comply with what are often arbitrary regulations.

The American university clearly reflects changes in American society. Addressing issues that center on fairness, race, and gender are essential because they are morally and spiritually correct. Nevertheless, life in academe was easier and perhaps more friendly when we were more homogeneous. Several points can be made here. One concerns the issue of diversity as it relates to gender and race. For some, increased diversity in these areas has had a significant impact on morale. However, I think it is important to develop the issue of diversity in a broader context.

Simply stated, science was easier when there was less to know in order to get started. When we were less intellectually diverse, we were more fluent in each other's language. In basic biology, many of us received similar training as chemists or physical scientists. Now, we must confront a scientific knowledge base that expands exponentially.

To reiterate, we used to be smaller in number and more homogeneous. When I took enzymology some 30 years ago, my Professor, Dr. Bernard Axelrod, asserted that he would not welcome the pressures that he perceived would be placed on us. In his career, he had worked with or met every plant biochemist who had influenced his life or career. His point was that he had an intimate sense of his identify and history as a research scientist that we would not have.

When we were less diverse, we judged ourselves by a set of rather straightforward and intuitively understood criteria. This has changed over the past 15–20 years, in part because of changes in administration and our willingness to accept certain changes in academic philosophy. For example, many of us have been asked to accept the trappings of postmodern colleagues, whose conceptual constructs arise more from rhetoric and semantics than from linearly constructed hypotheses. In this setting, we have had to place more emphasis on quantitative, rather than qualitative, measures of academic worth. That is, we `bean count' because we perceive difficulties in understanding the quality of each others' science.

The fields of academic research, whether social or physical, have never been closed clubs. Yet, there has been some effort to level the playing field so that, figuratively speaking, all can play. However, when expectations regarding performance make clear distinctions between levels of quality, I sense that there is less insensitivity caused by arbitrariness in judgment and, as a consequence, morale is higher.

In summary, I am certain that we have not changed intrinsically and become more insensitive. However, all of us have limits. Informational technology, automation, changes in administrative style, and the need to operate under a different set of standards—that, on occasion, can compromise our integrity—have tested such limits. Poor morale comes from having to adjust to too much. The good news it that since we can articulate reasons for low morale, we can address at least those features that are easy to resolve; I hope we will learn to adapt to the others. Regrettably, our reasons for poor morale are multifaceted, interconnected, complex, and in some cases self-inflicted. The process of resolution is going to take a while and require thoughtful insight.

Response to Professor Rucker

These three additional problems are all real, but only one is extrinsic; the other two are symptoms of precisely the withdrawal from responsibility I describe in my paper. The appearance of more data per unit of time, in more different venues each year, is a real issue, one we cannot address individually at all. The Web meets the predictions for any new technology: it offers a nicely balanced set of new solutions to old problems, and new problems for which there is as yet no solution. The Web brings the latest data to the bench scientist with unprecedented speed and focus; at the same time, it threatens the notion of fair peer review of any bench science, because reviews can be ignored when every PC is its own journal, with its own table of contents on its own home page.

If there is a solution here, it seems to me to lie in the willingness of practicing scientists to put some time into constructing the formalism for peer review of results on the Web. That would, of course, be an aspect of administration, which brings us to the first of Rucker's other two causes: the professionalization of administration and its subsequent isolation from practice. The only honorable way for a scientist to serve in an administration would be for the administration to acknowledge in advance that the scientist would be free to see all relevant data and draw her own conclusions, regardless of the larger administrative agenda. Surely it is for any practicing scientist simply to say no to committees and central administrative appointments, the agendas of which are to co-opt the presumption of scientific objectivity by having scientists sign off on matters about which they have no expert knowledge. I lasted 7 years as Dean of Columbia College, and left when I was no longer free to maintain a scientist's standard of objectivity and honesty.

The third cause is old news. Bright people from new backgrounds, who neither like scientists nor trust science—or the other way around—are what the academic world out there is largely made of. What is new is the appearance of people holding such opinions within the world of scientific practice. Such people are telling us all something very important: it is possible to do good science without becoming orthodox in one's religious observance of its verities. As for being uneasy with new scientists who happen to be cast in different shapes and colors than one's own: well, wake up and smell the coffee!

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Rucker, R. Articles by Pollack, R. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Rucker, R. Articles by Pollack, R.