A Problem-based Learning
(PBL) (of the ill-defined problem kind) activity for synthesizing our ideas
about directions for future research and collaboration
Date: Mon, 3 May
2004 12:37:04 -0400
To:
peter.taylor@umb.edu
From: eop@pbf.org
Subject: Please
guide and excite my board about a new funding category related to research on
development
Dear Peter Taylor:
I am excited to
have learned of your interdisciplinary workshop on "Complexities of
environment and development in the Age of DNA" and hope to get your input
before the workshop participants disperse. During the 1980s and 1990s I made a small fortune from the
biotech boom and established a foundation to support further research. I have become aware, however, that
information gained from sequencing and manipulating genomes does not translate
as directly into practical knowledge as we had wanted to believe. This led me to become interested in different
kinds of research that address the complexities of development of organisms
over their life course. But I also
started to wonder if the issue went beyond funding new research-Do we also need
innovation in the language we used, in how children were taught to think about
genes, in how the science has been presented to the public and policy-makers
(which shapes their expectations), in opportunities for concerned citizens to
get involved in shaping the directions of scientific research, in graduate programs
on science and on its social implications, in interdisciplinary workshops, and
so on? With these questions in
mind, I asked my board to discuss the terms of a new funding initiative. This is the main agenda item when
we meet in mid -May.
I know you do not
have time during the workshop to prepare a full prospectus for a new funding
category for the foundation, but I am hoping your self-interest-you would,
after all, be prospective grant-recipients-will motivate you to generate a
number of 1 (or 2) page "briefings" to help the board develop an
innovative Request for Proposals – an RFP that creates niches that aren't
already covered well elsewhere. Does the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications
program of the Human Genome Project offer us guidance here? Or a recent attempt to develop a new
NSF Research Agenda for "Linking Biogeophysical and Socio-economic
Systems" (http://lsweb.la.asu.edu/ akinzig/report.htm)? Maybe not -- given that mine is a
private foundation, you have more room to innovate than you would if you
thought only about what a federal agency could fund. Indeed, I am more interested in your stimulating the board
by focusing on the topics and themes that excite the particular set of participants
at the workshop than I am at your attempting to be comprehensive. I will be out of contact for the next
two days so I will have to leave it to your judgement how best to shape these
briefings. I look forward to
seeing if attachments arrive in my email box when I return. In expectation that you'll rise to the
challenge, I thank you greatly for your input and will make sure you are sent
the RFP as soon as it is available.
Yours,
Evelyn O. Pimental
Pimental Bioresearch Foundation
Peter
Taylor
Possible
PBF themes adapted from ELSI* with additions:
Societal
Concerns Arising from the New Eco-Development
(*
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/elsi.shtml)
Fairness
in the use of developmental
information
[e.g., knowledge of gestational adaptations] by insurers, employers, courts,
schools, adoption agencies, and the military, among others.
Privacy
and confidentiality
of developmental information.
Psychological
impact, stigmatization [and advocacy] due to an individual's developed
differences.
Reproductive
issues
incl. adequate informed consent for complex and potentially controversial
procedures, use of developmental information in reproductive decision making,
and reproductive rights.
Clinical
issues
incl. the [formal & informal] education of doctors and other health service providers,
patients, and the general public in developmental capabilities, scientific
limitations, and social risks; and implementation of standards and
quality-control measures in testing procedures.
Uncertainties associated with fetal
and neonatal tests for susceptibilities and complex conditions (e.g., heart
disease) linked to development, incl. risk factors in life course
epidemiology
Conceptual
and philosophical implications and discourse regarding human
responsibility, free will vs biological determinism, concepts/metaphors/narratives of health and disease.
Health
and environmental issues concerning developmental modifications of humans and other
organisms, responses to new technologies.
Commercialization
of products incl.
property rights (patents, copyrights, and trade secrets) and accessibility of
data and materials.
---------Additions
Complex
causal accounts:
methods, results, public communication.
Development
of citizen and scientific stakeholder representative groups, incl. "best
practices" for facilitation, training, and building institutional
capacity.
Analysis
of the impacts of ELSI-style research on research directions, education, public
engagement in discussions about science, policy-making, and institutions.
+
Complex
causal accounts: methods, results, public communication
The
PBF invites proposals for research and outreach projects that leads to
researchers, policy-makers, media commentators, and other parties having
greater facility in envisioning complex causal accounts of disease incidence,
etiology, treatment, and prevention, especially accounts that reconstruct the
sequencing of events or processes, their wider connections across regional and
national boundaries, and across realms conventionally addressed within single
research disciplines.
Possible
projects might include a developing web-based anthology of accounts with linked
analyses and critiques of the methods used to construct the accounts,
sociological case studies of different parties addressing complex accounts.
Exemplars
Sleeping
sickness accounts in P. Richards (1982) "Ecological change and the
politics of land use," African Studies Review 26:1-72 and F. Pearce
(2000), "Inventing Africa," New Scientist (12 Aug): 30-33.
The
end of the bubonic plague in Europe in G. Hawthorn (1991), Plausible Worlds.
Barker DJP. (1971) Buruli disease in a district
of Uganda. J Trop Med Hygiene 74:260-264.
Expression of interest:
New metaphors and representative frameworks for understanding complexity in risk factors
Background
Epidemiologists conceptualize
risk factors as pieces of a causal pie.
Each slice represents a proportion of the population with a given
state˜physical or social and the relative risk of having a given risk and
developing a disease. For example, with breast cancer risk factors include a
diversity of conditions or states- hormonal use, alcohol consumption, number of
pregnancies, BRCA mutation, atypical hyperplasia. All of these factors may construct different causal pies. In
this metaphor of the pie, genes are static entities, things, and therefore,
points of public health intervention, genetic screening for example.
The methodology of
epidemiology creates conceptual and logistical contraints in investigating how
risk factors interact and emerge over time. The bounded pie is a poor
representation for the development of disease and limits the integration of
complex, intersecting processes constructing multiple pathways of disease.
Slices are conceptualized a separate pieces with intervention understood as the
removal of a single slice. Because of such dimensional limitations to thinking
about disease backs epidemiology into narrow investigations of single disease
endpoints and the relationship to individual variables (with some statistical
ability to examine interactive effects only at one point in time). "Webs
of causation" offer an alternative metaphor for disease development,
leaving researchers to unravel the question of what constitutes the spider.
(Krieger, Nancy. 1999.
Epidemiology and the web of
causation: has anyone seen the
spider? Soc Sci Med 39:
887ˆ903.) New knowledge in genetic expression and disease challenges
researchers in health to create metaphors for representing disease development.
Expression of interest
This expression of interest
or request for proposals challenges researchers, investigators, philosophers,
sociologists and historians of science, health and medicine to develop new
metaphors, models or concepts for representing causal pathways in disease that
incorporates complex intersections of development. Such models or metaphors
should be used to help researchers diverge from dichotomies of gene and
environment and move away from gene-environment interactions that provide for
narrowed actions between specific genes and individual chemicals. Research may
also consider how new metaphors or conceptual frameworks for causation
influence ideas of prevention and intervention.
To
be continued
Request for
Proposals
Pimental
Bioresearch Foundation
The purpose of this RFP is to encourage innovation in the language used in scientific and pubilc discourse in the discussion of advances in genetic research. We welcome proposals that explore this issue across multiple domains including secondary and post-secondary science education, environmental and occupational health, basic and applied genetic research, and public policy discourse. We recognize that innovation in the use of language may emerge from new or existing theoretical frameworks as well as empirical research into the current use of language across these domains. Our foundation welcomes proposals for conceptual , empirical, and education outreach projects that may include:
· Develompent of new research methodologies to assess the current use of langauge in public discourse about genetic research.
· Qualitative and quantitative empircal projects aimed at understanding how the current use of language has shaped school curricula, employer practices in the area of occupational health ,and public health policies.
· Innovative community educational initiatives that use new language in the promotion of greater understanding of genetic research.
· Innovative initiatives to promote the use new language among genetic researchers when conceptualizing and presenting their research.
· Innovative initiatives to promote the use new language among elected and other public office holders.
Evelyn Fox
Keller
Unpacking the Verbal Dimensions of Common Biological
Nouns:
Consider some examples:
Nature
Nurture
Gene
Organism
Environment
Mind
Self/Identity
Knowledge
Intelligence
The first thing we see is that although these are all nouns, they are very different kinds of nouns. Some refer to (putative) objects or entities, some to properties, some to processes.
Gene, e.g., is presumably an object, but nurture is simply a noun form given to the act(s) of nursing/nurturing. (So too are act and action noun forms given to processes). Let us begin then with those nouns presumably referring to objects or entities. Here too, atg least two distinctions need to be made:
1) objects or entities that exist unto themselves (E.g., atoms) vs. objects or entities that exist only in relation to other objects or entities (e.g., whirlpools).
2) Stable vs. labile objects or entities. E.g., chromosomes vs. microtubules
1. Gene: an object that exists only in relation to other objects or entities. A stretch of DNA has independent existence, but it becomes a gene only in context. What are the verb forms: Gene expression, silencing, splicing, etc. Similarly, gene expression has further verbal dimensions, e.g., regulation, etc..
2. Protein (shift from structure to function. Protein function – linked to (labile) conformations, itself linked to binding. Altered by activity of chaperones.
3. Environment: Shift from what is to what is happening. E.g., signaling.
4. Self/Identity: consolidate; identify or disidentify; differentiate; match; contrast, complement.
5. Knowledge: recognize, know, acknowledge
6. Intelligence: respond; observe; notice; discriminate; grasp; understand
Proposed RFP for Pimental Strategic
Research Networks
Jason Scott Robert and the NewSSC
Research Group
Prospects for the generation of new
knowledge through interdisciplinary research are bounded by a kind of terra
incommunicado where investigators lack the means (financial,
institutional, linguistic, pedagogical) to pursue big research questions that
transcend individual disciplines and individual researchers. There is thus a
need to cultivate research tools that promise new opportunities for
interdisciplinary research and communication. One such tool is the Strategic
Research Network.
Investigator-initiated Strategic Research Networks endeavour to bring together researchers from across disciplinary and institutional boundaries for intensive discussion and debate of selected topics. The topics may be construed as modular elements of big research questions. Pimental SRNs involve invitation-only research meetings held at regular intervals over a three-year period. Participants will generally include members of the Strategic Research Network, internationally renowned scholars, and a range of students and trainees.
Workshops will involve both presentation and discussion of works in progress, as well as a variety of team-building activities and the facilitation of non-traditional creative means of collaboration and communication. While the generation of new knowledge is a primary objective, of equal importance is the acknowledgement of this new knowledge through knowledge transfer and knowledge translation. A three-year timeline is required for the emergence and consolidation of an embodied extended mind within the SRN.
In order for progress within and beyond the boundaries of disciplinary academia, researchers must be afforded both the time and the resources to anticipate, investigate, and respond to emerging challenges in science and its embeddedness in culture. SRNs provide this opportunity both to established researchers but also to the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars and teachers.
Direct funding for each SRN will be capped at US$100,000/year for a minimum of three years.
Dear Evelyn Pimental:
WHEREAS: The Pimental Bioscience Foundation wishes to
establish a funding
niche to encourage new research on the complexities of
development over the
life course;
AND WHEREAS: researchers tend to be embedded in ongoing
projects with
their own momentum, contacts, areas of expertise and
enabling/constraining
networks, such that a certain routinization is
encouraged in the generation
of research, with the consequence that "new"
often means iteration of
familiar methods and questions on similar entities and
problems;
AND WHEREAS: funding agencies are among the
enabling/constraining
networks of working scientists, just as scientists
help constitute the
enabling/constraining networks for the funding
agencies (as illustrated in
fact by the Foundation's invitation to Peter Taylor);
AND WHEREAS: both groups, which have some overlapping personnel,
must
negotiate partially conflicting and partially
congruent demands and needs in
furthering their projects;
AND WHEREAS: my own interest is in maximizing the research utility
of the
developmental systems framework with which I have been
involved;
BE IT HERE PROPOSED: that the Foundation invite proposals for
projects
that treat research as a developmental system, with
processes at many scales
(temporal, psychosocial, political/economic, etc.),
the project goal being
to encourage a more thorough mining of a variety of
nonstandard theoretical
frameworks in developmental research;
BE IT FURTHER PROPOSED: to this end some of the funding would be for
interdisciplinary workshops that include not only
working scientists and
theorists of science, but participants from
appropriate agencies ,
commercial concerns, and environmental and health
regulatory agencies.
Topics that might be included are:
exploration of pragmatic groupings of 'risk factors'
or other developmental
influences, indexed not by apparent similarity (social
factors, toxins,
genotypes, etc.), but by time and kind of impact,
singly and in combination,
on the developing organism;
explicit search for sequence effects among these
factors;
attention to possible alternative pathways and
equivalent influences and
interventions, rather than to root causes and silver
bullets;
. . . all this to be accomplished employing the kinds
of experiential and
collaborative exercises employed at the Woods Hole
workshop, in the
expectation that these will encourage the loosening
and reconstitution of
some of the abovementioned enabling/constraining
networks, returning
constituent metaphors, questions, assumptions and
practices to solution, in
order to allow their recrystallization into different
configurations.
Yours truly, etc
Rasmus Winther
A "Meta-Briefing"
Interdisciplinary Focus Group
Analyzing the Very Possibility of Interdisciplinary Research
Goal:
Without necessarily
suggesting any particular research project, the goal of the group is to discuss
the following aspects of interdisciplinary research:
(1) its preconditions, (2)
its potential dynamics (including strategies and biases), and (3) goals (e.g.,
Klein 1996, Weingart and Stehr 1999). Such discussions would involve
identifying and problem-solving potential risks and pitfalls of such research,
including those stemming from: (1) cultural and linguistic differences and
obstacles (at all levels, from academic subfield to national level), (2)
specific disagreements over preferences of all sorts, including preferences for
allocation of limited resources (e.g., time, skill, money, and sentiment,
Gerson 1976), (3) methodological and conceptual differences among particular
groups.
Method:
Invite 10-15 open-minded
leading researchers from different fields in natural and social sciences,
humanities, engineering, law, medicine, among others. Identification of leading
open-minded researchers can be done by a variety of ways, including exploring
citation indices, searching through popular media to look at those researchers
interested in presenting the work of their discipline, and, most importantly,
informal questioning of researchers in particular fields. (These methods can
themselves be questioned and further explored.) Provide a pleasant space for
3-4 days for this group of people to discuss the very possibility of
interdisciplinary research. Now, methods of identifying and problem-solving
potential risks and pitfalls can include both more traditional methods, such as
individual presentations and distribution of published (and non-published)
research materials as well as innovative/exploratory methods, such as
discussion-heavy "group emergent" dynamics as well as
"participatory theater" and sub-group partial discussions (Taylor,
Nunes).
Apologies. To be continued
http://www.dgp.utoronto.ca/OTP/papers/managing.x.disciplinary/
Mnging.X.Discipl. Research.html
Gerson, E M. 1976. "On
`Quality of Life'". American
Sociological Review, 41, 793-806.
Klein, J.T. Crossing
Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996.
Weingart, P and N. Stehr
(eds.), Practicing interdisciplinarity, University of Toronto Press, Toronto
(1999)