A discussion initiated by Katherine Haxton prompted me to check out ResearchBlogging.org and there I discovered the Virology Blog written by Vincent Racaniello. Vincent is a poliovirus researcher at Columbia University; I’d met him a few times while working on the same virus in Boston and it was nice to get back in touch.
Racaniello definitely qualifies as a senior blogger, being a Professor of Microbiology and a very eminent virologist. Astonishingly he has been running his virology blog since 2004. He even has a podcast! Shame on me for not noticing sooner.
On my first perusal I came across a fascinating post on letters Vincent had received from Albert Sabin, the pioneering developer of the oral poliovirus vaccine, a breakthrough that has spared hundreds of thousands the paralysing misery of poliomyelitis. Sabin was arguably a very great scientist, but from what I’ve read he could be, um, difficult. He had little regard for Jonas Salk, a “kitchen chemist” according to Sabin, who developed the rival killed polio vaccine. In fact there was little love lost between the two scientists and their spats have become the stuff of legend.
Racaniello corresponded with Sabin in the ’80s and ’90s following his own breakthrough, the generation of an infectious clone of poliovirus. Some of the letters are a bit technical but they do give a real flavour of a great but acerbic man. One from 1991, composed in the 85 year old Sabin’s elegant longhand, gives a typical taste. He begins charmingly, disarmingly:
First of all, many thanks for your kind letter… (the sweet words were good medicine for an old man’s ego)…
But it is soon apparent that the old man’s ego has not been sufficiently assuaged. Quick as a flash he whips out his machete and starts hacking mercilessly:
It seems to me, that based on the statements in your recent publications, you have either read none of my publications having a bearing on the multiple quantitative phenotypic expressions of individual poliovirus particles… or, if you did, you didn’t learn anything from them…
The emphases reflect Sabin’s angry underlining—I can’t help thinking that he’d have made a wonderfully lively, if vitriolic, blogger! He continues to swipe and stab for another four closely scribed pages but—fortunately—Vincent was well able to defend himself. Or at least the wounds seemed to have healed! Check it out for yourself, if you dare.
Virologists are a nasty bunch, to be crossed at one’s peril. At least, that’s how it always seemed to me when I was one!
Ouch – put that knife down!
I’ve met some very nice virologists (Vincent, for one). I don’t think there’s anything particular about the discipline of virology that draws out the darker side of human nature. Isaac Newton, I’m given to understand, was a bit of a git…
Speaking as a virologist – a herpesvirologist, to be precise – I can say that there is some truth to the characterization. Herpesvirologists are known to eat their young. A quite common practice, really, in which you prevent your post-docs from becoming competition.
That aside, so cool to know that Vincent Racaniello has a blog! I interviewed with him when I was looking for grad schools. I never knew he was so web-progressive. It would be great to find out what convinced him to start blogging… And then apply that to web-resistant researchers.
Dear oh dear, virologists are getting a bad press. I don’t think the attitudes and problems you mention are specific to virology. I have heard tell of some awful crystallographers…
And yes, Vincent is very much at the cutting edge, Web2.0-wise (can’t believe I just wrote that). Not only does he have a blog and a podcast, but yesterday, he started a wiki. There’s an opening for someone to write the entry on herpesviruses…