Does Scientific Progress Come from Projects or People? Joshua Lederberg, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY Address to the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges Washington, DC, November 9, 1987 When Bob Clodius called me about speak- ing today, I of course recalled our good times together at the University of Wiscon- sin over 30 years ago. I wondered, having worked exclusively at private (a cuphemism for federal) research institutions, namely, Stanford and The Rockefeller, all that time, how pertinent my expericnee would be for you. Of course, we both ugreed: all the more reason for discourse, and in any event there is much more that joins private and state in- stitutions in carrying out their research func- tions than divides them. Institutions, how they are taken for granted and how they serve as homes for in- tellect, will be the focus of my discussion. Bob and I and all of us have been giving a lot of thought to their status today. My own experience, and especially my present role, does constrain me to speak most about the research mission—and the academic career of research in the natural sciences. I won't be saying very much about overall budget prioritics—how much we should col- lect in taxes; how much we should spend for defense, for health, for education. ‘These questions are easy only for the one who doesn’t have to make the final decisions about all of these responsibilities of govern- ment. So I should not comment on them without giving the same attention to the di- temmas of each sector as I will to my main topic. Should we be complaining? In terms rel- ative to other countries, or much of our past history, we have a robust scientific enter- prise. Yet 1 believe that, with available funds, we could be far more effective and could get better perspectives on fundamen- tal priority allocations. And trouble is loom- ing in industrial competitiveness and in the morale of younger scientists as they face the problematical attractions of the scientific ca- reer. The morale of presidents is of less 4 Nov. at (484 broad public concern. Steve Muller asks, Where are the giants of yesteryear? | para- phrase his answer: They are collecting re- turn-deposit becr cans to help pay the bills. My subject does not lend itself to the sct- entific process of analysis and verification with which Fam most familiar. [ will call more anecdotally on 35 years at the labora- tory bench and another decade in academic administration for an avowedly subjective appraisal of how federal agency funding, our institutions, and the careers of individual sci- entists interact in that heady twentieth-cen- tury environment for research. The institu- tions’ perspectives will also be noted and also the interaction of these with the incen- tives and opportunities for unconventional and interdisciplinary initiatives. The skele- ton of my remarks comes from a working paper I submitted during my membership on the Packard-Bromley White House Science Council panel on the Health of the Univer- sities. Despite notable deficiencies in that re- port—it failed to include my paper verba- tim--I] commend it to you as a high point of examination and mutual understanding of the basic issues of the federal-universily re- lationship today. Predictably, and just as we feared, it is being implemented in a quite selective and lopsided fashion: namely, whatever will save the federal budget short- run dollars. It does give a particularly good account of our problems in compensating for tong deferred maintenance and renewal of capital facilities and instrumentation, so I will comment mainly on the issues of oper- ating support for research programs at aca- demic institutions. I. The investigator's relationship to his/her institution and to the federal grant system. At the present time, federal funding ac- counts for a lion’s share of the support of ©1989 by ISI@ CURRENT CONTENTS® Joshua Lederberg 2779 of the scope of our science and technology when we have not exhausted the possibilities of constructive reform in the federal-univer- sity relationship. In recent years the overall financial stresses on institutions, coupled with stern policies of federal agencies that limit the in- stitutions’ flexibility and draw down their small uncommitted reserves, have left little buffering capacity on the institutions’ part to reinsure against contingencies. The predictable consequence is a confu- sion of responsibility for the career interest of the scientist: the federal government has the means for financial flexibility but es- chews the responsibility; conversely, the in- stitution has the responsibility but not the means. The loyalties of the scientist are like- wise divided and confused. Only the most scientific research at *‘private’’ universities and increasingly at state institutions as well. From the perspective of the individual in- vestigator, the dependency on federal funds is even greater, since the nonfederal input will be concentrated on faculty salaries and the institutional infrastructure [which is only partly paid for by indirect cost recovery]. For most investigators at universities, very limited funds for the actual conduct of re- search are available except from federal sources. Even a momentary interruption of support (while it may not immediately im- pact the investigator’s tenure as a professor) poses grave stresses on the continuity of the research, on the employment of technical staff, and on the capacity and opportunity of the investigator to continue a research career, Since World War II, the scope of federal support for science has constructively ex- panded that enterprise to the degree that complaints about the details of research ad- ministration, and their qualitative impact, are in some ways ungracious. So long as the dependency on federal funds was less than total, private resources could make up for discrepancies that are difficult to rectify in a government bureaucracy responsive to the politics of both the executive and legislative branches. It is not a good answer to reduce accomplished and fortunate can look beyond the imperative of qualifying for renewal of their research grant. Then pushed aside are all other activities, including intellectual co- operation in education as well as research, risk taking in the planning of research, even reaching out for technology transfer in ap- plying new science. New structural ap- proaches to encouraging interdisciplinary ventures are being actively pressed, espe- cially by the National Science Foundation (NSF); but that top-down approach may even compound the problem if it docs not look closely at the dynamics of the careers of the creative individuals who are the real wellspring of science and technology pro- ductivity: their functioning before and after, as well as during, their participation in these new structures. In my view the best way to foster interdisciplinary creativity is not to impose new structures, but to liberate indi- vidual scientists to reconstellate themselves as called for by the scientific opportunity. (As this is becoming a controversial policy debate, I must display my credentials: my experience in interdisciplinary and applica- tions-oriented work embraces not only mo- lecular biology, but also applied biotechnol- ogy, world health, computer science, space exploration, and international relations.) Even existing academic structures have be- come necessary evils, in some respects, CURRENT CONTENTS® ©1989 by ISI® 8 5 from the perspective of encouraging novel individual initiatives. They will be aggra- vated by the cluttering of the organization- al tandscape with still more crosscutting ri- gidified **improvements’’ that then take on a life of their own. Further compounding these constraints has been the trend in grants administration, during the past decade, ever more to the project rather than the investigator as the locus of merit. Short terms of grant awards have enhanced the opportunity and incen- tive for micromanagement of others’ re- search, even on the part of peer scientists. This sets up another vicious cycle, that the burden of grants review constricts the pace and volume of feedback betwcen the inves- tigator and the review process. It is not un- usual for an application for a two-year grant lo require a year's lead time, and then— with very short notice—difficulties crop up in the prospects of renewal that would then imperil the continuity of the work. There is great value in peer review—c.g., the gatekeeping of the refereed journals— which provides indispensable objective crit- icism and public exposure of new findings and ideas. At present, however, investiga- tors are typically spending 20-30 percent of their time and energy in sustaining the flow of grant support and in a sctting of high anx- iety that can only interfere with their cre- ative thinking. (Yes, there is some optimal level of accountability and arousal, but no one can justify what is experienced today.) Widely misunderstood, however, it is not the peer-review but the project system that is the root of this stress, although it is ‘peer review’’ that has attracted vocal criticism. Who better than other working scientists could maintain critical oversight on the qual- ity of science? Of course, one’s colleagues are also one’s competitors, and during times of stringency one needs to take special pre- cautions against interested bias and devices to insist on the accurate reflection of judg- ments pooled from individual ballots. [ have found that demanding a rank-ordering of judgments helps on both counts: to reduce the negative impact of one idiosyncratic vote, which gives undue weight to a single blackball when all the absolute votes are simply averaged, and to force the judges to express difficult choices, closer to the con- sequences of their votes. In the cnd, after all, the proposals will have to be rank-or- dered in some way to reach a decision on which will be funded. Needless to say, the judges should be true peers, scientists of experience and accom- plishment—a goal hard to achieve when all have been so exhausted by their prior ser- vice: more about that later. It is the short-term emphasis on projects that amplifies the stresses on individual ca- reers. This is then matched by the systemic waste that flows from intermittent encour- agement and distress, the nurturing of ca- reers that are allowed to sprout, followed by intervals of drought or decapitation. The project system leaves all too little latitude for intrainstitutional measures of criticism and support. In a word, careers are being administered, de facto, by a distant bureauc- racy that accepts little responsibility for this facet of the scientific enterprise, while the system leaves few resources to local com- munities of scholars to guide the evolution of their scholarship or the reeducation of their (possibly temporary) weakest links. Al- together, the project system is in violent con- tradiction with the professorial system at the university. We would not cast on the dust- heap a brilliant teacher who had one bad year. But this is precisely the prospect fac- ing the research career today. Still embed- ded in the project system is the ideology that scientific research is an amateur vocation— a discretionary incidental to teaching—to which the investigator can return after a brief fling. I don’t know how else to understand the preoccupation of the NSF with summer salarics as its avenue of support of princi- pal investigators. Perhaps even to a fault— one could argue about that—research is no longer an ancillary function of the univer- sity: it is the principal criterion of recruit- ment to our major universities. Thave heard some agencies brag that the average dura- tion of grant support was sevemyears—that was supposed to be an index that everybody could get a ride on the trolley car. They had 6 ©1989 by 1S1@ CURRENT CONTENTS® sd made no enquiry and obviously could know little about what happened after they had been pushed off for the new crowd, nor the waste entailed in that scesaw style. These frictions first frustrate, then deter many young scientists. | am not aware of other than anecdotal evidence that many gifted students are turning away from sci- entific careers in anticipation of these prob- lems. The evidence is clear that very few MDs now are willing to embrace the risks of a research career as against the incentives of a specialty practice (and against a back- ground of debt for paying for their MD ed- ucation that puts them under extreme bur- den). While most of the emphasis, perhaps correctly, has been placed on the decline of secondary and undergraduate education in science, these motivational factors, should not be ignored. The PhD graduate or MD contemplating research must look forward to a lifelong ca- reer of seeking project grants. His most promising years may be ‘those in graduate school and as a postdoctoral fellow when he or she at least has the administrative and fi- nancial shelter of an established laboratory. We should not lose sight of the often con- tradictory demands on the scientific person- ality: antitheses such as imagination vs. crit- ical rigor, iconoclasm vs. respect for estab- lished truth, humility and generosity to col- leagues vs. arrogant audacity to nature, ef- ficient specialization vs. broad interest, do- ing experiments vs. reflection, ambition vs. sharing of ideas and tools—all these and more must be reconciled within the profes- sional persona. They are intrinsic to the na- ture of science. We should work hard to avoid piling on gratuitous stresses that dis- courage, even deter, some of the worthiest young people seeking scientific careers to- day. They are perhaps most clearly telling in the trepidations of well-quatified minor- ities about entering graduate research and careers in science, compared to the safe course of law, business, or medicine. 2. Remedies. A far-reaching reconstruction of the fed- eral-university relationship probably exceeds CURRENT CONTENTS® ©1989 by ISI® realistic goals and certainly would require still more extensive deliberation. It appeared to be working admirably from about 1950 to 1965, and, while the high rates of annual increase in appropriations cannot be repli- cated, some other features perhaps can. This approach has the merit of replicating exper- iments already done within the corporate memory of granting agencies. Some essential features include a. Above all, recognition that an insti- tution(’s administration) is a processing center for flows of resources, not a pri- mary fount. The ‘‘partnership’’ simile (of government and university) is a con- structive image, but it may be mislead- ing about the revenue-raising capabili- ties of the partners. It is elementary but still must be ex- plained to grantors (public and private) that whatever the grant system does not provide can only be compensated for by (1) taking resources away from another activity (ii) discovering other sources (unlikely!) (ili) shrinking the program Suggestions that ‘the institution should pay for ..x.."’ are rarely accom- panied by informed mandates as to the sources that should be tapped. Faculty should not be excessively burdened with factual knowledge about administrivia; indeed they are often equally ill-in- formed about this principle, ¢.g., in dis- cussions of indirect cost recovery. Com- plex institutions, like academic medical centers, may need to improve their own cost accounting for their own awareness of the cross-flows, and many questions doubtless can and should be asked about them. This oversight of institutions’ policies is not well done by ad hoc demands around single, vulnerable proj- ects on the part of agencies that will not share responsibility for the reconstruc- . Uon that will be entailed. b. Restoration of emphasis on the cre- ativity of individual investigators, rather than the substance of a research propos- al, as the central criterion of merit. Re- 7 search is after all a foray into the un- known and unpredictable. The skills needed are, above all, those for impro- visation in the face of unexpected dis- covery or disappointment. Those skills are not evenly distributed, and a careful- ly thought-out proposal is important tes- timony about them. That writing cannot, however, substitute for proven and sus- tained accomplishment and, especially, for research of an exploratory (versus exploitative) character. It is infuriating to see critiques worded like ‘‘The inves- tigator has not demonstrated [in ad- vance] that he can [discover such and such]”’ addressed to individuals who have repeatedly surprised the scientific community (and themselves) with their prior innovations. No wonder that many innovative minds now boodeg their most creative ideas under the cover of ‘‘sure- thing’’ applications or, as a variant, write their proposals around work al- ready completed. And what a waste that their ingenuity should be so expended! The implication that an investigator should ‘*know what he is doing’’ before being worthy of a grant flies in the face of the actual history of the most creative discovery. How would a project propos- al to NSF have fared that looked to ex- plore the high-temperature superconduc- tivity of ceramics? And I will aver in ret- rospecting aboul my own career since 1946 that none of my own most consc- quential discoveries had been tele- graphed in project proposals before- hand. About the most important matters, we are always too ignorant in advance to spell out the discoveries we might make. 3. Lengthening the period of award. A change of culture, or rather a regres- sion to the 1960s cra of the National! Insti- tutes of Health and NSF and the 1950s of the Office of Naval Research, will not hap- pen spontaneously nor readily. The bureau- cracies of most institutions and agencies have become ever more professionalized, viz., as professional administrators, and only those rare individuals who have had personal experience of creative scientific re- search are likely to have the skill and expe- rience to know how to oversee these changes of outlook—a problem especially taxing for the middle, i.c., working, levels of management. We then have to think of the most effec- tive managerial devices to work these changes without entailing the reeducation of hordes of effector agents. My candidate is one fell swoop of administrative fiat, name- ly, a mandate that grant awards again be typ- ically for five to seven years. This would reduce the administrative load of reviewing grant proposals, and likewise, on the inves- tigators, especially if there were a period of grace for the more gradual phasedown of a nonrenewable project. Reducing the now in- tolerable workload of review would con- serve the precious resource of competent peers. It might also enable a discourse be- tween applicant and reviewers that is now rigid and full of mutual misunderstanding. Our current practice is vicious beyond imag- ination, once one thinks about it. If there are questions arising in the review of a project application, the supplicant will hear about them only after the peer panel has met and, often, only after a deferral that will have caused incalculable trauma. The straitened bandwidth of communication, the fantasies that too often underlie the judgments of the peer-review group without correction, these badly need reform with the help both of more human-scale procedures and of tech- nologiés like electronic mail and file main- tenance. Our other gatekeeping systems, those of refereed publications and of facul- ty appointments, generally give more inti- mate contact with the submitter or more timely feedback and access to other op- tions—other reviewers, or other gates. Meanwhile the current research project sys- tem gives disproportionate rewards to the grantsmen, those most skillful at verbiage for manipulating the system independent of the inherent scientific merit of their ideas. I am less sympathetic with the claim that these stresses in any way justify the incidents 8 ©1IBIby IS1@ CURRENT CONTENTS® of fraud and misrepresentation in science, cach of which is so loudly advertised in the media. It may be, however, that the current system is attracting carecrists into science impelled more by grantsly skills than their love for problem-solving for human benefit and for truth. We must be careful to return to these themes as our criteria of judgment. The indirect effects of lengthened dura- tion of awards would be equally valuable: it is more difficult for reviewers to slide in- to micromanaging projects of such duration. The focus of attention of the applicant would be redirected to basic goals and of the re- viewers to the applicant’s personal skills. The time given would allow for opportunis- tic exploration of unpredictable paths and for them to face the skepticism of the larger community. The principal argument I have heard in defense of the short trolley ticket is the need to make room for young people. We must give careful attention to that. Yes, they may have difficulty competing with established investigators; they may have little but their project proposals to present as testimony of their skills. The perspective of trying to identify the most capable individuals does not, I would say, preclude the use of what- ever testimony is relevant. We can of course give competitive points for youth, if that is our policy objective. We should keep in mind, however, that the principal use of funds in the hands of established investiga- tors is precisely for the support of younger associates—certainly that has been my life- long experience as student, as professor, and as administrator. I submit that the working professor is a better and highly interested judge of the qualifications of those associ- ates than is a remote committee; undoubted- ly, institutions could also enhance their local review procedures to assist in those evalua- tions. My own expericnce was also to have had the opportunity to earn my spurs and peer recognition through the work I did as a research fellow in Professor Tatum’s lab- oratory. This system of apprenticeship has been institutionalized in the most consistent fashion in my present institution, The Rockefeller University, and there is abun- dant historical evidence that it works very well. Finally, if we do really mean that the typical scientific career is going to be trun- cated in 7, even in 15 years, we really had better attend to all of the other insidious im- plications this has for the tenure system of the university. The extreme, of lifelong tenure of re- search support, I do not advocate, even though that works reasonably successfully in systems like the British Medical Research Council and the intramural programs of gov- ernment and of industry. There is some in- terval of recurrent accountability that must be optimal in balancing the stress of per- formance with the leisure and security for careful reflection; a seven-ycar cycle should be about right to keep track of the changing seasons of a scientific life. It is curious that many research managers who are sluggish to respond to my pleas are themselves per- manently ensconced in their own bureaucrat- ic niches. I don’t advocate that they be put on a two-year leash to prove their perfor- mance—that would compound the disaster of short-run bottom-line accountability: a theme whose consequences for our industrial economy have been all too evident and cer- tainly contributed to...Black Monday. But 1 hope they will be less insouciant about ‘*keeping people on the trolley car’ for an average total period that should be a single episode. These cries in the wilderness have not gone utterly unheeded. The directors in our audience can give you details of their agen- cies’ recent initiatives with experienced in- vestigator awards and with lengthening the terms of grants and other simplifications of their procedures. Program managers should also be allowed more flexibility to keep expiring grants ‘talive’’ for intervals long enough to allow the threshing out of misunderstanding or of other occasional but apparent failures of ob- jective peer review. That flexibility is itself an administrative burden, but it will be more tolerable against the background of seven- year than of two-year awards. Finally, as a university administrator I would frequent- ly have won the bet, if I could make it, of CURRENT CONTENTS® ©1989 by ISI® 9 i i i i : placing funds on a project on the gamble that it would be eventually renewed. Some means should be found for the retrospective reimbursement of such gambles when they are in fact legitimated by later reexamina- tion, That is not merely fair-dealing: it also enables and encourages insightful manage- ment on the part of the university adminis- tration. Of course I have to make such gam- bles anyhow, but with short shrift for ex- plicit reimbursement when I am right, in- (ended to offset (the hypothetical case) when Lam too optimistic. In fact, Ecan’t remem- ber the last time an investigator that I grub- staked didn’t ‘‘get back on the trolley car’’; the net effect is almost always just a lot of lost energy (and a dwindling of reserves). Industrial contractors have access to risk capital, invested as against expectation of fu- ture profit, that is denied to not-for-profit institutions. The measures just suggested are in the spirit of many others that would re- ward institutional as well as personal skills in the management of creative science. The present system of grant funding not only makes no provision for that risk capital, it subjects what there is to constant attrition: unilateral flows from cost sharing, incom- plete indirect cost recovery, infrastructural costs, the whole system of faculty compen- satton that exchanges modest salaries for lifelong job security. Not allowable as ‘‘in- direct costs’’ are the career-supporting bur- dens, attending to the gestation and early nurture of academic investigators, start-up and tide-over expenses, even the terminal care that is part of the system’s social contract. We should jealously guard the pluralism in government support of science that is one of our greatest safeguards against monumen- tal and monolithic error. One agency can ex- periment and offer cues to improving the system for others. 4. We must share responsibility. The entire burden of renovation of the re- search environment should not and cannot rest solely on federal reform. There is much to attend to in our own houses. Unhappily, too many institutions have. been socialized to accommodate to their de- pendence on the existing system and with reduced power their directors have abdicated what leadership they might still exercise in the management of research. Such a sweep- ing generalization is of course subject to no- table but rare exceptions. All too often the department has become the largest unit that sustains much intellec- tual and. academic cooperation. Students funded from one project can spend some time in another lab in the same department; there is no comparable facility across broad- er reaches of the university. Above all the project funding system has further bolstered the imperatives of specialization; many able professors have little experience and litle culture beyond the domain of their discipline [projects}. The project system further pre- empts the loyalties that might be directed to one’s colleagues and one’s institution in favor of the nationally centralized fount. In that milicu there is little incentive or latitude for leadership of any breadth even within science. Both these structural impediments, and the rarity of the appropriate talent, make it ever more difficult to install department chairs, deans, or provosts who are cognitive- ly engaged with the content of the work they are called upon to administer. We are grate- ful when their political and human relations skills sustain some quiet among warring fac- tions. Presidents, as Steve Muller and Jim March have lamented, are no longer expect- ed to do more than raise money and empty the garbage can. Nor are faculty likely to be responsive, when their main task is to get their grants renewed. In consequence of these (and other) factors, many able scien- tists will properly refuse to involve them- selves in formal administrative responsibil- ities: chairs, deanships, and other executive positions are going begging or are being filled by people with requisite high talents other than academic, It does not follow that scholarly attainment is a sufficient qualifica- tion for a managerial role; but without it the executive is ill equipped to make his own judgment of the merits of his colleagues’ work, and he must struggle to sustain their 10 ©1989 by ISt@ CURRENT CONTENTS® esteem and his or her authority. This depre- cation of leadership is part of a vicious cy- cle of anarchy and its associated ills of splin- tering what ought to be a community of scholars. We all share responsibility for the exertions needed to restore that communi- ty, one that includes the teachers, the re- searchers, and the administrators. 5. Some thoughts on “‘big science.’ Biology, until now, has rarely faced the necd for megatechnologies to answer its prt- mary scientific objectives. The human ge- nome DNA-sequencing proposal does loom as a new way of doing business. This is a structure of formidable complexity: three billion nucleotide pairs of DNA, a full two meters of double helix if unraveled from a single cell. This corresponds to about 100,000 gene products that will have to be accounted for. The ultimate reductionism would be to build an analytical factory that could complete the reading of all three bil- lion units as one technical exercise. A price tag of a few billion dollars is cited, perhaps less if there is prior investment in new tech- nology to automate the task. Is it worth the cost? Undoubtedly! Is it the wisest use of that level of expenditure? I have very grave doubts! Part of my reservations have to do with the style of research it encourages, part with a misunderstanding about what we need to earn in ‘‘mapping the genome." We have by now profound information concerning a score or so of human proteins; cach of them is at least a life’s work. At a modest $10 MM each, that would amount to a trillion dollars for the full set, and obviously we must make discriminating selections of tar- gets before committing to the task. About 100 human proteins are now discernible as agents of important biological activity; that number will soon grow to perhaps 1,000. These should be the priority list for further inquiry. It will be far more important and more feasible to tearn in depth about that percentile of the human genome than to have an exhaustive listing of a sequence of three billion nucleotides. For these, we will look in detail into regulation, three-dimensional structure, genetic variability within and be- tween species, physiological interrelation- ships, and therapeutic applications. To pur- sue such enquiries will take much more than the engineering mentality that would apply a single methodology for a single sweep. It will need a sense of the organism and a fo- cused expertise on, even fascination for, the parts under scrutiny. This megaproposal does behoove us to sharpen a distinction be- tween exploratory and exploitative phases of scientific development. Exploratory re- search engenders revolutionary break- throughs with new perspectives; the agen- da for exploitative science then becomes fairly obvious. For the latter, exquisite technical skills are to be recruited, but not too much imagination. Such projects can then be fairly readily judged by objective re- viewers. There is little likelihood of plans being disrupted by totally unexpected dis- coveries—though this may happen even in the best regulated laboratory. Precisely be- cause the DNA-sequence paradigm is so central to modern biology, it does set the agenda for almost all of the foreseeable, the plannable research at least of the next cou- ple of decades. My fear is that it may also submerge new revolutions, not unlike the ones that initiated us into this phase of the history of biology. Other sciences face very different chal- lenges. Without large telescopes, accelera- tors, spacecraft, important regimes of the physical universe remain simply inaccessi- ble to us. We have had good experiences in national facilities to provide these capabili- ties to a broad national community. There remain scrious questions how to relate them to the life of the university. Much concern has been expressed that existing departmen- tal structures frustrate broader and morc in- novative interests—and I have had my own experience of that. Genetics was certainly a stepchild at medical schools at the start of my career, and biochemistry not long before that. But I question whether larger ‘‘cen- ters,”’ if brought in top-down, won’t aggra- vate the problem. By their allegiance to ex- ternal sponsors, they will be even less ac- CURRENT CONTENTS® ©1989 by [SI® 11 ( November 27, 1989 countable to, and communicative with, their colleagues on their own campus. At the same time they will make inevitable calls on general resources that will weaken the uni- versity’s flexibility in responding to other contingencies. We can answer these con- cerns (a) with appropriate sensitivity in the style of administration of these centers, and (b) by stronger internal leadership to con- travene the splintering of the campus com- munity into walled enclaves. Otherwise, we may again find that today’s ‘‘new’’ centers are tomorrow’s entrenched resistance to everchanging horizons. , Another challenge to introspection is whether we are'doing all we can to acceler- ate ‘technology transfer’’ from academia to industry—~a point of special sensitivity in the midst of today’s anxieties about economic - competitiveness. No one who knows my own personal history will accuse me of in- difference to that issue. I will recall an anec- dote about my professor, Edward L. Tatum, who completed his PhD in bacteriology at Wisconsin just 50 years ago and was facing a decision where to work. He was urged to take a position at Iowa, to look into the then “*hot"’ field of the microbiology of butter, one of manifest practical importance. Instead he went to Stanford, to work with G.W. Beadle on the eye pigments in fruit flies. That became translated within four years into their Nobel Prize winning work on the biochemical genetics of Neurospora, indu- bitably one of the principal foundations of today’s biotechnology. It would have been tragic were any industry to have had a veto in deciding what would truly be of greatest industrial consequence. My own experience has been consistent with that theme, that the universities accept the difficult charge of Icadership in pointing out where tomorrow’s industries will find their greatest opportu- nities, many of them in the hands of corpo- rations that will need new birth certifi- cates—and so will not yet be at hand as the visible contemporary partners at the time the research is conceived. The wisdom to oversee these complex technical relationships is still another chal- lenge to the academic leadership of the fu- ture. Good luck. Volume 29 Number 48 Ua ge EY Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences