1. science

COMMENTARY
Future malaria
control
Insects drive
selection
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LETTERS I BOOKS I POLICY FORUM I EDUCATION FORUM I PERSPECTIVES
LETTERS
edited by Jennifer Sills
Results: Big Ideas
In July, we asked young scientists to describe the one big idea in their field that they wish every
non-scientist understood.
We heard from nearly 200 readers. A sample of the best responses can be found below. To allow
for as many voices as possible, in some cases we have printed excerpts of longer submissions. To
read the complete versions, as well as many more, go to http://scim.ag/NextGen4Results.
Submit Now: Experiments in Governing
Add your voice to Science! Our new NextGen VOICES survey is now open:
PAUL DARGUSCH
To submit, go to http://scim.ag/NextGen5
Deadline for submissions is 16 November. A selection of the best responses will be published
in the 4 January 2013 issue of Science. Submissions should be 250 words or less. Anonymous
submissions will not be considered. Please submit only once.
RECENTLY, AT THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC
Games, a famous Austrian swimmer found
a creative explanation for his moderate
success: He argued that intelligent athletes have a disadvantage in competitions
because they tend to think
too much. In an attempt to
prove his claim, he pointed
to an intelligent alpine skier
who only won four World Cup
races and an—in his opinion—
rather unintelligent one who won more than
50. This might be an extreme example, but
we encounter causal oversimplification and
faulty generalizations so often in our daily
lives that we barely notice them anymore.
What makes matters worse is that politicians
throughout the world—be it intentional or
not—use logical fallacies as tools to justify
unmoral actions and gain votes, inciting rac-
40
ism, sexism, and fear as collateral damage along the way. Their success is based
on the lack of a basic understanding of
logical fallacies and critical thinking.
Much more than from a specific scientific concept, our society would benefit from
knowledge of (and training in) scientific reasoning. The Austrian swimmer—although
apparently hindered by his intelligence—
managed to win 34 medals at major events
throughout his very successful career.
School of Geography Planning and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
I AM AN ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGIST,
and I wish that people understood the concepts of hazard and risk and the differences
between the two. Chemicals are
hazardous—even things we
might think of as benign or
“natural”—but they only
cause a problem when they
reach a concentration that is
associated with a hazard. Risk
[is a measure of both] hazard and
exposure. I am frustrated by news and social
media outlets that incite fear of “hazardous
chemicals” in the general public without
ever considering the level to which exposure
is occurring.
RUDOLF GRISS
KATHERINE COADY
Laboratory of Protein Engineering, École Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland.
E-mail: rudolf.griss@epfl.ch
The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, MI 48674, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
I WISH EVERY NON-SCIENTIST UNDERSTOOD
[that]…. [c]arbon markets are our best climate policy alternative because (through the
availability of carbon offsets) they create
options for lowest-cost climate change mitigation…. The fact that carbon offsetting can
be good seems to have been lost in an ideo-
5 OCTOBER 2012
…NUMEROUS RECENT EXAMPLES OF RAPID
phenotypic evolution in wild populations,
occurring over the span of just a few generations, have taught modern biologists that
evolutionary change is something we can
often observe directly. Yet the average nonscientist (perhaps even the average nonbiologist) thinks that evolution can only
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CREDITS: PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS
You’ve just been elected to your nation’s highest office! In your inaugural address, announce
the biggest challenge facing your country today and how you will use science to address it.
NextGen Speaks
logical debate about development justice, achieving
emissions reductions in
established industries, and
the blind pursuit of governance rigor…. Scientific perspectives have been largely overlooked. We need offsets that contribute to
genuine sustainable outcomes, but we also
need to make progress on climate change
mitigation, and offsets enable a more economically palatable transition.
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NextGenVOICES
Neurobiology
Prize Essay
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crawl through the millennia at a
pace that is slower than anything
humans can easily imagine. This
mindset allows many to safely
ignore evolution, or, worse,
reject it entirely.... [T]he misunderstanding that evolution occurs
primarily on a geologic time scale
has impeded societal endeavors
such as human medicine, harvest
of natural resources, and conservation efforts. But times are
changing. Physicians are updating antibiotic dosage suggestions to curb
the evolution of drug-resistant pathogens. Fisheries management agencies
are applying life history
theory to effectively
manage wild stock.
Conservation groups are
realizing the importance of
conserving genetic variation in threatened species….
A public grasp of one of the biggest ideas in contemporary evolutionary
biology is within reach.
CREDITS: (ILLUSTRATION) JOE SUTLIFF/JOESUTLIFF.COM; PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS
STEPHEN P. DE LISLE
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada. E-mail:
[email protected]
[I WISH EVERY NON-SCIENTIST UNDERSTOOD]
the immunology underlying vaccines. It
frustrates me to no end that available, effective inventions to combat disease
aren’t always used due to media
reporting and mass hysteria.
If the public and media networks fully understood the
science behind vaccines,
preventable deaths could be
avoided.
ADITI HALDER
University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4067, Australia.
E-mail: [email protected]
MÁTÉ VARGA
what exists in our nuclear DNA,
one has to grapple with a startling idea: Life as we know
it would not exist without
these small organelles, once
mere foreign bodies inside our
single-celled ancestors. For
all our arrogance, humans are not
independent from other life on this planet; the
story of the natural world is not only about the
struggle of individual species but about the
relationships between them. Understanding
our interconnectedness provides plenty of
food for thought—and thoughtful citizens
make thoughtful stewards.
Department of Genetics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, H-1117, Hungary. E-mail: [email protected]
[I WISH NON-SCIENTISTS
understood] the idea that one
of the biggest threats to public health is the rise in the
drug-resistant pathogens.
Due to increased global
trade and travels, these pathogens can spread easily. Our global
research system is necessary and timely. We
never know when local problems and solutions may become global, and every part of
the world has a contribution to make.
JILLIAN WALKER
PATRICK KOBINA ARTHUR
Department of Biological Sciences, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA 91768, USA. E-mail: jswalker@
csupomona.edu
Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Ghana, Legon-Accra, Ghana. E-mail:
[email protected]
I WORK IN THE FIELD
of medical genetics
and genetic counseling, an area where the
contact with the nonscientific public is very
intense. It would be great if we could better explain concepts related to risk of recurrence, recessive inheritance, and de novo
mutations…. Sometimes it is very difficult to
alleviate the sense of guilt that parents of malformed children experience….
…I WORK WITH DIFFERENT SPECIES OF
fungi, many of which are pathogens.…I wish
more people, non-scientists as well as some
prominent scientists, understood that organisms that cause disease are defined as pathogens only in relation to the organisms they
affect.…Pests causing infestations and epidemics are usually an integral part of the ecosystem. Often, we overlook the fact that diseases occurring at a larger scale are caused
by an ecosystem imbalance.…
[M]any times, imbalances
are caused by anthropogenic factors and are indicators of our own shortsighted harmful activities
that lead to medical and
EDUARDO PREUSSER DE MATTOS
I WISH THE PUBLIC UNDERSTOOD THE ENDOsymbiotic theory. In realizing that mitochondria have a radically different genome than
…THE IDEA OF EVERincreasing complexity is
rooted in a strong adherence to the old Aristotelean
world view of hierarchical
classification of living things, which still
permeates our everyday thinking. But in
this case, it is time to let it go. The past two
decades provided plenty of evidence that
the endless variety of forms surrounding
us is the product of just a handful of signaling pathways and gene regulatory modules, which are used iteratively over and
over during development. Just as the imaginative combination of a limited number
of Lego bricks can create a dazzling array
of forms, so can changes in the regulation
of key genes create new pigmentation patterns, new appendages or new behaviors.
If people came to terms with this concept,
most likely they would accept more readily
our place in nature as just one branch on the
Tree of Life….
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Microbiota
and cancer
Department of Genetics, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Graduate Program, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul,
Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, 91501-970, Brazil. E-mail:
[email protected]
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LJERKA LAH
Laboratory for Molecular Biology and Nanobiotechnology, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, SI-1000,
Slovenia. E-mail: [email protected]
I AM IN SCIENCE POLICY AND I WISH EVERYone had a better understanding
that science itself is not politicized or inherently supportive
of one party or another. Too
many people, I think, believe
that science serves only a particular viewpoint or political
argument. In reality, science is
the underlying foundation on which
to make policy decisions that may or may
not hinge on the science itself. With a better
understanding of that, I hope people would
not be as quick to criticize scientific reports
and the scientists who produce them based
solely on the conclusions.
ANISH GOEL
Technology Policy and Geopolitical Affairs, The Boeing
Company, Seattle, WA 98101, USA. E-mail: anish.goel@
boeing.com
…A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF PHARMAcogenomics would lead to
safer prescriptions, reduced
risk of adverse side effects,
minimized healthcare
cost, and improved clinical outcomes. In addition,
a better understanding of
this concept will encourage
the public to participate in clinical trials in
order to bridge the knowledge gap among
clinicians, scientists, and the non-medical
community. This will pave the way for the
advancement of medicine and improvement
of standard practice.
MICHAEL O. BACLIG
Research and Biotechnology Division, St. Luke’s Medical
Center, Quezon City, 1102, Philippines. E-mail: mobaclig@
stluke.com.ph
[I WISH NON-SCIENTISTS UNDERSTOOD] THE
concept of gene-environment interaction that
could predispose us to the progression of certain diseases. Diseases are often multifaceted
in nature, and studying
merely genetics or simple
in vitro models is not sufficient in recapitulating
the environmental factors
that we are exposed to across
the years…. If everyone can take a small
step to mitigate possible deleterious geneenvironment interactions by altering their
lifestyles, we can potentially reduce our
healthcare costs even without discovering
novel treatments to delay or reverse the progression of the diseases plaguing the developed world.
BRYCE TAN
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National Univesity of Singapore, 119077, Singapore. E-mail: [email protected]
UNCERTAINTY. IT DOES NOT MEAN I DON’T
know. It is quantifiable. It is understandable. Communication
between non-scientists
and scientists would
improve greatly if nonscientists understood scientific uncertainty. I work
between the fields of environmental engineering and ecology
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5 OCTOBER 2012
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environmental catastrophes….[I]f more people adopted a less anthropocentric perception of their existence, they would be freer to
plan a sustainable future in the long term with
research efforts and funding perhaps shifting
toward…biodiversity and conservation.
CREDITS: (LEFT) ANISH GOEL/BOEING; OTHER PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS
LETTERS
LETTERS
animals….Improper use and overuse of antibiotics are the major reasons for the increase
in multi-drug–resistant bacterial strains.
Bacteria may gain sovereignty again over
humankind unless everyone stops overuse
and misuse of antibiotics.
SARAH M. ANDERSON
…AS A NEUROSCIENTIST WORKING ON
learning and memory, I wish every nonscientist could appreciate
the beauty of our sophisticated neural circuits and
understand that dramatic
enhancement of human
intelligence is optimistically possible….
CREDITS: PHOTOS COURTESTY OF THE AUTHORS
Nitrogen Systems: Policy-Oriented Interdisciplinary
Research and Education-IGERT and School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164,
USA. E-mail: [email protected]
[I WISH NON-SCIENTISTS WOULD HELP]
stop overuse of antibiotics….[A]ntibiotic
use for any kind of abnormal physiological
condition is a common practice in developing countries like Nepal.
Even though we are not
sick, we use antibiotics in our daily life,
for example, cosmetics, shampoo, and meat
from antibiotics-treated
BISHNU P. MARASINI
Natural Product Research Laboratory, Nepal Academy of
Science and Technology, Khumaltar, Lalitpur, Nepal. E-mail:
[email protected]
CHUN-WAI MA
Department of Physiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine,
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. E-mail:
[email protected]
…AS A PH.D. STUDENT, ONE OF THE MOST
challenging—and sometimes discouraging—things for me to explain to a non-
scientist is why I chose to
be a scientist, and why my
research matters. The satisfaction and joy I have
when accomplishing a hardearned research project, adding valuable data to a longterm study, or discovering a new question to
explore can be intangible to a non-scientist.
I don’t expect non-scientists to fully understand why I chose my career path, but the
notion that science is a critical component
to understanding our world, now more than
ever, seems lost on many….
ELIZABETH PHILLIPS
School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on October 5, 2012
in interdisciplinary research. My work links
to sensitive issues such as climate change
and environmental pollution. We are scientists, not fortune-tellers or psychics reading into the future. No, we cannot predict
every exact detail what will happen because
of human impacts on the Earth system. But,
using scientific observations combined with
sophisticated models, we can determine a
range of what could happen and what most
likely will happen….
Letters to the Editor
Letters (~300 words) discuss material published
in Science in the past 3 months or matters of
general interest. Letters are not acknowledged
upon receipt. Whether published in full or in part,
Letters are subject to editing for clarity and space.
Letters submitted, published, or posted elsewhere,
in print or online, will be disqualified. To submit a
Letter, go to www.submit2science.org.
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