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Date:         Tue, 12 Jan 1993 16:26:00 EST
From:         Charles Bailey <BAILEY@HMIVAX.HUMGEN.UPENN.EDU>
Subject:      Re: being famous, etc

>My central point is that fame in bioscience (if not all science) correlates
>very well with success and productivity, contribution to the scientific world
>and thus to the larger society.  Thus, I believe it should be regarded as a
>very positve attribute, and not disparaged.

One brief comment here - I would guess that much of the controversy over this
question revolves around two notions:

1. 'fame' is a fairly sensitive measure of productivity (i.e. if one is
   'famous' in one's scientific community, then one has likely made a
   significant contribution to that community at some point), but not
   necessarily specific (i.e. the lack of 'fame' does not imply that one is
   a less capable, dedicated, or successful scientist), but may rather reflect
   the popularity of the area in which one works (e.g. what fraction of the
   populace would recognize Francis Collins but not Alfred Knudson?),
   serendipity, association with certain individuals (this often involves
   accusations of editorial bias among journal boards), etc.

2. 'fame' is not necessarily a predictor of future success, although good
   people and dollars often gravitate towards a locus of established repute
   (a non-fundamental force? :-)).  This becomes a particular concern for
   those who are worried by constricting research funding, since they fear
   that the limited resources will become increasingly concentrated in the
   hands of the established, and that this will make it extremely difficult
   for new investigators to become established (absent departure of old
   investigators), or will make establishing oneself unduly dependent on the
   favor of previously established investigators.  I haven't seen much
   evidence of this yet in the US (as opposed to some European systems, where
   such a heirarchy is long established), but it seems a legitimate topic of
   concern.

Politics we will always have with us, and this is not all bad - at the very
least, it provides a means to function as a community, rather than as a
collection of unattached individuals.  On the other hand, the freedom that the
US biomedical funding system presently allows has produced excellent results.
Seems like we can find a way to maintain this, while acknowledging that we have
to work with a limited pool of resources, and that the investigators who have
proven themselves successful may have good advice to offer about utilization of
this pool.

Comments are always welcome; flames to nla0:.  One small request off topic:
could writers please try to use a standard net .sig - name, email address, and
possibly institution - at the end of their posts?  I'm not crusading for
conformity, but my mailer usually scrolls the From: header off the screen by
the time I get to message end, so it's nice to see where the post came from in
the .sig.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU