Translating words into action—trials of a male feminist

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Steve Caplan

I have been sitting on the sidelines watching, reading and cheering (no, not cheerleading—let’s not get into that debate…) as I follow the blogs, commentaries, lectures and personal examples of wonderful women in science who are leaders of the movement towards equal representation, opportunity and equality. I am honored to be among several who blog regularly here at this site, in particular the superb blogs of Jenny Rohn (Mind the Gap) and Athene Donald (Athene Donald’s blog), and of course many others.

I agree 100% with everything being said. My spouse unconditionally agrees that I am a certified feminist. So now what? How can I translate this into action?

Please, this is a serious question, and I invite input on the matter. The gap between “declaration” and “doing” is beginning to bother me.

Until now I was fighting for my own career, my own survival. Now that I have a foothold (also known as tenure), I feel compelled to do more for science, women in science and minorities in science (a matter which I believe is separate and I will come to shortly).

I have always been puzzled by women who choose not to work and stay home to raise children. Of course I ‘accept’ this as a woman’s right, or a couple’s right to decide how to manage their own lives. But from my perspective, a person is defined by their work. This does not mean that people who work in tasks outside science are inferior. No, my point is that I hold very high respect for someone who takes her/his job seriously and is good or efficient at it. Believe me, I am full of respect for the checkout person at the supermarket who rapidly checks me out. I am in awe of the clerk at the bank who quickly processes my request, and the plumber who quickly diagnoses and fixes the leak in my toilet. It is not an elitist respect, but simple respect for a job well done. And I am certain that each and every one of these workers goes home at the end of the day, proud of their mastery at work.

Women who choose to stay home puzzle me—regardless of whether their families have enough money to afford this practice. The reason is that to me, staying home symbolizes a person’s giving up on her/his own career in favor of the next generation. Well it’s important to ensure survival of the next generation, but once our children are born, do we give up our own identity to promote theirs?

Throughout my own career I have had strong female role models. My Masters and Ph.D. advisors were both female, and the latter played a particularly strong role in shaping my scientific career. Another tremendous female scientist with whom I had the honor of being affiliated, was Dr. Peggy Wheelock. She was a wonderful person who played a unique and special role in promoting the careers of newly-independent researchers, and women in science. She was the type of person who would pick up the phone, call me, and say: “I was thinking about your career, and it’s time for you to get on a journal editorial board or two. E-mail this editor—if he tells you that I am already on the board and he doesn’t want another person from the same institute—just tell him I said to take me off.” This outstanding example of mentorship—and giving me the feeling that I was not alone in my career battle—is something I will never forget, and will do my best to pass on to my students, both female and male.

Well, back to the main question: what can I do to prove my loyalty to feminist values? As a parent, I promote the idea of gender equality, equal opportunities, and no glass ceilings. I am sure that this message is well understood. In my own laboratory, I never look at gender as a reason for favoring one student or postdoc over another, and I already have 75% females in the lab. So no ‘leveling of the playing field’ is needed at this stage. My graduated students have gone on to postdoctoral positions, and I am doing my best to help an outstanding female student to obtain a well-deserved faculty position. But this is hardly feminism; it is just doing what any mentor should naturally do.

I was recently asked to be Chairperson of a grant review study section. I received a pile of charts explaining the association’s policies and “target ratios” for women reviewers in the study panels. The aim, of course, is 1:1. My own panel currently has an 8:1 male:female ratio, and my first task was to nominate 4 women scientists to fill in the 3-4 slots that are open. So perhaps this was my first ever opportunity to institute some minor change for the better.

So where is the problem? If I have 75% female students who are among the best in the department, and they are succeeding as graduate students and going on to promising careers, how is it that the faculty in my department (as well as the grant review study section) is 90% male? Where are we going wrong?

Before trying to answer and asking for input on this important question, I would like to bring in an additional complex issue—primarily for the purpose of comparing and contrasting the situation. This is the issue of minorities in science.

As it turns out, my grant review group also has targets for reviewers who are ‘minorities’. I use the quotations here because minorities have been qualified into two sections: 1) under-represented minorities, and 2) minorities.

The under-represented minorities are scientists who are African American or ‘black’, of Hispanic, Alaskan, Native American or Polynesian descent. Please forgive me if I’ve inadvertently left any under-represented minorities out of the equation, as I don’t have the forms in front of me.

As an “aside”, I must say that I personally don’t really understand this type of categorization. I would be catalogued as “white”, although my own skin is more of a beige/pink/brown hue. It’s also not clear to me why those of North African descent are considered differently on this artificial scale than those of Hispanic descent—are there more North African scientists? Well, this categorization probably deserves a blog by someone more knowledgeable in evolution and anthropology, so I’ll get back to the point.

The other ‘minorities’ are qualified by those of Asian descent, and it turns out that reviewers of Chinese and Indian descent are not really minorities—at least in science—and some study sections even have a majority of reviewers from these countries.

So for all practical purposes, I propose in this blog to ignore the latter ‘minority’, as they are well represented in science. Now, with regards to all the under-represented minorities—who truly are under-represented—what is the reason for this? Without providing numbers and statistics, I think it is easy to see the reason—there are simply very few graduate students proportionally who belong to the above under-represented minority groups. Probably, this has to do with the fact that there are proportionally low levels of undergraduate students from these groups studying science—and perhaps in university overall.

All of this leads of to the conclusion that, as opposed to the situation with women in science, there is a problem early on somewhere in the education of these minorities. Women, on the other hand, appear to encounter difficulties only much, much later on, in obtaining and/or maintaining faculty positions.

Thus, it would be easy to contrast these two groups of minorities and suggest that lack of access to a good (science) education is the major concern for the under-represented minorities, whereas with women, the central problem comes from lack of career advancement at the postdoctoral level and above. Why?

I am certain that Athene and Jenny’s blogs will shed a lot more light on these issues than I can, with my limited perspective, but I would like to propose that there is an early educational issue that might still need to be rectified in this case as well. It is not the science level or content that is at stake, but rather the lack of sufficient women-in-science models—something that I know is noticed by girls in school at an early age, that may play a part of the attrition of women in science at the higher levels. Obviously the “glass ceilings” set by male scientists is a major reason (among many others, including women ‘sacrificing their careers’ for those of their partners)—but I suggest that even reading about historical experiments performed almost exclusively by males has so permeated scientific culture that it will take a conscious effort by parents and educators to explain and prepare girls and young women to charge forward in science and not look back. I am optimistic that in my lifetime we will see equality and justice.

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If you think science is competitive…

Posted on January 15, 2011 by Steve Caplan

A few years back, when my two children were about eight and five years old, I taught them the rudiments of playing chess. As they showed enthusiasm, I looked about the city and located a chess club. The club is located within a school cafeteria one evening a week from 6-9 pm, and provides a free platform for chess players, along with encouragement, lessons with two outstanding and committed teachers, and a fun atmosphere.

As it is my habit to carry a backpack stuffed with papers everywhere I go (my wife often chides me that I might suddenly pull out a recent paper while at the symphony…), I found it natural to pull out a recent paper and get some reading done while my kids were playing. And then, about six weeks after we had begun our weekly ritual, it happened: someone asked me to play.

I looked around, embarrassed, not wanting to hurt the man’s feelings, and saw that there were indeed an odd number of players, and everyone else was deeply engrossed in their games. Including my own kids. So I said, “Why not?”

And thus I got hooked.

In the beginning, it was fun; I had nothing to lose, being a complete beginner, and I found it was an unbelievable distraction from work—since I probably dream science most nights, I found that playing a tough game of chess was one of the few things that could completely distract me from thoughts of work for a few hours.

I have always been fascinated with chess. Perhaps from reading about some of the chess heroes from days gone by. For example, the amazing Harry Nelson Pillsbury worked 14-hour days inside an automaton called Ajeeb at Coney Island in New York.

The stories have it that he drank whisky from morning until night, and still managed to survive for ten-years playing chess against any comer. In 1900, he finally left his job to cross the Atlantic and play top-level chess against world champions in Europe. He was also known for an unbelievable memory; apparently three university professors once rattled off a list of 30 extremely complex words and Pillsbury repeated them back one-by-one, three minutes later. And then he repeated them in the opposite order. The next day he was able to repeat them again, but only in the proper order.

My heritage also compels me to be struck by the number of Jewish chess players who made it to the top tiers of the game. One fascinating personality was Akiva Rubinstein, who despite never being world champion was widely recognized as the best player of his day. Richard Reti, in his classic “chessography” entitled “Modern Ideas in Chess” (1923) , tells the story of the young Rubinstein who is an ultra-orthodox Jew in Vienna at the turn of the century, busy studying the Torah. One day, he walks into the Viennese cafe where all the renowned chess players meet and play. He challenges the top player to a game and loses. He leaves the cafe and disappears. He doesn’t return for three months, but when he finally comes back he is able to handily beat all the other experienced players and become enthroned as the top chess player.

There were many other world class Jewish chess players, among them a world champion named Emmanuel Lasker. For those readers with any interest in chess, I highly recommend Michael Chabon’s stunning novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union”, which features a dead man under the alias of “Emmanuel Lasker” and has a decidedly ‘chessophilic’ attitude.

But I digress…

I had never played chess before, and of course never studied it. In fact, I didn’t even realize that people actually study chess. I simply thought it was a talent. I knew that there was some strategy, but had no idea how complex it was. I was so naive!

(By the way, the journal Science recently published a highlight of a paper providing evidence that while a certain reasonably high IQ is necessary for chess success, everything else comes from practice: see chess for drudges)

Along with my kids I began to take part in a few weekend tournaments. I became a card-carrying member of the United States Chess Federation. I actually did pretty well. I played and won my first “quad”, a “rated” small-scale tournament played by four players against each other, usually with players of similar levels. But I was playing against other relative beginners and those who hadn’t climbed the rating scale too high.

It turns out that the rating scale is very complex—that a supercomputer is needed to calculate winning or losing rating points—and one can fluctuate up and down considerably from tournament to tournament. Despite these fluctuations, I reached a plateau. Just under 1400 points. For some perspective, a child just beginning to learn to play might have a rating of 300-500 points. A grandmaster is probably going to be 2500 points or higher. The top player who frequents the chess club in Omaha is a “master” with a 2000 rating. 1800 is very strong. 1600 is quite strong. If I’m not mistaken, 1400 is about the border between the so-called D and C ranges.

Well, I wanted to improve. I bought some amazing chess software programs, including one called “Fritz” that actually analyzes games that are entered into it, and makes fun of the user with Robin Williams-like accents and vocal insults. Once I made a move and a heavily accented Russian voice said “Played last in the Russian metal-workers championship in 1935”. I probably should have taken the hint and given up then.

I read books, did exercises. But guess what—so did my opponents. And then I realized—in my line of work, there is no way I am going to be able to study opening, middle games, end games, tactics and strategy enough to really get better. I was suddenly in a unique situation: all my life I had believed that hard work had got me where I am. That I could control and overcome any weaknesses in my intellectual abilities by simple brute force—studying, learning and more studying and learning. And here I was, suddenly faced with a situation where I could not resort to my faithful modus operandi. How frustrating!

As it happens, when I became more heavily involved with the final editing and preparation of my novel for publication, “something had to give”. For me it was the chess. While I do miss the adrenaline of the occasional spar, I have come to the conclusion that science is too competitive for me to have a hobby that is even more competitive. Perhaps when I retire…

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PTSD: Post-treadmill Stress Disorder

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Steve Caplan

Years ago when I was an ambitious young Ph.D., and I had more hair, fewer wrinkles, and no children to poke fun at me—I worked hard. I mean physically hard. Much of my research revolved around the necessity of putting together multiple large protein gel apparatuses, and separating large amounts of protein lysates in two-dimensions—first by their reduction status (if they had, or didn’t have disulfide bonds), and then by molecular weight.

Well all this explanation is to set the tone for the actual amount of physical work that I carried out in order to run and analyze up to 30 of these protein ‘gels’ a week. Lots of preparing reagents, toting around heavy containers filled with buffers for use in the protein separations. In short—some physical exercise. Moreover, I had no computer, e-mail, or internet. I only had access to these luxuries on a departmental computer unit occasionally (and more frequently as I neared my graduation in 1998). Much less temptation to sit down—unless reading a journal or actually writing.

As a postdoctoral fellow at NIH, I had my own computer. Reagents were often easier (and even less expensive, sometimes) to purchase. Nonetheless, I worked long hours at the bench and still managed to stay somewhat in shape.

Seven years ago I set up my own lab. I worked hard in the beginning, unpacking boxes and setting up incubators. A year or two later, I found myself mostly parked behind my desk, staring for hours at my computer screen. In other words a “desk potato”.

After gaining a few pounds, I could see where this was heading, so I started to exercise. Due to some old knee trouble that I’m plagued with, I didn’t have many options, and have ended up with a regimen that consists mostly of walking quickly on the treadmill. In trying to keep up with my slowing metabolism, I’ve been increasing my treadmill time on average to about 40 minutes every morning. And I’m extremely proud of myself—neither rain nor snow nor trivial viral illness knocks me off my routine. I drop my daughter off at school and head to the gym every morning before work.

It’s interesting that one of the entirely unintended (but certainly welcome) consequences has been that my productivity at work is better—but it’s really more than that. It’s my creativity that has really improved. As I walk, my thoughts first turn to the people in my lab, their individual projects, and what we can do to progress. I find myself frequently using my memo pad on BlackBerry to jot down ideas, before I become too seasick to continue.

It’s not just the science—I find ideas for the novel I am writing come naturally during this exercise—as well as ideas for OT blogs. This one is obviously an example.

So is it really the exercise, or is it simply that I have designated thinking time where I have little else to capture and compete with my attention? The literature on PubMed is not extremely compelling. There are a series of articles, mostly about exercise and the elderly, and some on exercise as part of rehabilitation. There are a few scattered reports of enhanced creativity related to exercise, but many fewer than I would have expected. Here is a sample abstract from one of them: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3982945 Perhaps there are better places to look for such papers. Can anyone help me out?

So I now have a new theory, a new hypothesis that exercise stimulates creativity—and perhaps one day I’ll look into it more deeply. But today I underwent a negative treadmill-related experience that I call Post-treadmill Stress Disorder (PTSD). After a solid 50 min. of walking at a 5.3 mph pace, I took a big drink of water and headed to the locker room to congratulate myself on a job well done and bask in a nice hot shower. The temperature outside was 1 degree Fahrenheit when I entered the gym.

I set my work clothes in a locker, undressed, grabbed a couple towels and headed to the showers. I pulled the curtain across my stall, and turned the lever for the water. A gurgling noise. Then nothing. Unfazed, as yet, I moved to the next stall, and the next. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not even a drop.

I then noticed two workmen on the other side of the locker room with a ladder and tools. I asked them. No water. How long? At least an hour. Great, I have a meeting in my office in 30 min.

Well that’s Post-treadmill Stress Disorder: but the stress will be with my colleagues—who will need to find a seat as far away from me as possible…

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Sod the iPad and snowblower: here’s to girlpower!

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Steve Caplan

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Sod the iPad, snowblowers are the thing…

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Steve Caplan

Birdhouse in the snow

Before- snowblower power leaves the iPad behind...

After- a job well done by man's best friend- the snowblower

To be repeated, ad nauseum, until the storm abates…

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Protecting educators and education

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Steve Caplan

It happened again. On Thurs. Jan. 6, 2011, a high school vice-principal was shot and killed, and her principal-colleague was shot and seriously wounded. This time the shooting hit close to home—our home. In fact it was only about two miles away.

I find that there is a bizarre dichotomy at schools here in the US. On the one hand, the acceptance of minorities and different cultures is simply awe-inspiring. From a very early age children learn to naturally accept others who are different from them in any way. It really is a remarkable feat of which Americans should be very proud.

In addition, there are very strict regulations in place against any form of bullying (“no tolerance”)—whether it be physical, verbal or virtual. Although I must add that there have been worrying reports that online bullying is a growing problem that schools are having a hard time dealing with. However, if I compare the rapid action that I have witnessed principals deploy to deal with students who bully to the lack of action during my own childhood in a Canadian school, I am extremely happy that my own children are here now. And yet…

And yet—another case where schools have come under attack from loaded weapons has occurred. Here in the quiet midwestern city of Omaha, where the people are wonderful, and life is generally calm.

According to the newspapers, the 18-year old student was upset about being suspended for bad behavior, and took his policeman-father’s gun to carry out his murderous attacks and subsequent suicide. So in this particular case, my questioning the whole issue of ‘gun control’ isn’t really relevant. Or is it?

True, in this sad story, where the gun should have been either in his father’s custody or locked safely away, the gun came from a source that would have been available even had there been strict gun control laws. But this is an unusual case.

Frequently, horrible shootings are carried out by people who purchase and own their own guns. In many cases, it is hard to understand how people with a history of violence, mental illness or instability, or criminal records are able to obtain weapons so readily. Almost every time such a shooting rampage occurs, we are forced to ask, again and again, how do we let this occur? The Virgina Tech shooting was carried out by a loner who was definitely mentally unstable, and suffering from severe anxiety. Why was he able to obtain a gun so easily? The University of Alabama assistant professor who killed 3 colleagues and wounded three others in a faculty meeting had several violent incidents in her past—how did she obtain a weapon? And during the preparation of this commentary, another incident in Tucson, Arizona left 6 dead and thirteen wounded. This investigation is still in its early stages.

What else can I say? I understand the rationale of those who oppose gun control; I know that freedom to bear arms is considered a constitutional right—back from the days of the wild-west when citizens often had to rely on their own preparedness for protection against criminals. But is that not anachronistic?

Okay—so the argument is then that the criminals can obtain weapons illegally in the street—why prevent ordinary citizens from defending themselves?

Well the answer is here before us. The vast majority of these horrible shootings is carried out not by the “garden-variety criminal-in-the-street” element, but rather by people who probably would have had a difficult time obtaining a weapon. Yes, there are ways around these obstacles, and certainly some of the murderers would have succeeded nonetheless—but my reckoning is that university researchers and college students are unlikely to have ready underworld connections to purchase automatic weapons.

With regards to ordinary citizens defending themselves; well it may take a generation, but if weapons were to become largely unavailable, then eventually there would be little cause for ordinary citizens to defend themselves. It’s time to start. There are too many educators right now on the front lines, and it’s time to afford them the best protection possible: by not allowing easy access to dangerous weapons.

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An imposter with a pen—part two

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Steve Caplan

Rather than respond one by one to all of the kind wishes and wise words in response to “Imposter with a pen”, I thought that I’d add a brief blog to let you all know that I “survived” the book signing without being “unmasked”. In fact, as is usually the case in my day-job lectures and what-not, after the initial jitters, I felt fine and actually enjoyed myself. I was able to get in a few good words for Lablit (the genre, website, and authors), and of course, Occam’s Typewriter. I even sold 20 books or so.

However, just prior to the start of the book signing, I was reminded of a (true) little story that took place way back (shortly after Richard’s ammonite died…) when I was an undergraduate student in Jerusalem.

In our third and final year of the very condensed biology program in which I was enrolled, we finally had a range of elective courses. I was thrilled to be able to escape from botany, zoology and ecology courses (no condescension intended—just not my forte) and immerse myself in the more biochemical and molecular-based ones. One course that was mandatory was the scary “undergraduate seminar”.

Although Hebrew was (and still is) a second language to me, I was not especially concerned; after all, I had the advantage of reading the papers in English. However, many of the students seemed to be very frightened. I chose an immunological topic related to bone marrow transplants and set out to prepare.

Finally, after weeks of preparation, came the fateful day. Not only did we students have to stand up in front of the class (at least in front of those of us who had chosen immunological-based topics), but also in front of a cluster of professors (can anyone help me out—is there a term for a group of professors like a “gander of geese”?) who were involved in guiding the students through their readings and preparations.

Well, I did fine. But this story isn’t about me. It’s about another student who—reports had it—was extremely stressed and hadn’t eaten much in the 24 hours before his seminar. His name was Simon, and when his turn came he stood up and slowly walked to the front of the classroom/lecture hall. Now these were of course the pre-power point days, so Simon, like everyone else, had a pile of transparencies that he had prepared for the overhead projector.

After laying the first transparency in place, Simon turned on the projector, moved to the side and began his first sentence. He was somewhat pale, and his voice shook. From the back of the room, I did not like where this was headed. In his second sentence, Simon said (no, it wasn’t put your hands on your head!), “I think I need a drink of water”. He walked to the side of the room, took a long drink, and came back to the center. He began his third sentence, wavered back and forth like a pendulum, and promptly passed out.

Poor Simon! It took over two minutes to revive him. Fortunately, this was a medical center, and a doctor arrived on the scene promptly. Simon was fine, and eventually did a private seminar at a later date for his examining professors (they weren’t taking any chances!).

A few years later, Simon and I found ourselves both as graduate students in the Lautenberg Center for General and Tumor Immunology. One of the requirements for the entire department was to occasionally deliver a weekly journal club. When it was Simon’s turn, there was a lot of whispering in the room before the journal club started. After all, a number of the students and professors in the room had witnessed “the event” a few years earlier, and for those who hadn’t, the rumors spread to them rapidly.

Simon got up and introduced the paper. He then smiled and said in a bold voice: “For safety sake, I suggest that those of you sitting in the front row move to the back; the overhead projector is heavy and I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.” He went on and did a great job. All’s well that ends well…

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An imposter with a pen

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Steve Caplan

I’m glad I can bang on the keyboard with my two fingers right now, rather than be forced to write with a pen. While my penmanship has always been awful, my main concern right now is not the ‘readability’ of my handwriting, but the shakiness of my hand. This is because last night I didn’t get any real sleep.

No, I was not busy ‘trying out’ all the wonderful new toys and functions on OT (what is a “widget”, anyway, an upside down midget?—not to mention Quora). I was lying awake in bed wondering what on earth I am going to say at my very first book signing this afternoon at The Bookworm, a wonderful private-owned bookstore here in Omaha, Nebraska.

I am not usually given to excessive nervousness over seminars, teaching classes, etc. In fact, I have given my share of them, and at this stage of my career, while I always succumb to a few stressful moments at the very beginning of any lecture, I don’t normally fret about it until I am up at the podium. But this time it’s different—I feel like an imposter. There are actually some parallels to a situation in my recent post “Informal Science”, where I describe my first day as a new assistant professor and hear someone call out “Dr. Caplan”, but can’t quite fathom how my pediatrician father has arrived on the scene.

Rationally, I know that I am not an imposter (correct me if I’m wrong!)—but nonetheless, I can’t shake that feeling I am going to be discovered for what I am—a scientist pretending to be an author.

Another key difference from anything else I’ve previously experienced in my scientific work, is that this time, it’s personal. True, fiction authors can always retreat to the “No comment-like status” of claiming that, after all, this is only fiction. The fact that no one actually believes me when I say that, and that they are constantly “figuring out” whom my characters represent, is a side-effect of this profession, I’m afraid.

Well, I’ve gathered my immediate family for support—so at least someone will be there. And I’m doing what I always do when concerned that I am ‘out of my element’—I’m practicing. I’ve received some solid advise through one of the Lablit forums, and I have prepared a list of things to say: when and how I came to write the book, what inspired it, a few witty (I hope!) anecdotes, etc.

I’ve also prepared a short passage to “read”—a section that I consider to be humorous (we shall see!). Interestingly, I practiced reading it—even went as far as having my daughter record it on video (yes—an obsessive-compulsive control freak) so I could see for myself how this looks. My prime observation—I need to look less at the ‘audience’ and at least look down at the book now and then to pretend that I am reading the passage and not declaring it from memory. After all, it’s a “book reading”, not a drama class. That’s what I get for taking 13 years to publish it—I could join Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” heroes, the ones dedicated to keeping books alive (when they were being burned) by committing entire novels to memory.

Well, enough said. “Duty calls”, said Mr. Wickham, so off I go. I still have a few hours left to practice—reading rather than reciting…

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Hello OT!

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Steve Caplan

Hello World! Or more specifically, Hello Occam’s Typewriter bloggers and readers!
Actually, “Hello World!” sends shivers down my spine; after a hiatus of 20 years since learning Fortran and Pascal in university, my 8 year old son coaxed me back to learn programming with him—a terribly user-unfriendly language called “C” (at least for novices like myself), and every exercise began with the ritual “Hello World” being used.

Well, I was advised to delete the “Hello World!” post: (Welcome to Occam’s Typewriter. This is your first post. I suggest you delete it else you’ll look a bit of a prat.) As I do not want to appear like a “prat” on my first blog on “NO COMMENT”, I deleted this post.
Thanks, Richard, for the sound advise!

I do want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the wonderful welcome and great interactions that I’ve been having these past few weeks as a beginner-blogger—I am really enjoying this, and feel quite “at home”. This is at once a thought provoking and entertaining site, and I’m honored to have an opportunity to make my own modest contributions now on “NO COMMENT”.

Just a brief note about how I arrived here at OT. Several months ago in the course of self-publishing my first novel, I summoned up the courage to e-mail Jenny and ask a few questions related to my novel and to the Lablit site. Why “courage”, you might ask? Well, by now some of you may be familiar with a few of my recent posts, but we are all only “virtually acquainted” (except for Jenny, a fellow cell biologist who I had the pleasure of meeting at ASCB in Philadelphia last month). In person, I am not an especially social person (I can imagine my wife’s laughter as she reads this understatement!). Actually, I did not expect a famous author like Jenny to even reply. Well, fortunately for me, she did—within minutes!

At that point in time I had heard of Twitter and Facebook, but had not a clue what they were. People were constantly referring to the ‘social media’, and I could see those little icons—but what did they have to do with me?

Slowly I became involved in some of the forums on Lablit.com, and when it was suggested that I begin to Tweet, I tried. At first, I was not impressed. After a day, I was being followed by a local hair salon, what looked to be an escort service, and a dog breeder. I couldn’t understand what people were writing. I commented once at a Lablit forum that 98% of the Tweets I read seemed silly. I was advised that I was following the wrong people—turns out that this was good advise. I am now a convert.

So I first learned of OT’s existence through Twitter, not really understanding what exactly was going on—until Jenny explained the situation to me in Philly. When I first logged onto OT, it was love at first site. And here I am! Thank you, World!

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Criminal leadership: a bad situation for citizens and scientists

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Steve Caplan

Happy New Year to everyone. And while many countries celebrated the coming year, not in every country is the New Year based on the Gregorian Calendar. And not in every country was the New Year’s break a happy time.

The example that I would like to bring forth is that of the State of Israel, a country that I adopted many eons ago, and unfortunately with which I have become somewhat disenchanted.

There are many wonderful people in Israel, in particular my own scientific mentors and teachers. In fact, Israel has a very strong scientific tradition, and it’s easy to appreciate this from the Nobel prize winners for figuring out the ubiquitin proteasome pathway (Ciechanover and Hershko, 2004) and the ribosomal structure (Yonath 2009) in recent years.

Although it’s now very difficult to find paper journals to flip through (with the exception of Cromercrox’s weekly starting with the letter N and a few others), virtually flipping through tables of contents of any journal dredges up a host of Israeli authors. Perhaps non-Israelis may not easily pick out the Israeli names. And indeed many names, such as my own, do not have an “Israeli ring” to them. But amazingly, there will often be an entire list of 6-7 Israeli-named authors, including the senior author, with the correspondence address listed as “Harvard” or “UCLA” or some other university in the US (or elsewhere in the world). Not necessarily in Israel. In fact, statistics show that there are actually more Israeli scientists who are employed in Academia (not postdocs—that’s obvious—but actual lab heads) in US universities than in all the universities in Israel.

By now, some of you may be wondering where this commentary is headed, so its time to move on to the point. So while the world was celebrating New Year’s, in Israel, where the New Year is celebrated according to the Hebrew lunar calendar, the wheels of justice churned forward. And those wheels of justice convicted Israel’s former President (a ceremonial figure, as opposed to the Prime Minister), Moshe Katzav, of two counts of rape and another for sexual assault.

While this is a victory for the Israeli judicial system (and for the victims and their families), proving that no one is above the law, it is a sad day for a country whose first president was Chaim Weizmann, a chemist who is considered to be one of the developers of industrial fermentation, and who helped create the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as well as found the Weizmann Institute in Rehovoth. The second presidency was offered, after Weizmann’s death, to Albert Einstein, who turned down the opportunity. And yet, the 8th president, Katzav, has sunk the country to a new low.

It is clear that the opportunities for Israeli scientists outside Israel are a major factor in the so-called “brain-drain”. However, it is also clear that a pervasive atmosphere where a rapist can climb up to the esteemed position of President reflects a much deeper problem, and that the “brain-drain” is the outcome of more than just an imbalance in opportunities for scientists.

Here’s to a better 2011.

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