ScienceInsider

U.S. scientists have been wondering whether research will be part of the upcoming economic stimulus package that Congress and President-elect Barack Obama are working on. Past economic stimulus packages have focused on massive public works projects as well as tax breaks to spur consumer and industry spending.

Those items are a good bet to be part of any economic recovery plan whose cost could top $1 trillion. But on Wednesday, congressional leaders will also hear a pitch for research.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS—A loose alliance of 500 scientific organizations has declared 2009 the Year of Science and is hoping the effort will lead to a spate of projects to put science and technology in reach of the public. This week, the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) kicked off an outreach campaign here at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology to encourage more scientists and their organizations to promote a public understanding of science.

Bloomburg says President-elect Barack Obama might think so:

Obama has said the Pentagon’s space program -- which spent about $22 billion in fiscal year 2008, almost a third more than NASA’s budget -- could be tapped to speed the civilian agency toward its goals as the recession pressures federal spending. ...

The Obama team has asked NASA officials about the costs and savings of scrapping the agency’s new Ares I rocket, which is being developed by Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Minneapolis- based Alliant Techsystems Inc.

NASA chief Michael Griffin opposes the idea and told Obama’s transition team leader, Lori Garver, that her colleagues lack the engineering background to evaluate rocket options, agency spokesman Chris Shank said.

“The NASA review team is just asking questions; no decisions have been made,” said Nick Shapiro, a transition spokesman for Obama.

Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, appears to be the top contender for the post as President-elect Barack Obama's director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
      Collins, buttonholed today at a meeting of one of the Obama transition teams, answered "no comment" when asked if he aspired to the post. But Alan Trounson, head of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco, admitted to Science: "That's the name I've heard most often."
        Collins and Trounson were among the scientists and disease advocates at the meeting of Obama's agency review team for the Department of Health and Human Services.

—Constance Holden

One of the nation's most biodiverse states has taken the Bush administration to court to reverse last-minute changes by the Department of Interior to the Endangered Species Act. The changes to the law went into effect on 16 December. They would eliminate mandatory scientific reviews by Fish and Wildlife Service officials of decisions that agencies make related to endangered species. The Administration of President-elect Barack Obama is expected to reverse the changes, but the involvement of the state, which is joining several environmental organizations that have already sued over the rule changes, could boost the chances that the rules will be tossed out by a judge.

—Eli Kintisch

It's not often that White House science advisers suggest how the next Administration might want to do things differently. But that's what the outgoing President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has done in a candid self-assessment.

Released last month, the report acknowledges what was perhaps an open secret: that PCAST, a presidentially appointed advisory group, concentrated on the second half of its name. That bias was tailored to the Bush Administration's interest in using technology to stimulate economic development, says venture capitalist Floyd Kvamme, its co-chair, adding that the decision was a no-brainer. "If you look at the big issues of the last two decades, especially the concern over energy," Kvamme tells ScienceInsider, "the role of information technology in our lives, and the promise of nanotechnology, I think you'd have to agree that the solutions will come not from science itself but from its application. And that's what technology is."

Although Kvamme asserts that the council's various reports were influential, he sees considerable room for improvement by Harold Varmus and Eric Lander, whom President-elect Barack Obama named to be co-chairs of PCAST along with the next science adviser, John Holdren. Suggested changes range from the size and composition of the council to its interactions with the White House, other federal agencies, and Congress.

One problem is that PCAST grew too big for its own good, expanding from 22 to 35 members over the Bush presidency. "The current size of PCAST is no longer optimal," the report notes, suggesting that it could be more productive with 20 to 25 members. As the council grew, it also accumulated too much dead weight. "About a quarter of our members, over time, became inactive," the report acknowledges. Some of the worse offenders, Kvamme notes, had lobbied the hardest to join the council. "Maybe they didn't realize how much work they would be asked to do," he says.

Kvamme says PCAST also could have done more after it issued a report. "Maybe it's not our role, but I think that we should have worked harder to make sure that the Hill understood why we felt so strongly" about certain issues, says Kvamme. He also faults himself for a steady decline over the years in the number of meetings between PCAST and senior White House and agency officials on timely issues. "In the early days, we were briefed regularly on what to look for," he says. "But once we understood how the process worked, we stopped having those meetings. Maybe we should have continued them."

Having a few more working scientists as members might also have helped PCAST do a better job, Kvamme says. "Charlie [Arntzen, a much-decorated plant geneticist at Arizona State University] was very helpful on many issues. But maybe we should have had a few more like him." At the same time, Kvamme says that members never discussed whether PCAST should include the rising generation of scientists—Arntzen is 65—and that younger scientists were tabbed for expert panels convened to help write specific reports.

Finally, Kvamme says he's "surprised" that Obama has named two outside co-chairs, both of whom have spent their careers in the life sciences. "There are so many other important issues, like education, energy, information technology," he says. "And it never crossed my mind to have two co-chairs."

—Jeffrey Mervis

A member of a U.S. scientific delegation headed by the President of the Institute of Medicine was interrogated for 9 hours earlier this month in his Tehran hotel. The U.S. National Academies labeled the incident a “serious breach,” and declared on Friday that they “cannot sponsor or encourage American scientists to visit Iran unless there are clear assurances that the personal safety of visiting scientists will be guaranteed.”

IOM President Harvey Fineberg and the small delegation were visiting Iran to identify opportunities for cooperation in the medical sciences. They were accompanied by Glenn Schweitzer, director of Eurasian programs at the Academies, who has spearheaded an 8-year effort to nurture scientific ties with Iran in the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries. On 4 December, three men who claimed to be security officers detained Schweitzer in his room for 3 hours of questioning. Two days later, they returned for another 6-hour session. The men threatened to prevent Schweitzer from leaving Iran and told him that exchange visitors are not welcome. None of the other members of the delegation were questioned, and the men, who did not identify themselves, did not explain why Schweitzer was targeted.

“This really was a big surprise. It’s a risk we did not expect at all,” says William Colglazier, executive officer of the Academies’ National Research Council.

A scandal appears to be brewing among French geologists and other earth scientists. According to a full-page story in the 26 December 2008 issue of the French daily Le Monde, members of the prestigious Institute of the Physics of the Globe of Paris (IPGP) stand accused of conflicts of interest. Their offenses? While serving on the seven-member editorial board of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, several IPGP researchers allegedly edited and accepted papers from colleagues at their own institute.

The affaire threatens to taint France’s former research minister, geophysicist Claude Allègre—also a former director of the IPGP—just at the moment when Allègre is reportedly being considered for a cabinet post. According to Le Monde, four of Allègre’s papers received such insider treatment; one published in 2004 was edited by IPGP geophysics researcher and current director Vincent Courtillot, a longtime Allègre associate who served as his chief advisor at the research ministry.

The conflict-of-interest accusations are circulating in the form of an anonymously produced 100-page document consisting largely of the papers concerned. According to Le Monde, the document was sent to the journal’s publisher, Friso Veenstra of the scientific publishing giant Elsevier. Veenstra reportedly told Le Monde that he had not been aware of the situation but that in the future he would keep IPGP members from serving on the main editorial committee—citing a formal rule the publisher had adopted in 2006 against such conflicts of interest.

But Courtillot, who reportedly served on the editorial committee from 2003 to 2005, and IPGP geochemist Claude Jaupart, a member from 2006 to 2008, are quoted by Le Monde as denying that there was any secret about their involvement with the IPGP papers, arguing that they were identified as the editors on each one. Courtillot and Jaupart also say that their role on the editorial committee was explicitly to help publish French papers that, despite their high quality, might not otherwise have seen the light of day.

Le Monde reports that the affair has embarrassed officials of the giant research agency CNRS, with which the IPGP is associated, citing e-mails that the paper has obtained. As for who took the trouble to dig out all of the offending papers and circulate the anonymous 100-page document of accusation, Le Monde says that this is an “open question”—but suggests that researchers unhappy about Allègre’s vocal skepticism of global warming being caused by human activities might have been involved.

—Michael Balter

Emory University has taken the unusual step of banning one of its own, prominent psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, from collecting industry money at certain speaking engagements. The decision comes after Nemeroff spent months under the uncomfortable spotlight of Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), who accused him of failing to report at least $1.2 million of the more than $2.4 million he earned by consulting for drugmakers. Nemeroff subsequently stepped down from his post as department chair.

Yesterday, Emory reported the results of its internal investigation into Nemeroff's dealings with GlaxoSmithKline. The Atlanta, Georgia, university found that Glaxo paid him more than $800,000 over 5 years for giving 250 speeches, money he did not report to Emory. Although Emory says Nemeroff's failure to disclose the amounts he received didn't taint his research or patient care, the university imposes these limitations on his activities: Nemeroff will need to "seek review and approval by the dean's office of any and all outside compensated engagements before he accepts them," and he can't seek National Institutes of Health grants for 2 years. When it comes to speaking at continuing medical education events, Nemeroff will be permitted to talk only at those "sponsored by academic institutions or professional societies."

Emory spokesperson Ron Sauder declined to tell ScienceInsider whether the measures were taken to appease Grassley or because Emory doesn't trust Nemeroff to participate in industry-sponsored events. "I really can't interpret that for you," Sauder said, beyond noting that the measures don't apply to other faculty members.

Nemeroff said in the statement that he had misunderstood the disclosure rules and thought he was following them properly.

—Jennifer Couzin

In a verdict that U.K. scientists see as a turning point in efforts to protect animal researchers against illegal attacks, a British court yesterday convicted four people of conspiring to blackmail companies that supply an animal testing laboratory.

The activists had targeted employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe's largest contract medical testing center, with threats of violence, vandalism of homes and businesses, letter bombs, and firebombs between 2001 and 2007. Prosecutors at the trial, held in the southern English county of Kent, said the campaign was also directed against GlaxoSmithKline, Astellas Pharma Inc., F2 Chemicals Ltd., and Biocair. The defendants, members of the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, will be sentenced next month along with three people who pleaded guilty earlier to conspiracy to blackmail. One defendant was acquitted.

The Kent trial grew out of 30 arrests made during a May 2007 police raid across the United Kingdom, dubbed Operation Achilles, which included sites in the Netherlands and Belgium. Simon Festing, the executive director of the Research Defence Society, tells ScienceInsider that, combined with similar trials over the past few years, the total number of convictions of such activists now stands at 30. He says those outcomes send a strong message that U.K. authorities are capable of protecting researchers. "This shutters the largest, most aggressive, and most unpleasant animal extremist organization in the world," says Festing, who notes that U.K. police have estimated the group contained about 40 to 60 active members. "Confidence is growing that police can deal with this problem. As a result, more and more scientists are willing to come out and explain the importance of animal research."

The police crackdown has been a boon to U.K. campuses. (The University of Cambridge abandoned plans in 2004 for a primate research lab, and activists have targeted an animal research lab being built by the University of Oxford.) Festings says there have been fewer than 10 criminal incidents this year, "none of them serious," a level that is the lowest in decades. "Now that people know most of the activists are in jail, it's easier to build and refurbish facilities and to attract investors," he says. "I think that people are becoming more comfortable in their ability to do good science."

—Jeffrey Mervis