What is required for successful interdisciplinary working?

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Athene Donald

Yesterday I cycled over to the Addenbrookes Site for a meeting with Maria Spillantini of the Brain Repair Unit. She is particularly interested in Parkinson’s Disease, and we were discussing the nature of protein aggregation in Lewy Bodies – abnormal filamentous deposits. In disease, these are located in some nerve cells which are believed to degenerate as a result. Alpha-synuclein is the major component of the Lewy Bodies and the filaments do not stain with Congo Red, unlike the typical amyloid fibrils of diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease.  To what extent my physicist’s approach to such protein aggregation may be helpful in unraveling the make-up of the Lewy Bodies is what we were discussing: they have complex morphologies, with a clear central region which stains differently (and is clearly visible in transmission electron micrographs too) from the outer regions, but a detailed understanding of what these different regions are or why they form is lacking.  It was a fascinating discussion and we explored possible ways to take the work further.

Once back in my office I was trying to type up my notes when I realized how many basic facts about the deposits, their location and what is known about the relevant pathways I had neglected to ask.   These weren’t research-type questions; they were probably ‘Parkinson’s Disease 101’ type questions, but my education had not included exposure to that material. And this exemplifies a well-known problem in trying to tackle interdisciplinary research. Sometimes it is jargon or nomenclature one lacks knowledge of, sometimes as in this case it is simply basic facts, but there is always a large amount of groundwork to do for truly interdisciplinary collaborations to take off.  It takes time and effort to forge good collaborations and to learn sufficient background to interpret what the other party is saying.

Some years ago I attended a meeting at the Royal Society discussing how best to prepare for interdisciplinary working. The question was asked was it preferable to be educated in a specialist subject (physics, zoology etc), or should one be educated at undergraduate level in a little bit of all the subjects, so that one was ‘interdisciplinary’, or perhaps better ‘multidisciplinary’ from the start of one’s  higher education? The consensus then, and I would still agree with it, was that it was better to be thoroughly and rigorously trained in a single subject, to become an expert in it, and then to learn what one needs to interact with other disciplines as required later – by which time you know what topics you need to cover. From my own past work on food, which exposed me to food scientists and their degree courses, I think it is clear that for many of them did not have the tools to address some fundamental questions because they were necessarily in the jack-of-all trades mould. This approach is very useful for some situations, and may certainly prepare food science graduates for work in their industry, but it does not necessarily facilitate tackling novel research.

Posted in Biological Physics, Interdisciplinary Science | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Bad – and maybe some Good – Science

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Athene Donald

This week’s THE has an article about mainstream science reporting (Trial by Error) and the quality, or lack thereof, has been the subject of many recent discussions on many blogs and in the mainstream press.  It also ties into issues about Scientific Literacy , in other words what we can expect the average member of the public to understand.  However the issue about science reporting is slightly different from simple literacy, in that the former is both about what the journalist is able to grasp (and therefore to report accurately), and about what the drivers for their reporting may be; these drivers are not solely about accuracy but rather forcibly tied into selling newspapers.  For some newspapers the two may mesh (as Mark Henderson of the Times says in the THE article, “There are some newspapers that are very concerned about getting things right as far as possible while still presenting accessible reporting for a general audience – which is entirely possible to do – and there are other media outlets that may take a different approach as to how they attempt to sell themselves.” ), but not for all. The Times is a much more responsible organisation on this front than some other newspapers one could name, for which the two drivers may be poles apart.

I am a late convert to the idea that scientists cannot simply avoid talking to the media because they are worried their science may be misrepresented (see my recent comments on Hilary Sutcliffe’s blog), having previously been personally burnt by bad experiences. But I now realise that this isn’t a good enough excuse not to try to engage.  And I also accept the arguments in the THE article that the unremittingly negative tone of Ben Goldacre’s writing is by now backfiring, however instructive his deconstruction of much of the Bad Science he reports may be.  However, one of the challenges is to find ways of celebrating good science in ways that aren’t immediately spun as the sort of hype that we see so often as ‘scientists find X cures cancer ‘.  Perhaps my recent experiences have been fortunate in that I am now interviewed as a female scientist, not a scientist. This seems to allow me to talk about the broader context of  my science , and to be allowed to specify I am doing underpinning science rather than discovering the Answer to Everything.  Or maybe I really learnt something from media training!  Nevertheless it has given me an opportunity to explain why I enjoy science as well as why the science I do may be useful.  Opportunities  to demonstrate that scientists are people, and not dangerous nerds who can’t be trusted , is to be seized in my view.

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Lawson, Willetts and Equality

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Athene Donald

Dearie me, it really is the silly season. Dominic Lawson, in today’s Independent, writes a perfectly sane piece about the fact that if more girls go to university than in the past, then necessarily there are fewer places for boys – of whatever social class – and so can have the effect of reducing social mobility. Bizarrely, though, the piece’s html tag is http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-feminism-is-the-obstacle-to-equality-2060177.html which is enough to get the blood flowing. He doesn’t say that at all, though, and sometimes the tag appears much more reasonably as http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-boys-learn-from-your-sisters-2060177.html , corresponding to the actual headline in the newspaper.  I think someone in the Independent must have worked out that actually the piece wasn’t about ‘feminism as the obstacle to equality’ after all and tried to change the tag. Unfortunately the original tag is now being circulated – eg by the UKRC in its daily update – with the headline Dominic Lawson: Feminism is the obstacle to equality .

Lawson does indeed ask equality for whom, citing Willett’s much trumpeted book The Pinch which has a chapter on “Feminism has trumped egalitarianism”.  Lawson neatly unpicks Willets’ apparent view that social mobility is equivalent to equality, whereas treating men and women equally would not be (I haven’t yet read the book, I am merely reflecting Lawson’s comments here).  But what are the implications for all the girls entering HE if Willetts really does believe this version of equality, rather than being sloppy in his writing?

Posted in Education, Equality | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Proteins turn up in many guises

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Athene Donald

I have just come back from a brief trip to the Netherlands to discuss a project on protein aggregation at high concentrations with collaborators from NIZO (a Dutch food research organisation) and Eindhoven University.  This project – funded by a Dutch Government source – ties in with my current work on protein aggregation of more medically relevant proteins, but is firmly directed at high protein content foods, where the aggregation can lead to a dry and unpalatable texture.  My collaborators are two theoretical soft matter physicists and a polymer chemist who has spent the last 20 years working on food systems. And my own original entry into protein aggregation came via that route of foods, although most of my work is now a long way away from foodstuffs.

I think this exemplifies both the fun and the challenge of working in physics at the interface with biology. Within the UK there are rather few physicists working on food; and I think many mainstream physicists would still regard it as a rather odd activity. Physicists by and large  may now accept biological physics – e.g. amyloid fibril formation – as a more reasonable research topic.  And yet, the two areas in this case are essentially one and the same thing.  The physics of the project I describe above could equally well apply to a study of interactions between proteins in the crowded environment of a cell; the cell contents are not just dilute dispersions of proteins as one might naively assume. but the proteins jostle one other because of their high concentration. Yet within the cell the proteins do their business effectively and, under normal circumstances, do not aggregate, unlike the unpalatable foods mentioned above. What seems to matter, in the foods, is how the high densities change the balance of intra- and inter-molecular bonding and the interaction with the water molecules. Other small solute molecules (e.g. salts) may also have a role to play in shifting the balance.  There is much to understand at a basic level, which may in time lead to practical indicators for the food industry.

Incidentally, when I fly into the Netherlands, particularly at Rotterdam, less so at Schipol, I am always struck by the number both of wind turbines and also greenhouses. The country’s  green credentials seem a bit confused and, as David Mackay makes plain in his fascinating book, most of the country would need to be covered by wind farms in order to raise a significant proportion of their energy consumption  (though offshore installations are being built, and are significantly more productive).

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Prizes for Women (only)?

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Athene Donald

 

Do women need prizes simply because they are women and can’t compete with men for prizes more generally? AS Byatt  clearly feels that women-only prizes are demeaning and sexist according to a recent article in the Guardian following her appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  As the winner of a women-only prize in science, and therefore having thought a lot about this topic, I would like to offer some thoughts in response.

One doesn’t know how accurately she is quoted, but apparently AS Byatt said ‘The Orange Prize assumes there is a feminine subject matter – which I don’t believe in. It’s honourable to believe that – there are fine critics and writers who do – but I don’t.’ But is the Orange Prize really given for writing about feminine subjects, or is it given simply to ‘celebrate[s] excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world’ as its web site says? There is a difference, and I think it is a crucial one.

This was very neatly expressed, within the scientific context, by one of my fellow L’Oreal laureates, Eugenia Kumacheva as she accepted her prize. She said that there is no such thing as female science, only science done by women.  Exactly.

However, does that mean there shouldn’t be prizes for women? I was asked this question by Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs so my reply is a matter of record. I believe that if such prizes exist, they give a wonderful platform to celebrate the fact that women do do science and do it well. Since I – and clearly AS Byatt too, who won the Booker Prize in 1990 and has just been awarded a James Tait Black Memorial Prize – am perfectly capable of winning prizes in open competition, I do not feel I won the L’Oreal award as a consolation prize when I was too incompetent to win anything else since I am a mere woman.  If I had thought otherwise my reaction would have been entirely different.  So, the reason for woman-only prizes is not a dumbed down version of a proper prize; on the contrary it serves some completely other purpose, that of celebration. More on this later.

 

AS Byatt made some further points when she went on to say that she thought women who write intellectually demanding novels are perceived by critics as strange and unnatural, ‘like a dog standing on its hind legs’.   In other words she thinks critics are often sexist, a very different point from the Orange prize being sexist in itself. I cannot comment on literary critics’ vagaries, and I will save my thoughts on whether there is sexism in science for a later post (maybe).   But I think it is unfortunate if the presence of sexism in the community of literary (or scientific) peers is mixed up with ideas of sexism of the prize itself, thereby devaluing it.

So why do I think that the L’Oreal/UNESCO For Women in Science awards (at all their different levels: national and international fellowships for early career researchers, and the continent-wide Laureates) are a worthwhile enterprise and should not be marked down as sexist? Now, more than a year on, I probably have a much clearer idea of the impact the prize has had on my career. But first let me quote some previous winners’ comments:

  • “This award can serve to inspire more women to overcome obstacles and pursue their dreams of a career in science” (Nancy Kip, China 2004 Laureate)
  • “This award was mixed with the sense that the patients played a prominent role, because lepros is a disease that is still stigmatized. Patients perhaps go attention again because of this recognition of me as an individual” (Indira Nath, India 2002 Laureate).
  • “This public recognition of scientific research is a special event that has challenged me to be an advocate for young women wishing to pursue a scientific career” (Joanne Chory, USA, 2000 Laureate).

So, as these comments indicate, the prize is about far more than the money that comes with it (useful though that is) and the pleasures of a week in Paris at someone else’s expense. It is about the visibility it proffers, and the interest others show in it, so that one can do more as a role model for young women, and as an advocate for science itself.  I mentioned Desert Island Discs, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a fool of oneself to a very large audience (though like my Cambridge colleague Mary Beard I only have a rather dim memory of what I actually said). But what struck me most were the delightful emails I got as a result of the programme from complete strangers saying positive things such as how my words had touched a chord, given them a chance to talk to their daughter about a career in science or made them reconsider their own career choices. This was outreach in a way I had never anticipated, but which certainly makes its way into my Pathways to Impact statements for the Research Councils.  There have been many similar, if smaller scale opportunities to stand up and be counted as a scientist who happens to be female, but clearly it has led to my profile becoming sufficient that I get random emails from schoolchildren seeking advice: about life as a scientist (and even to be their friend on Facebook, though these I decline), career choices and optimum A level combinations; and I get a fair number of invitations to talk to schools.  These are events of a sort I am sure would not have come my way without the media exposure I got last year, and I am pleased to be able build on this platform to broaden people’s appreciation of science, scientists and the scientific way of life.

Now L’Oreal, no doubt like Orange, have a wonderful PR machine, so that they make sure the initial prize announcement makes its way into the correct media channels. But, due to that impetus I feel the knock-on effects have been entirely helpful for the work I do around gender in science. The media attention for getting a ‘standard’ prize such as the recent IOP Faraday Medal is essentially zero. So, rather than seeing this woman-only prize as sexist,  I pay tribute to the innovation that the For Women in Science award was and is, and the opportunity it has offered me to further my own goals in supporting young women wanting to enter the sciences. Its underlying premise ‘The world needs science and science needs women’ is an important one. Consequently, I do not agree with AS Byatt’s take on things, however much, in a purely literal sense, these prizes are indeed sexist by being closed to men.

 

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