3JUNE 2015 ASCB NEWSLETTER

The American Society for Cell Biology

8120 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 750Bethesda, MD 20814-2762, USA

Tel: 301-347-9300Fax: 301-347-9310

ascbinfo@ascb.org, www.ascb.org

Stefano BertuzziExecutive Director

Officers

Shirley Tilghman PresidentPeter Walter President-ElectJennifer Lippincott-Schwartz Past PresidentGary J. Gorbsky TreasurerKathleen J. Green Secretary

Council

Martin ChalfieAnthony A. Hyman

Daniel KiehartRuth LehmannIan G. Macara

Laura M. MacheskyIra MellmanTom Misteli

Denise J. MontellJodi Nunnari

Samara Reck-PetersonClaire Walczak

The ASCB Newsletter is published 11 times per year

by The American Society for Cell Biology.

W. Mark Leader EditorJohnny Chang Production ManagerKevin Wilson Public Policy DirectorJohn Fleischman Senior Science Writer Christina Szalinski Science WriterThea Clarke Director, Communications and Education

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ASCB Newsletter ISSN 1060-8982

Volume 38, Number 5June 2015

© 2015 The American Society for Cell Biology. Copyright to the articles is held by the author or, for staff-written articles, by the ASCB. The content of the ASCB

Newsletter is available to the public under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike

Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

by-nc-sa/3.0).

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The American Society for Cell Biology8120 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 750

Bethesda, MD 20814-2762, USA

A year ago ASCB members Bruce Alberts, Marc Kirschner, Harold Varmus, and I published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy entitled “Rescuing Biomedical Research from Its Systemic Flaws.”1 Our purpose was to catalyze conversations among the scientific community, university leaders, and government officials regarding what we saw as a corrosive hyper-competitiveness within our profession, brought about by too many people chasing too few resources. At the heart of the problem is a longstanding assumption that resources to support the biomedical enterprise would continuously grow at rates well above that of inflation—an assumption that no longer holds, and because it creates a Malthusian dilemma, cannot sustain a healthy system capable of producing great science.

The negative impact of the current environment is being felt by scientists at all career stages, who feel discouraged from branching out from the tried-and-true and taking risks and find themselves spending far too much time writing and rewriting papers and grants. But the burden of this system is falling most heavily on the youngest members of our community, who are spending their most productive years in dependent training positions, looking ahead to uncertain futures.

A New Willingness to Confront the IssuesThe four of us are hardly the first to point out the nature of the problems that we face as a scientific community. Indeed those problems have been building for at least two decades and were predicted in several major studies in the late 1990s.2,3 What feels different today is the willingness—dare I say even eagerness—to confront the issues, roll up our sleeves, and start redressing the longstanding practices that have landed us where we are today. It has been

immensely gratifying to see the initiatives taken by young scientists themselves. For example, a group of postdoctoral fellows in the Boston area held a symposium last fall in which they

discussed the issues and debated solutions.4 One of the organizers of that meeting is Jessica Polka, who just stepped down as co-chair of ASCB’s Committee for Postdocs and Students, COMPASS.

Anyone who has given even cursory thought to the problems confronting the scientific workforce is necessarily struck by how complex our ecosystem is, and how there are no magic bullets or painless solutions for what ails us. Indeed there are

significant differences of opinion about the best way to proceed that will need much careful consideration before implementation. That is why I was so impressed this spring with an initiative led by ASCB member Judith Kimble, together with Marsha Mailick, Vice Chancellor for the Office of Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Together they organized a campus-wide set of discussions about the future of biomedical research that culminated in a well-attended day-long conference on their campus. Their work provides a terrific blueprint for the kinds of brainstorming and vetting that will be essential to develop wise paths forward.

The work at Wisconsin was overseen by a steering committee on which everyone from graduate students to senior administrators participated. They defined four broad questions that were studied, refined, and debated over a six-week period prior to the conference. The questions were:n How should the pipeline change to reduce

the number of independent investigators who compete for research funding?

n How should university policies, departments, and laboratories change to accommodate fewer government funds available to maintain them?

Rolling Up Our Sleeves to Confront Scientific Workforce Challengesby Shirley Tilghman

President’s Column

Shirley Tilghman

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