One of my favorite strangers in the whole wide world died this summer, but I just found out about it today. Grace Paley was a friend of mine, a person I loved, who could make me laugh and cry, mad as hell or happy like a little kid. What a way she had with describing everyday life. E. Annie Proulx’s writing reminds me a lot of Paley’s even though Proulx’s characters are full of rural twang these days (it makes me homesick to read Proulx’s stories anymore). Paley wrote of everyday people doing everyday things. She captured the majesty of mundane existence and the complexity of people’s inward selves, their simple joys and the tragedy of what comes to us all, in one way or another, if we live long enough. She taught us to smile anyway.

Grace Paley was a hero of mine. It’s a hard thing when your hero dies. It doesn’t make me feel older, just a bit more alone. I never got to meet Grace. That said, it sure seems like we knew the same people.

Last night, I attended an event sponsored by General Electric’s Healthcare branch. The big guns were here and Joe Hogan, President and CEO of GE Healthcare put on a great show of the latest in imaging technology and a panel discussed how it can be used to protect today’s Olympic athletes. He highlighted some interesting bits about the upcoming Olympic games in China including that an investment of $40 billion dollars is being made by the Chinese government to support the games; an amount that dwarfs other sums spent for past games. This is where is started to get interesting for me.

Two panelists, Margie Hunt, Head Trainer for the US Olympic Committee and Dr. Jack Taunton, Chief Medical Officer for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games each made digs about environmental quality in China. This was particularly noteworthy for me as each of these two people are charged with protecting the health of athletes, not to mention every other person attending the games in Taunton’s case. The most poignant was a comment made by Taunton in reference to a slide Joe Hogan from GE had shown in his presentation about the games in China (GE is a huge investor). Now remember, the slides that folks usually show at such an event are meant to impress, but the air quality in the city shot Hogan used looked worse than LA. It was absolutely abysmal. This got me thinking…

Perhaps for the games in China, we can introduce a fourth medal made of lead. It can be presented to the competitors or spectators who suffer the greatest exposure to toxic levels of environmental contaminants while playing with toys, drinking apple juice, or using toothpaste while attending the Olympic games in China. I think it’s an idea whose time has come.

Now that I’m on Facebook (and since my lab mate Jason saw me signing up for it) I have become aware that I am… uh… older than most people on it. Er, older than everyone on it. Jason gave me good natured (i.e. ruthless) ribbing about my motivations for being on Facebook and told me to not write to any of his nieces (thanks man… you’re a real pal).

So, now I have the stupid account (and a few people have added me as “friends”, which is nice), but I’m paranoid to use it. I’ve read here and there about awkward moments that come from supervisors or managers joining such online networking sites only to find photos of employees or subordinates wearing a lampshade on their heads or doing body shots after a monster truck rally. I’m trying to avoid any discomfort that might come from former students knowing that I am part of the website by simply not looking at anyone’s posted materials. I’ll just let them come to me if they need anything and now they know where to find me.

That said, why should I even have the account if I’m not going to use it? It all seems a bit silly, especially the sometimes conflicting notions of privacy and access on the net (or interweb as people “my age” are supposed to say). It’s like an invitation-only yard sale or something. Whatever… for now, I’m on Facebook and until I decide to bail completely from using it, why don’t you kids do me a favor and lower the volume on that crap you call music? It’s giving me a headache…

Thus, it was an absolute delight to be recognized by Her Excellency M. Jodi Rell, Governor of Connecticut, via a generous and touching commendation that included having Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 named as ”Dr. Willy Lensch Day” in the State of Connecticut. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had my own day before. I couldn’t quite figure out what I should do with it. I spoke to an authority on holidays (my daughter Annie) and we decided that on “Dr. Willy Lensch Day” all children should put out their shoes before going to bed so that they could be filled with candy by a giant elf. Oh, and free pony rides for everyone… and free coffee… with those nice flavored creamers.

This brings up the following questions:

What would YOUR own holiday be?
How would it be celebrated?
What special traditions would it involve?

This ought to be good…

Every year for I forget how long I’ve invited friends and colleagues (i.e. I seem to have no friends who aren’t colleagues) to predict the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. I’ll be danged but last year someone actually hit it spot on (congrats to you Frau Dr. Schmitt ... oh… and to Drs. Fire and Mello too I guess).

Who will it be this year? Every year I enter Mario Capecchi, Oliver Smithies, and Martin Evans (go lads, GO!!). I do hope they are reading this in Stockholm. HELLO??? I have a feeling that this year belongs to James Till and Ernest McCulloch . We shall see (I’m going to enter twice).

You there. Yes, YOU. Whom do you think will be meeting King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden this year? What is the name (or names) and for what will they be recognized? This is your chance for glory. Use it wisely.

I do get feedback once in a while, but what I have found in my completely unscientific analysis of the process, is that people are less likely to comment on a serious blog than one that is trivial. Here’s what I mean… I did a little experiment here on Nature Network Boston. I posted a blog called The New Valley of Death more than one and a half months ago. It is a serious posting that describes the difficulties stemming from starting one’s independent career on private research grants as opposed to federal funding. It has not been commented upon and I have no way to know if anyone has ever read it.

This is in contrast to a “fun” posting that I made only two days ago, What’s Your Starbucks Name which has already received five comments (thank you).

What does this mean, if anything, to what “science blogs” are doing in the world? I know that it is completely incorrect for me to assume that my own experiences as a blogger reflect the state-of-affairs in the wider science blogosphere. There are some very successful science blogs out there and it is entirely possible that mine is simply not up to snuff. I’m not complaining. I write because I enjoy it. That said, it seems a worthwhile question to ask if there is there something to the hypothesis that in blogs, as well as life in general, we want candy instead of broccoli? Hmmm? Please feel free to comment… or not.

My Starbucks friends “Alice” and “Mike” are not named anything close to that in reality. I’ve been trying to come up with a good alias for another friend of mine (I think that “Una” is a nice substitute). I wonder why we do this. Maybe most Starbucks names are the result of having given names that other people always spell wrong (sorry Aloysius). Maybe it’s part of the desire for anonymity within the city. I do not know. Whatever the case, what our Starbucks names are and how we choose them are interesting. What’s your story javahead?

-Thor (non-fat grande almond latte please)

At the NNB pub night tonight I spoke to a new faculty member from a Boston area academic research institution. He told me an unfortunately now familiar tale of how he is trying to do his research using small foundation grants because he can’t get a big one from the NIH. Small private grants are great but they don’t exactly make you a hero in the department. This is because while they might pay for quite a few tips and tubes, they almost never offer a reasonable overhead or indirect cost recovery rate.

For every dollar an investigator wins in direct NIH funding, the institution gets a certain amount on top of that, say 50 cents or so. Each institution negotiates their own rate with the federal government and these rates can vary between institutions due to intrinsic differences like real estate values, support salaries based on cost of living, and things like that. With private grants that do not offer the same indirect recovery rate as the NIH (most offer nothing or 5-10% at best), you might be paying for all your own reagents but you are not paying your share for the bench space you have, the light shining down on it, or the salary of who sweeps the floor around it relative to someone with the same amount of grant support from the NIH. Dig? Here’s where the Valley of Death comes in…

We’ve all heard the buzz about how hard it is to get a first, independent grant like an RO1. The chances are dismal, but just HOW BAD is it? The NIH tells us that the average age for a new investigator to receive a first RO1 has risen “to 42 (years of age) for PhD degree holders and 44 for MD and MD/PhD degree holders”. As my new friend told me, if you get hired on as an Assistant Professor, and get a three year startup package, based on the ages of most new faculty at hiring that money is going to be long gone by the time they have a chance to get independent funding. This is the new Valley of Death in academia and it’s wide and dry. If anything like its cousin in biotech and pharma, it’s going to be the stopping point for a lot of science.

Anyway, I am a person with all sorts of lists rattling around in my head. Favorite books, favorite songs, favorite beers (Shiner Bock = #1 if you are keeping track). I also have a long list of heroes, mostly scientists, authors, and few guitar pickers thrown in for good measure. Am I too old to have heroes? I hope not. I wish to never be so old as to not need a hero or two. Beyond the obvious ones (Darwin, Mendel, Einstein, Johnny Cash) there are folks like Thomas Kuhn, Marie Curie, Dody Orendurf, E.O. Wilson, and Dmitri Mendeleev… I have so many. They’ve taught me just about everything I know (or rather, think I know).

Do you have a hero? Who is it and why?

Some weeks ago, Connecticut handed out nearly 20 million dollars in its first round of funding and the StemCONN meeting was a showcase of that accomplishment. The first day was dedicated more to policy than science and focus groups worked on issues such as interstate collaborations, ESCRO committees, and commercialization. Day two was all about science and the small meeting in Hartford boasted an incredible roster of big guns including Rudy Jaenisch, Diane Krause, Haifan Lin, George Daley, David Rowe, Miodrag Stojkovic, Laura Grabel, Ian Wilmut, and others. I’d like to shift the focus here just a bit to take a close look at one aspect of state funded initiatives…

A difficult situation is created nationally when states move to fill the void left when the federal government fails to take a seat at the table. For me, one of the most important gatherings at StemCONN was dedicated to exploring how states might best work together to develop uniform policy around stem cell research. This would be a key ingredient to interstate collaborations being able to move the field forward. As it stands now, a difficult patchwork of regulations is developing from state to state. Surely, there must be a better way… and there is.

The best route would be for the federal government to recognize the importance of opening up funding for human embryonic stem cell research. If ANY scientist could apply for an NIH grant to study ANY human embryonic stem cell line that was derived under standard practices of informed consent, then an incredible leveling would occur nationwide and the science would leap forward as more labs entered the field. As it stands now, scientists are left to wonder what fallout may come from collaborating with colleagues in less permissive states, or those that outright forbid certain types of research. I recently co-authored a piece in Drug Discovery Today that speaks to some of these issues. I’d enjoy discussing the matter here.

What do you think should happen next? Is it good enough that individual states either promote or shut down certain areas of research? Or should the feds step up to the plate and politically legitimize the field by allowing us to compete for grants like everyone else, even if the cells of interest were derived after August of 2001?

I’ll tell you my choice in advance: open up federal funding and at the same time keep the cashier’s window flowing on state funding. If the feds brought all human stem cell research into NIH eligibility, states would still stand to reap enormous benefits from continued companion funding (public health, prestige, academics, IP…). Science is one of those areas where money equals work. The more you work, you more you learn and that’s what it’s about.

Maybe it’s brilliant. After all, they may share some common goals. Each wants people to eat lots of tiny, sugar-coated blobs. The chemistry of what’s inside the blobs differs (hopefully), but I feel that a certain confluence between pharmaceuticals and candy has come about in recent years, at least as far as marketing strategy goes. Ads for both show happy people, with better lives, enjoying the human experience as a direct result of consuming the featured product. We live in a society where many seem to think that a pill likely exists for every complaint, that somehow, every disease or injury could be immediately healed if only people weren’t so miserly in handing out the cures, that money is all you need. Money means access and somewhere, the wealthy can shop for treatments like a kid in a candy store. This attitude makes explaining the complexities, timeframes, and intent of conducting research a difficult task. Anyhow, I digress from my theme.

I would certainly not be the first person to have observed the calming, anti-psychotic effect that chocolate has on certain people (i.e. “If you had eaten that last brownie, I would have killed you…”). At any rate, it is my hope that the union of real candy and street candy will at least yield improvements in both the sugar coating present on the less tasty drugs not to mention a better experience overall for those research subjects assigned to the placebo category. Call me…

Problem is, Lanza’s group cannot know in advance which blastomere in the embryo is capable of making a cell line. In fact, their data suggests that maybe only ONE of them can, and with a low sucess rate at that. How can we know in advance which one that is? Maybe someday we will. That day is not today. Maybe each blastomere has a low probability of being able to make an ES cell line. If that’s the case, the technique also has a long way to go in order to prove itself as it is most likely that any given blastomere will NOT be able to make a cell line. Here, the embryo is exposed to the risk of damage during the biopsy with only a very low probability for a successful ES cell derivation (in this paper, 2/35 or less than 6%). Thus, while this paper is certainly interesting, it does not appear to be all that it is touted to be. Far from it in fact. It appears to be a valid statement based on the data that single human blastomeres can be used to create embryonic stem cell lines. However, did they publish the experiment that the press is widely reporting, the experiment where ONE AND ONLY ONE blastomere was removed, a cell line made, and a residual embryo left for possible implantation? No. Not in my reading of the paper.

The bill is gathering support from a wide array of individuals outside of congress, including Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell who just today, sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Harry Reid urging ”...the U.S. Senate to join the House of Representatives in supporting the expansion of federal funding for stem cell research, the field of science that may lead to cures for cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening illnesses.” Well done Governor Rell.

If the bill passes the Senate, it is said that President Bush will most likely issue the first veto of his presidency. Stay tuned…

Some obvious (and much welcomed) bits relate to improving diversity, modernizing undergraduate education to include more first-hand research, and to removing barriers within and between graduate programs in order to allow students to choose from a much wider array of laboratories for their thesis work. Well done.

What I also find notable are the comments on creating ways to encourage more cross-disciplinary research, including smoothing out the way things work between the Harvard affiliated teaching hospitals. This is suggested to come together in a few different ways including establishing a new oversight committee to promote collaborative projects between programs, departments, and schools (the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee or HUSEC). At first glance, suggesting that the creation of more bureaucracy could help in some way seems way off base. However, the power in this punch comes from the suggestion that control of 75 FTE’s (full-time efforts or jobs) as well as some space would belong to the HUSEC. The proposed Allston campus appears to play pretty heavily in these plans as well and is described in a recommendation all its own.

Harvard is taking commentary on the recommendations through the summer and fall with plans to finalize the report by the end of 2006.

Now, I must say that I find taking photos of posters to be poor form indeed. Though “public”, the data on posters is largely unpublished. To me, there seems to be a line between writing down one’s own impressions of a poster, and actually capturing figures and data via photography. What do you think? It is ok to take photos of posters at meeting? If not, why?

The pocket protector was once an icon indicating a technical education, perhaps THE icon. They were tiny vinyl billboards not only proclaiming to the world that you knew important things but also which brand of reagents you preferred (my own vintage specimen says “STP”, my dad was a mechanic).

The pocket protector is now something like the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, rarely seen in the wild, never caught on film. I was left to wonder if equivalent scientific icons exist today. I simply cannot think of what the modern equivalent would be. Maybe it’s ok that we have weaned ourselves from the pocket-protector. I have a subtle feeling however, that its extinction is unfortunate. I’ll tell you why.

I worry that we are losing our public identity as scientists. This is particularly troubling when living in a time where science has not only lost some of its luster but also its credibility. Declining matriculation rates in science education, scandals, and various anti-science positions within our government have us in a tough spot. Compounding this is a public perception of scientists as either maniacal personalities working towards the denigration of humanity (ala Dr. Frankenstein) or as bumbling idiots (ala Ross on “Friends”). It’s a crazy idea, but maybe bringing back the pocket-protector could actually help scientists to regain some of their cachet.

Absent such badges of membership, the public is unaware that scientists walk among them. Without knowing that the lady holding a Gucci bag on the platform next to you is a Ph.D. working on tyrosine kinase signaling, the fact is missed that not only are scientists regular people but they often have good taste. Though the pocket-protector would no doubt diminish one’s impression of the latter, it might actually do something to reinforce the former.

One of the central issues I try to address in public speaking is that scientists are people. In some debates, individuals opposing science speak of “scientists” as though they were distant things. Things have no spirit, no compassion and thus may be objects to fear, especially where powerful technologies are involved. By stepping up to the microphone and saying “this is who I am and this is what I do”, scientists move closer to regaining trust. True, it is a small step, but an important one nevertheless. Maybe a few more pocket-protectors could do the same thing.

My own pocket-protector may be seen by clicking here .

Hey, if anyone on the Nobel Committee is reading this, what happened with Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty ? Hello?!!