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26 SEPTEMBER 2008 VOL 321 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
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CREDIT: JUPITER IMAGES
LETTERS IBOOKS IPOLICY FORUM IEDUCATION FORUM IPERSPECTIVES
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Slipping secrets down
noisy channels
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COMMENTARY
The burdens
of atlases
LETTERS
Fixing the Leaky Faucet
A. I. LESHNER’S EDITORIAL “JUST GIVE THEM GRANTS” (16
May, p. 849) is an urgent call for dedicated funding for new
investigators in science. However, without a means to sustain
new investigators once their laboratories have been estab-
lished, another crisis will quickly follow: the inability to
retain the talent brought to the bench. This leaky-faucet
phenomenon is already well known to women in medicine
and science, with much good will to slow down these depar-
tures but little resolution in sight. The academic and funding
community must be committed to the full length of the
science career, not just the early part of it. Why recruit if we
cannot retain? To do so will only create disillusionment and
distrust among those in whose hands the future of science lies.
JUDY ILLES
Department of Neurology, National Core for Neuroethics, The University
of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 2B5, Canada. E-mail: jilles@
interchange.ubc.ca
edited by Jennifer Sills
Redefining Academic
Success
A. I. LESHNER MAKES SUCH A COMPELLINGLY
simple recommendation in his 16 May Editorial
(“Just give them grants,” p. 849) that one cannot
but wonder why it need be made at all. If
junior academic scientists need a government-
funded grant to launch their independent
research career, why not just give them grants?
Problem solved. However, if the academic
research community is really going to tackle
what is, despite the Editorial’s straightforward
prose, a very complicated issue, then it should
also consider another seemingly simple ques-
tion extracted from the Editorial’s f irst sen-
tence. Why is it that securing external funding
for independent research is a “gold standard”
for academic success, particularly in the first
few years of a career spanning decades?
Shouldn’t the early investment in a junior
faculty member’s scholarly research be the
responsibility of the institution hiring him or
her? Might not considerations of success also
include the originality of the individual’s
research, the contributions the research could
make to the intellectual content of his or her
chosen field of research, and the value of the
individual as a colleague? Surely there are
ways for institutions to develop internal met-
rics of success. So, here is another simple
recommendation: It is time for academic insti-
tutions to stop ceding their promotion and
tenure decisions to the NIH and other external
funding bodies.
SUSAN M. FITZPATRICK* AND JOHN T. BRUER
James S. McDonnell Foundation, St. Louis, MO 63117, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
susan@jsmf.org
Caught in the Middle?
AS A POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW ENTERING THE
market for biology faculty positions, I was
happy to hear that 25% of NIH Research
grants are going to new investigators who
have never received an RO1 (Editorial, “Just
give them grants,” A. I. Leshner, 16 May,
p. 849). My sense of schadenfreude was ful-
filled to hear that these funds will come off
the backs of senior investigators who,
despite clearly being deadwood, are hogging
multiple grants. But then I wondered what
will happen to me in the phase between
being a new investigator and a senior inves-
tigator. Surely there must be some interme-
diate step. The transformation from plucky
young innovator to conservative graybeard
cannot be instantaneous. After that first
RO1, I will have some publications and
some data, but not as many as my more sen-
ior competitors. And the funding situation
for me will be even tighter than before,
because a significant fraction of funds will
be going to those undeserving, knee-biting,
new investigators. Additionally, I will have
reached a stage where I have significant
responsibilities—graduate students and
postdocs will be depending on me for their
career advancement and livelihood. So I am
left asking, what will happen to new investi-
gators once their honeymoon is over?
SANJAY S. P. MAGAVI
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
E-mail: smagavi@mit.edu
Just Give Them
Fellowships
IN THE RECENT EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHTING THE
issues faced by young academics in secur-
ing funding for their own research (“Just
give them grants,” 16 May, p. 849), A. I.
Leshner touches on an important point: the
subversion of personal research interests
during postdoctoral training periods. As an
example, UK government-funded research
Letters to the Editor
Letters (~300 words) discuss material published
in Science in the previous 3 months or issues of
general interest. They can be submitted through
the Web (www.submit2science.org) or by regular
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receipt, nor are authors generally consulted
before publication. Whether published in full or
in part, letters are subject to editing for clarity
and space.
Published by AAAS
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 321 26 SEPTEMBER 2008 1777
LETTERS
councils typically expect grant recipients to
be appointed at a higher education institute,
with a minimum position of Lecturer, be-
fore applying for a research grant. As a
result, the pressure on freshly minted
Ph.D.’s in academia is, as stated, to follow
the path of postdoctoral research on estab-
lished projects, rather than trying to secure
their own funding.
Clearly, the UK research councils place
strong emphasis on the training of postgradu-
ates, but there appears to be little incentive for
those students to remain within academia in
the hope of pursuing their own lines of
research by obtaining individual postdoctoral
fellowships (1). Such fellowships provide
opportunities for young scientists to “make
their mark” in their respective fields without
being tied to lines of research that they do not
wish to pursue. By awarding more fellow-
ships, funding organizations may retain more
individuals to contribute to the continuity of
scientific enterprise and, in turn, fellows may
find getting that first grant or tenure position
a little bit easier.
ANGELO P. PERNETTA
CEH Wallingford, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Benson
Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, Oxfordshire OX10
8BB, UK. E mail: anpp@ceh.ac.uk
Reference
1. Research Councils UK (www.rcuk.ac.uk).
Destabilizing the
Pyramid Scheme
A. I. LESHNER’S EDITORIAL “JUST GIVE THEM
grants” (16 May, p. 849) suggests yet another
How cancer spreads
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Bidding high!
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well-meaning “fix” for the poor funding sup-
port for advancing research careers of post-
docs and young investigators in the United
States, especially in the biomedical fields.
Setting “funding quotas” by earmarking a per-
centage of new grants, those from the NIH in
particular, to investigators younger than a cer-
tain age probably will not aid a situation that
is, largely, a pyramid scheme.
Pyramid schemes provide considerable
incentives for those at the top [funded princi-
pal investigators (PIs), tenured faculty, and
most medical school faculty] and virtually no
tangible incentive to those at the bottom, who
support the scheme at the laboratory bench
(graduate students, postdocs, and research
associates). Perhaps it is time for some disin-
centives for those at the top. Some sugges-
tions follow.
(i) Any grant proposal that gives salary
support for postdocs must also include
funds for postdoc-only projects (mini-
grants within a grant). (ii) Any PI who pro-
poses to put postdocs on the grant payroll
should have documentation that he or she
has also done a stint as a postdoc. Who bet-
ter knows the value of mentoring than those
who have been mentored? (iii) Postdoc
Published by AAAS
26 SEPTEMBER 2008 VOL 321 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
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LETTERS
training is a disheveled cottage industry.
Establish a central clearinghouse of “post-
doc specialists” akin to “Matching Day” for
medical school graduates seeking advanced
training in limited residency training posi-
tions. (iv) If postdocs are to be a necessary
part of the research enterprise, then PIs, or
their departments or institutions, should pro-
vide some guarantee of financial support
beyond the tenure of a particular grant to
those postdocs who provide credible service
to that grant but who cannot find their own
support elsewhere.
DUAINE R. JACKOLA
8436 Second Avenue South, Bloomington, MN 55420, USA.
E-mail: drjackola@q.com
Biotechnology Innovation
in Africa
AFRICA IS PRESENTLY AT THE PRECIPICE OF A
socioeconomic renaissance. However, dis-
eases such as malaria, AIDS, and hypertension
remain common and important health prob-
lems facing the continent. The recent Policy
Forum by T. J. Tucker and M. W. Makgoba
(“Public-private partnerships and scientific
imperialism,” 23 May, p. 1016) should invoke
further discussions on new approaches for
increasing the effectiveness of global efforts
against neglected African diseases.
In the 1970s, 70% of resource flows from
the United States to the developing world were
from official development assistance and 30%
were private. Today, 85% of resource flows
from the United States to the developing world
are private and 15% are public. These changes
in resource flows reflect the emergence of the
private for-profit sector and the nongovern-
mental sector as crucial participants in the
development process (1). They have formed
many new alliances and programs in addition
to government aid. Unfortunately, when funds
for these programs run out, the progress often
stagnates or even reverses. Few public and pri-
vate donor programs exist to support more sus-
tainable programs, such as small indigenous
African bioscience businesses that are evolving
biotechnological innovations specifically rele-
vant to the region.
Developing local biotechnology capacity is
essential for ensuring availability and access of
health care products in a sustainable manner.
Several governments in sub-Saharan Africa
(such as Nigeria and South Africa) recognize
this and have increasing public sector support
for biotechnology innovation and entre-
preneurship to encourage small indigenous
biotechnology companies that are working to
translate relevant research discoveries to
usable products. National and regional public
policies and priorities are encouraging the
local development and manufacture of essen-
tial rapid diagnostics and genuine medicines
that are critical to health care needs of the peo-
ple, as a way of making these products and
services more readily accessible to more peo-
ple. In response, an increasing number of
entrepreneurial scientists of African descent
(led by Africans in The Diaspora) are establish-
ing local, small, socially responsible biotech-
nology enterprises. These efforts are inspired
primarily by necessity and a focus on translat-
ing relevant discoveries to products and serv-
ices that address regionally prevalent diseases.
A model that has not gained broad accept-
ability among private donors is direct support
in the form of pass-through grants to small
indigenous for-profit bioscience businesses.
Robert Grant had proposed a similar context
in his “Research in situ” model (2, 3). By work-
ing with indigenous for-profit bioscience
companies, multilateral funding organiza-
tions and agencies can potentially deliver
more sustainable change. This is especially
crucial because many developed nations
have modeled small businesses as the core
of their biotechnology development stra-
tegy, strengthened through government and
investor-backed small business grants and
loan programs. Streamlined donor support to
indigenous small bioscience businesses can
enable the development of specific new prod-
ucts and services consistent with the socio-
economic needs of the continent. Additionally,
through expanding collaborations with uni-
versities and institutes, the indigenous bio-
technology firms are evolving to create open
avenues of knowledge sharing to create these
products in a sustainable manner. This can
potentially drive the development of biotech-
nology on the continent.
EDDY C. AGBO,1*SIMON AGWALE,2CAMELLUS O.
EZEUGWU,3BOITUMELO SEMETE,4HULDA SWAI,4
ANTHONY IKEME,5RICHARD I. SOMIARI6
1Fyodor Biotechnologies, 26 Ogui Road, Enugu, Nigeria,
and 3607 Frankford Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21214, USA.
2Innovative Biotech Ltd., 1 Abdu Abubakar Street, GRA, Post
Office Box 30, Keffi, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. 3The Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of
Medicine (JH Cardiovascular Group Inc.), Baltimore, MD
21201, USA. 4Council for Industrial Scientific Research
(CSIR)—Polymer and Bioceramics, Post Office Box 395,
Pretoria, South Africa. 5Clintriad Pharma Services, Exton, PA
19341, USA. 6ITSI-Biosciences, Johnstown, PA 15904, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
eddy.agbo@fyodorbio.com
References
1. USAID Global Partnerships
(www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_partnerships/gda).
2. R. M. Grant, Nat. Methods 4, 887 (2007).
3. Editorial, Nat. Methods 4, 877 (2007).
CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
Reports: “Alignment uncertainty and genomic analysis” by K. M. Wong et al. (25 January, p. 473). C. Dewey, A. Schwartz,
N. Bray, and L. Pachter kindly directed our attention to an inconsistency in Fig. 1, which shows six different estimated trees
for seven different alignments of the open reading frame (ORF) YPL077C, and the Supporting Online Material containing
the maximum likelihood estimates for the 1502 ORFs that we examined. When equally likely trees are accounted for, max-
imum likelihood yields only four different trees for YPL077C. We intended to illustrate an extreme example in which align-
ment uncertainty produces different estimates of phylogeny, and not to select among equally likely trees to make the dif-
ferences as great as possible. Indeed, there was no reason to do so, because we could have illustrated the point with five
other ORFs, all with one estimated tree for each alignment and resulting in six different trees for the seven alignment treat-
ments (see the Supporting Online Material). Of potentially more importance, however, our results did not account for
equally likely trees, something that occurs
in 1.5% of the phylogenetic analyses.
Figure 1 repeats the analyses performed
in the original Report and accounts for
equally likely trees. As before (Fig. 2A),
we see a significant positive correlation
between alignment distances among
alignment treatments and the distances
between trees estimated from the align-
ments. Accounting for equally likely trees
does not change the relation between
alignment variability and phylogeny esti-
mation we originally discussed.
Fig. 1. Positive correlation between the
Robinson and Foulds [D. Robinson, L.
Foulds, Math. Biosci. 53, 131 (1981)]
measure of topological distance among
trees estimated from different alignment
methods and alignment variability among
alignment treatments (Spearman’s rank
correlation: rs= 0.52, P< 0.0001; note
that the correlation coefficient changes
from rs= 0.53 to rs= 0.52 when equally
likely trees are accounted for).
Published by AAAS