La universidad y el NSF: problema de todos

Este escrito mio fue publicado el 12 de febrero del 2013 en la sección de ciencias de El Nuevo Día.

Le cambiaron el título y le hicieron algunos cambios menores. Aquí lo incluyo en su versión original

http://www.elnuevodia.com/enriesgolacienciaenpr-1446278.html

La universidad y el NSF: problema de todos
Por Giovanna Guerrero-Medina, Ph.D.

Con la alta criminalidad, el desempleo y el menú de controversias políticas del día, ¿a quién le podría importar un asuntito de científicos? 

De primera instancia, quizás el lector piense que los problemas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR) con la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias (National Science Foundation, NSF) no le conciernen. Pero el problema con la NSF no es un asunto que solo afecta a un puñado de académicos. 

NSF es la principal agencia federal para la investigación científica básica. Los economistas, los químicos, los físicos, los matemáticos y los ecólogos, entre muchos otros profesionales de distintas disciplinas, miran hacia la NSF para apoyar sus proyectos y para darles estabilidad y reconocimiento a sus carreras académicas. 

Además de financiar investigaciones de calibre mundial, la NSF invierte muchísimo en entrenamiento de estudiantes graduados y subgraduados, en edificios e instalaciones de investigación, en salarios para atraer y retener a investigadores, en programas para fomentar la comercialización de tecnologías y en educación científica escolar y para el público general. En fin, los fondos de la NSF apoyan una gran variedad de aspectos y sectores que van mucho más allá de las paredes de los laboratorios. 

En el año fiscal 2010, dos años antes del congelamiento de fondos, la UPR alcanzó un récord en la cantidad de fondos provenientes de la NSF. Sobre $21.8 millones fueron al sistema universitario, de los cuales $19.4 millones fueron otorgados a la Administración Central, el Recinto de Río Piedras y el Recinto de Mayagüez.

Los fondos de la NSF son altamente competitivos –menos del 20% de las propuestas son premiadas después de un riguroso proceso de evaluación–. El recibir fondos de la NSF señala la calidad de los centros académicos y les indica a compañías privadas que en una región hay suficiente talento técnico para abrir fábricas de producción, centros de investigación y desarrollo, y para comercializar propiedad intelectual. Las cantidades de fondos alcanzadas en el 2010 por la UPR comparan favorablemente con las de otras universidades en Estados Unidos y demuestran la calidad y el talento de los investigadores y educadores de este sistema.

Hoy, la UPR está bajo probatoria con la NSF por deficiencias en la contabilidad de tiempo y esfuerzo, una medida que le asegura a la agencia federal que esta pagando exactamente por el trabajo acordado. La suspensión de fondos de la NSF podría tener un impacto abrumador, afectando la economía, el futuro talento laboral y el prestigio, no solo de la UPR, sino de todo Puerto Rico. 

En el ámbito de la economía, el recorte de fondos significaría despidos de personal, quizás el cierre de laboratorios enteros, y la pérdida de dineros “indirectos”, los cuales cubren costos generales de la Universidad, como la luz y el teléfono, que benefician a todos los programas académicos. Como la UPR tomó prestados fondos del Banco Gubernamental de Fomento durante el periodo de probatoria, sin tener confirmación de que la NSF los reembolsaría, los problemas económicos se han amplificado. 

A largo plazo, la suspensión de tantos proyectos de investigación representa una gran pérdida de propiedad intelectual en potencia: tecnologías y descubrimientos que de otra manera podrían servir un día para impulsar la economía de conocimiento de Puerto Rico. 

Aun más preocupante: los fondos de la NSF apoyan la educación de cientos de estudiantes puertorriqueños. El entrenamiento que estos estudiantes reciben tiene gran demanda tanto en el ámbito académico como en empresas privadas. Sin fondos de la NSF, muchísimos científicos boricuas no hubieran podido hacer descubrimientos seminales ni convertirse en profesionales reconocidos. ¿Qué futuro puede tener Puerto Rico si se pierden estas oportunidades de entrenamiento?

Finalmente, la pérdida de fondos de la NSF representaría un gran golpe al prestigio de la UPR en el ámbito de la investigación. El difícil trabajo de atraer y retener talento en las aulas y laboratorios académicos se haría aún más difícil. Ante la amenaza de que la NSF también estará revisando las prácticas de contabilidad de otros programas federales, también existe el riesgo de que este meollo repercuta en recortes de otras agencias federales, fondos que sumaron más de $128 millones en el 2009 para Puerto Rico. 

El problema de la NSF con la UPR es, por tanto, una emergencia a nivel nacional, a la par con la degradación del crédito bancario, excepto que en este caso sería la reputación académica del país la que bajaría de estatus. 

Y lo más trágico es que esto se pudo haber evitado. Los investigadores y estudiantes demostraron su talento y competitividad. Es solo a raíz de la incompetencia administrativa que surge este problema. La administración de la UPR debe considerar seriamente cómo legitimar su relación con la NSF, no solo para beneficio de sus estudiantes e investigadores, sino también para beneficio del pueblo de Puerto Rico que, de seguro, se verá perjudicado. 

La autora tiene un Ph.D. en Neurobiología de la Universidad de Berkeley y trabajó en los National Institutes of Health. Actualmente, es directora de CienciaPR.org.

How Doctors Think-Book Review

Aside from knowing the cellular changes that occur when certain genes are altered, it's amazing that I went through six years of molecular biology grad school and post doc without giving much thought to health and disease... I mean actual health and disease. i.e. what happens in humans, which is not always what happens in fruit flies. I also never gave much thought to my academic cousins, the MDs, who left me to gather dust in academia after their pre-med college requisites had been completed.

While it is relatively easy to find a link between a fruit fly's "symptoms" (or phenotype) and the genetic alteration that you yourself just induced (I do kind-of miss the weird God-like high that comes with that), it is much harder to do the same in humans. For one, human troubles are less likely to come from experimentation ;-). For another, we don't really have access as of yet to good molecular signposts for what is truly wrong biologically--doctors' tools for diagnosis (X-rays, blood work-ups, cultures, MRIs) are still pretty coarse.

Fortunately (and in contrast with flies), humans do have the gift of speech and of describing what ails them. When diagnosing a patient, doctors thus rely heavily on communication with the patient or his family members. They depend on this information to interpret the rough biological measures of what is happening at the organ/tissue level. But then there's communication and communication, and not all doctors have the skills, inclination, time, or mindset to appropriately seek information from the patient and integrate it with biological data. Even when doctors do have all the information they need, they can still make cognitive errors in determining a diagnosis or the best treatment option. Errors might come from lack of experience or from too much experience (biases for common ailments over rare ones), they might come from biases towards the patient or his/her statistical demographics, or they might even come from preferences for procedures that are financially advantageous for the doctor.

These pitfalls of medical practice and others are discussed in Jerome Groopman's book "How Doctor's Think", which is intended as a sort of patient's guide to a doctor's mind. The idea is that by recognizing the areas where doctors might fail, patients might be able to steer their physician into working at their best capacity.

I'm not sure if Dr. Groopman's book has been helpful in patient's lives but, for me, his book explained in detail the pressures on a doctor's mind. It also made me realize the difficulties associated with medical care--few of which have to do with science and technology and most of which have to do with the health care system as well as doctor's personal differences in associating with others. With such complex problems in the "real world", Groopman's book definitely made me appreciate the relative preciseness of science at "the fruit fly level" and the miles we have to go before human medicine is as precise as that.

Microbios Gigantes!

As a follow up to the previous post... If you have been left so fascinated by microbes that you wish you could just hug them, here's your chance: http://www.giantmicrobes.com/


A while ago I gave Salmonella and Lyme Disease to my friend Michelle, and Girardia and an Ulcer to my friend Mo. :-)

And you thought you were alone...

Did you know that we have 10X more bacteria in our gut than cells in our body? That makes me wonder if we are who we think we are. It may be time to rethink the species concept...

Advances in technology usually open doors for the exploration of new and exciting questions and this is certainly the case with advances in genome exploration technology. Thanks to shot-gun sequencing and microarray techniques it is now possible to study the symbiotic interaction between us "higher organisms" and our more numerous cohabitants, the tiny microbes.

Metagenomics, a new and exciting field of research (with an equally catchy name), attempts to study communities of microbes directly in their natural environments (e.g. your gut, your mouth, a patch of dirt, the ocean, etc.). By using modern genome sequencing techniques, metagenomics bypasses the need for lab cultivation of individual species. This is a huge step forward because it is estimated that we have only been able to isolate and culture just 1% of all microorganisms in nature. Metagenomics, thus, offers the chance to identify a wider array of microorganisms than previously possible. This new technology also allows the study of the little buggers in their natural setting (e.g. the complex crevices of your nose) as opposed to the artificial conditions of a petri dish.

This field of study offers so much promise that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the leading biomedical research funding agency in the U.S., has recently announced a new initiative to probe the human microbiome. This ambitious enterprise, which is part of the NIH's Roadmap for Medical Research, will focus on characterizing the populations that our bodies play host to and their role in health and disease.

But microbial populations are not just important for health. Microbe communities are also responsible for maintaining atmospheric balances of CO2, for supporting the health of crops (and in some cases causing their disease), and many types microorganisms produce potential alternative energy sources such as hydrogen, butanol, and methane. Clearly, (and whether we like it or not) these guys make life on this planet what it is and we have only yet begun to understand how it is they do it.

Interested in learning more? The National Academies has recently published a beautiful educational brochure on metagenomics and the importance of studying microbial communities. This brochure is freely downloadable here, where you can also request hardcopies for educational purposes.

Here are also some recent metagenomics publications:

• Metagenomics of the deep mediterranean, a warm bathypelagic habitat. PLoS ONE
• The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition: expanding the universe of protein families. PLoS Biology
• Metabolomics of a superorganism. J Nutrition
• An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest. Nature
• Metagenomic analysis of the human distal gut microbiome. Science
  

Dust in the wind?

Not too long ago, I got into an interesting conversation about science, consciousness, and spirituality. While, I consider myself an atheist because I do not believe in the existence of a god or a higher power, the other person maintained that no one is an atheist unless they are truly a-spiritual, that is, do not believe in any transcendence for the human experience. I interpreted this as more of a question of semantics, but our conversation got me thinking about what I really believe in regarding our place in this world and the meaning of our lives. So, dear imaginary (nonexistent) reader, brace yourself because we will attempt to swim out to the deep end of the pool and explore the outer limits of science, religion, and my humble opinion about the meaning of existence (you may want to grab a floatie).

I have considered myself an atheist since the age of fifteen or sixteen... I'm not really sure how the realization came upon me. I had been raised catholic, though admittedly not very strongly. My father went to church maybe twice or three times a month and considered himself religious but my mother didn't want to have anything to do with the church--she has always been a bit of an activist for the separation of church and state. I had gone through catechism and first communion and remember being inspired at a young age by the stories of Jesus and his kindness and love for his fellow humans. I did not however enjoy mass. Perhaps it was that the priests of my church were not themselves particularly inspiring. They were strict and dogmatic and I did not feel from them the love and kindness that had initially attracted me to religion. Starting in my teens, I began to have increasing doubts and a creeping suspicion that our lives were made of flesh and bone and that everything stopped after we died. I don't know how these thoughts came about. At that age I enjoyed science but I still had not found in it a vocation. I just had a gut feeling, and to be honest it wasn't a very good feeling at all. At night, I would have to push away thoughts about death because the anxiety it produced would not let me fall asleep. Even today I still have to make a conscious effort to withdraw my mind when these considerations start creeping in. I am afraid of death and I have no qualm in admitting it.

So my disbelief in God at a young age came from a "gut feeling", not from a positivist belief that the scientific method is the sole determination of what is real and what is not real. I am OK with this, and on some level I believe that this is the way it should be--personal religious opinions, whatever they may be, separate from science.

Religion and spirituality are not supposed to be held to account with the laws of physics. Because of mysticism, they have an inherent get-out-of-jail free card. For example, Christianity has what are termed "mysteries", i.e. supernatural truths that are unattainable to humans through reason. This is an intrinsic part of faith and it makes it futile to try to apply logic or empiricism to religion (there is no arguing with something that does not accept rational argument).

Also, and at the risk of getting flack from hard-core science champions, it may well be that science will only take us so far in our understanding of the world, our brains creating some sort of biological limit for what may be probed and understood. Although so far there has been no indication that this might be the case, there is the possibility that there might be a reality beyond what we are physically able to discern.

And in terms of the regrettable debate between faith and science, it is definitely best to keep the two separate. Everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe (especially the pastafarians). And even the most devout scientist may still believe in a higher power. My point is that our choice of religious or spiritual belief is valid and is outside of the realm of science even if it is within what some would consider an absolute physical reality...

An absolute physical reality, yet spiritual beliefs? Getting confused? Well so am I, but here's where the thicket of the jungle starts. How can one believe in spirituality if one believes that it is all in one's head so to speak? In other words, what happens when you believe that the experience of existence is nothing more than the product of that wonderful biological fortuity, the brain? What does this mean for spirituality?

I am still mulling these things over and it may take me a while to come up with a rational thesis (at this point you could say that I have a "gut feeling"), so I'll leave these questions open for now....