TAIPEI—With sessions ranging from aquaculture to structural biology and from neuroscience to entrepreneurship, the 12th International Symposium of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America (SCBA) that kicked off here today is certainly eclectic. The unifying principle is life science and Chinese-ness.
Founded 25 years ago, the 3000-member SCBA is the largest professional society for Chinese bioscientists in the world. The group sprang up because "it's a part of Chinese culture to try to maintain an identity over and above joining the mainstream," says Kuan-Teh Jeang, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
SCBA’s initial mandate was to help Chinese scientists navigate the U.S. academic world. The society’s agenda then widened to include trying to surmount what Jeang, who is the SCBA president-elect, diplomatically calls "the political divisions among Chinese areas." As a non-governmental and non-political organization, SCBA has encouraged collaborations with and among scientists in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Part of this effort led SCBA to alternate its biannual conferences between North America and those Chinese regions. The meeting starting here today on the campus of Academia Sinica has attracted 1300 participants, including more than 400 from other Chinese regions and North America.
The group's influence runs deep. "Large numbers of American educated scientists are going back [to Chinese regions] and they are the driving force behind many of the progressive changes you see there," Jeang says. Joseph Li, a virologist at Utah State University, Logan, says SCBA and its members have contributed to getting the Chinese regions to pay greater attention to health and environmental issues and to introduce more rigorous grant review procedures. "In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, [grant reviews] now follow the NIH process, but 10 years ago they didn't," Li says. He foresees similar progress in mainland China. One effect of these efforts will be "to make the quality of science [in Chinese territories] as good as that in the United States or better within 5 to 7 years," Li says.
A continuing disappointment for the group is that so few Chinese scientists have risen to scientific leadership positions in the United States. Kenneth Fong, a molecular biologist, biotech entrepreneur and member of the board of trustees of California State University, says that upwards of 25% of faculty members in the state university system are Chinese, yet no Chinese have risen to the position of provost or president. He says it is not the result of overt discrimination, but more subtle things that prevent Chinese from being fully accepted members of the academic establishment. If opportunities for advancement remain limited, Fong warns, the United States "will lose those leaders to Asia."
—Dennis Normile
I believe MOTYR's comments seem to be applicable to many disciplines of sciences, not only to the ways Chinese bioscientists conduct their scientific investigations, i.e. many of the advances and scientific endeavors are technology driven. Without the advances in DNA sequencing, the whole human genome will not be sequenced in record time. Without the atom smashers, there would not be discoveries of atomic sub-particles. Just look at the Nobel Prizes, they were being awarded to many individuals who developed significant technologies that advance the respective fields. Just the Physiology and Medicine category alone, radioimmunoassay, protein and DNA sequencing, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), just to name a few, were recognized as technologies that made significant differences in the ways we conduct scientific investigations. So, what is wrong with that? Of course, I am not saying that revolutionary concepts are not important. But, do we have such concepts on a daily basis? Technology-driven scientific investigations will fuel the development of new concepts and will also propel sciences on a daily basis.
The mention of Cultural Revolution in relationship to scientific advances is totally out of context. The Cultural Revolution was something of the past. I am sure history will have the final evaluation of its merits, but it can not be applied to the presence. Anyone who uses this as a standard for the Chinese is also something of the past as well.
The fundamentals surrounding this article are simple and sadly this strong attempt has missed the critical point to the progress of science worldwide. Chinese Asians are hamstrung by their centuries old culture despite the failed attempts to wipe it out with the Cultural Revolution. The rest of the world besides America suffers from the same relative problem but to different degree. The key is value placed on the individual, smallness, one's intellect and innovation and cost efficiency whether science or other endeavors coupled with no limitations but oneself. Small science, if you will, of no more than five closely working, highly skilled thinkers. In essence confidence, worth and freedom in the individual. Coupled with this is missing a fundamental and global value in novelty, going where no man has gone before.
Like the postwar Japanese, Chinese scientists are satisfied to copy, but with a tiny bit of improvement the status quo. To go along with dogma and reproduce and refine it at the technical level without question or concept driven skepticism. In fact the simple reproduction of a glamorous report is still a source of pride and bonding, Science, Cell or Nature, even though published in minor journal.
The administrative glass ceiling exists because they are content to extend their repetitive busy work to confirm and contribute to whatever is glamorous at the moment by dictatorial management of technial assembly line activity, rather than building consensus and training individuals of concept and hypothesis driven science. Churning out endless repetitive and duplicative data now gives the same brute force feeling of accomplishment and challenge to compete with the world that drove the Cultural Revolution. The lure (and delusion) of shortterm profit in the pharmaceutical industry fueled by the endless targets opened up by glamor of DNA sequence and sensitive detection technology plays no small part. It will have the same end.
In essence a democratic approach of advise and consent to productivity and training will take many years to come, if adopted at all, due to the above centuries of cultural background. Compare the features that it takes to be big dog in Chinese hierachy with comparable position in Western organization. They are fundamentally and totally different and few Asians are willing to analyse that, change and implement.
That said, the blank check given to the American continent in respect to land mass, melting pot diversity of race and culture and political and economic system in the late 17th century is unequaled in modern history in respect to science. Sadly, the evolution in science in America is currently away from that mix of factors with introduction of all the flaws described above associated with Asian and European precursor systems. Technology-driven repetitive data production without hypothetical base or hope of long term synthesis and application seems the synthesis worldwide at the expense of the human race. American science cannot compete with the brute force will and somewhat mindless technology-driven busy work fueled by the same cultural energy of the Cultural Revolution.