WHERE LIFE SCIENTISTS WORK

Two thirds of the 12,383 investigators were employed by institutions of higher learning; as shown in Table 7, 14 percent were employed by the federal government, 10 percent by industry, and the remaining 10 percent by a variety of nonprofit organizations—e.g., hospitals, clinics, museums, state and local governments—and a few are self-employed. In a general way, this pattern is relatively independent of the field in which these life scientists were trained (Figure 33). With the exception of horticulturists, those trained in the agricultural sciences are more likely to work for the federal government than those trained in any other scientific area. Of the 68 percent who were trained in the basic biological sciences, biochemists are by far the largest single group, constituting 15 percent of the total population of this study, with microbiologists and physiologists 8 percent and 7 percent of the total, respectively. Although, because of their numbers, these groups are predominant on the faculties of institutions of higher education, biochemists, microbiologists, and pharmacologists are also in great demand outside these institutions. Over 40 percent of those trained in these three disciplines operate in nonacademic environments, with all three unusually well represented in the laboratories of industry.

TABLE 7

Principal Employment of Life Scientists.

FIGURE 33

Type of employment of life scientists, by field of doctoral training. (Source: Survey of Individual Life Scientists, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research in the Life Sciences.)

Of the 17 percent of our population who were originally trained as physicians, one third also obtained Ph.D. degrees. Seventy percent of the M.D.'s are on the faculties of universities, including virtually all the M.D.-Ph.D.'s; rather few research-performing M.D.'s are in industry, but there is unusually high representation in nonprofit institutions, particularly independent hospitals and clinics and public-health organizations. Those trained as physicians constituted 44 percent of the 3,170 reporting members of faculties of medical schools (and these schools corresponded to 39 percent of the total academic population); these were 87 percent of all reporting physicians. The remainder of the medical faculty was drawn largely from among those originally trained in the basic medical sciences; biochemists predominated in this last group (15 percent of the gross total), with major representation also from physiology, microbiology, and pharmacology.

Because of their relatively large total number, those trained in biochemistry are found throughout the system in substantial numbers. Of 1,834 trained biochemists reporting, 59 percent (1,069) were in institutions of higher learning, including 491 in medical schools, 225 on arts and sciences faculties, 126 in agricultural schools, and 37 in liberal arts colleges. Substantial numbers were also found elsewhere: 247 in the federal government, 275 in industry, and 231 in other nonacademic, nonprofit organizations. (The disciplinary designation, “biochemist,” relates only to the field of original doctoral-level training, and not to the area of science in which the scientist is currently working.)

Of the life scientists in our sample employed by institutions of higher learning, slightly less than 5 percent were at liberal arts colleges. Undoubtedly, a much larger fraction of life scientists, particularly botanists and zoologists, are on the faculties of such institutions, but relatively few engage in research on a scale sufficient to have put them within the scope of this study.

The questionnaire addressed to department chairmen yielded an aggregate faculty for all responding departments of 17,172, of whom 3,852 were on faculties of arts and sciences, 3,907 on the faculties of agricultural schools, and 8,915 on the faculties of medical schools. Although the general employment patterns in the two questionnaire files are similar, the discrepancies are of some interest. Whereas 39 percent of all individual respondents were on the faculties of medical schools, 52 percent of the total departmental faculties reported were so employed. To place this in perspective, it should be noted that, of the 1,256 departments represented in the study, 267 are in agricultural schools, 246 in faculties of arts and sciences, and 694 in medical schools. Of the medical departments, 361 were departments of the preclinical and 333 of the clinical segments of medical schools. Undoubtedly, the returns from the chairmen's questionnaire should be taken as a more valid description of the distribution of the faculties of life scientists than that provided by the individual returns.

The 1,689 individual scientists who indicated that they are employed by the federal government appear to represent a large fraction of the senior life scientists in the federal establishment. The major employers of the 1,689 reporting life scientists within the federal establishment are the Departments of Agriculture (36 percent), Health, Education, and Welfare (27 percent), Defense (15 percent), and the Veterans Administration (11 percent). The patterns of employment of scientists in the various biological disciplines reflect the character of the agency missions rather closely. Thus, 84 percent of all those trained in agricultural sciences now in the federal establishment are employed by the Department of Agriculture; 53 percent of all federally employed M.D.'s actively engaged in research work for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; 29 percent of the M.D.'s work in the Veterans Administration; and 18 percent of the M.D.'s work in the Department of Defense.

The disciplinary employment patterns in other areas are repeated in the federal establishment: 32 percent of all federal life scientists were trained in the basic medical sciences, varying from 12 percent in the Department of Agriculture to 55 percent in the Department of Defense. Except for the physicians employed by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and the Veterans Administration and the agronomists employed by the Department of Agriculture, biochemists again constitute the largest single group of scientists in all federal agencies, ranging from 7 percent in the Department of Agriculture to 16 percent in the Department of Defense, 21 percent in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and 26 percent in the Veterans Administration.

An additional 135 scientists were employed in federal contract research centers, which are managed by educational or other nonprofit organizations. State governments employed 229 life scientists (1.8 percent of the grand total), largely in hospitals or state health departments and their laboratories, and approximately half as many life scientists were found in municipally controlled institutions of the same character. A significant number, 462 scientists (3.7 percent of the total), were employed by nonprofit institutes, foundations, and privately controlled museums.

There are no reliable indicators to determine whether the 1,155 individual respondents who indicated that they are employed in industry constitute either a large or a true sample of the total number of senior life scientists employed in that sector of the economy. Seventy-six percent were employed by manufacturing industries; two thirds of these were in the pharmaceutical industry. Again, those trained in the basic medical sciences predominate: 262 biochemists were the largest group, followed by 178 microbiologists and 107 pharmacologists. The low representation of other disciplines among investigators in industry is somewhat disconcerting. For example, only two embryologists, three anatomists, four cell biologists, four ecologists, eight animal pathologists, 10 biophysicists, 13 botanists, and 25 zoologists reported that they were in the employ of some industrial establishment.

Finally, in this regard, it should be remarked that of the 12,151 life scientists responding, 442 had obtained Ph.D.'s in chemistry and 114 in other fields of the physical sciences (about one half in physics), while 105 individuals were originally educated as psychologists. (No questionnaires were sent to individual practicing research psychologists or to the chairmen of either psychiatry or psychology departments.) The employment distribution of these 662 converts to the life sciences among institutions of higher learning, the federal government, industry, and other organizations was much like that of the groups described earlier.

MOBILITY OF LIFE SCIENTISTS

Geographic mobility, so prominently a characteristic of American society, is nowhere more evident than in the scientific community. As shown in Table 8, scientists born in each of the standard census regions can currently be found in each of the other census regions. Presumably, the direction of these migrations is dictated largely by increasing employment opportunities. This is particularly evident in the considerable migration from all other census regions to the Pacific Coast region and the South Atlantic region. Of at least equal interest, however, is the even greater tendency for relocation to regions likely to produce the least “cultural shock.” Not only is there the expected tendency of a substantial fraction of all scientists in all census regions to remain within the states or census regions within which they were born, but the most frequent move from one region to another has been to an adjoining area where life patterns are similar—e.g., from the lower South to the upper South, or within the Midwest.

TABLE 8

Migration Patterns of Life Scientists.

For the entire population of life scientists, the average length of employment in the current position was 9.6 years, with the median 6 to 7 years. Fifty-five percent of all respondents had held at least one previous position with a different employer, quite apart from any number of postdoctoral appointments. The average length of employment in that previous position was 4.7 years, and the median was 3 to 4 years. Although 90.5 percent of all such moves had been made after less than 10 years with the previous employer, employment translocation was reported by some scientists even after as long as 40 years with the initial employer.

The pattern of these moves is of interest in itself. Although institutions of higher learning were the principal source of those who entered the employ of the federal government, private industry, and other organizations, in a general way each employing entity in the system also tended to recruit from other institutions in the same category. For example, 36 percent of all those in private industry had been employed by a different corporation, and 19 percent of those now working for an independent hospital or clinic had previously worked for some other independent hospital or clinic.

Two thirds of those who had moved to an institution of higher learning had come from another such institution. Of the remainder, 13 percent had left the federal government, 5 percent private industry, 5 percent other nonprofit organizations, and 8 percent various other state and community institutions. Perhaps the major surprise in these data is the fact that, ignoring graduate and postdoctorate education, institutions of higher learning appeared to be a net importer of scientific employees. Whereas 1,750 individuals whose previous employers had been nonacademic institutions currently were employed by the universities, only 1,260 individuals currently employed by nonacademic institutions had previously been employed by universities or colleges.

Respondents to the questionnaire were not queried about their motivation in accepting offers of new positions. It may be assumed that these were responses to offers of higher pay, of opportunity to engage in independent research or research under more desirable conditions, or to locate in geographical areas attractive to the families of the scientists concerned.

PREVIOUS EDUCATION OF WORKING LIFE SCIENTISTS

In the foregoing summary, the initial training of working life scientists was categorized in disciplinary terms that are familiar as the titles of academic departments and that are employed in most statistical collections. However, the reader who has considered earlier chapters will have recognized that these conventional subdisciplinary titles have, in considerable measure, lost their meaning and convey false distinctions. Whereas biochemists were formerly concerned largely with elucidation of metabolic maps, they may today be concerned with macromolecular structure, the chemistry of cell-cell recognition, or the phenomena responsible for atherosclerosis. Not so long ago, microbiologists were overwhelmingly concerned with the taxonomy of microbiological forms, yet today they may be concerned with genetic mechanisms or the nature of the immune response to invasion by some specific organism. Hematologists, who only yesterday were describing changes in the morphology of blood cells in leukemia as seen with a light microscope, are now intimately involved in understanding the manner in which nucleic acids control the differentiation process among white blood cell types. Physiologists, who formerly engaged in studies of the mechanics of muscular contraction or morphological changes induced by steroid hormones, are today inquiring into mechanisms of transmembranal transport or the molecular events by which steroid hormones affect protein biosynthesis in receptor cells. Botanists, once engaged in taxonomic studies or in gross plant physiology, are today concerned with the phenomena by which plants interact with other organisms and with their environment, the cardinal aspects of ecology, while zoologists may be concerned with all those aspects of the environment that have favored rapid proliferation of new species in one set of circumstances or remarkably prolonged survival, unchanged, of other species, studies that embrace all aspects of ecology, genetics, biochemistry, and physiology. Even more dramatic have been the changes in the character of research in clinical medicine, pathology, and pharmacology. Investigators in these areas have learned to use the most recent developments in understanding such phenomena as protein structure, enzyme kinetics, transmembranal transport, neural transmission, immunochemistry, viral reproduction, lipid metabolism, and behavioral genetics as they explore disease mechanisms in man or animals, design and test new drugs, or prepare a patient for organ transplantation. And their laboratories cannot be distinguished from those of other scientists so engaged.

Because of these rapidly evolving and profound trends, it appeared desirable to reconsider individual scientists, not under classical disciplinary labels, but in relation to the nature of the research conducted during their initial formal education in graduate school and in relation to the research in which they are currently engaged. That two individuals are studying cellular structure and function is more significant than that one considers himself a zoologist and the other a botanist. The plant pathologist may have more in common with an animal pathologist than with a plant taxonomist, and similar considerations are obvious for plant and animal physiologists, or for plant, animal, and microbial geneticists, for example.

Thus, we have found it useful to recategorize life sciences research into the following dozen classifications:

Behavioral biology

Cell biology

Developmental biology

Disease mechanisms

Ecology

Evolution and systematic biology

Genetics

Molecular biology and biochemistry

Morphology

Nutrition

Pharmacology

Physiology

It will be evident that even these categories are somewhat arbitrary and are by no means mutually exclusive. They fail to make clear the fact that biochemistry, a research area itself, is also the common language and the tool for almost every other entry in the classification scheme. However, the questions being asked of nature by scientists within each category are sufficiently distinct to permit self-identification by our respondents, while providing a more revealing description of the life sciences endeavor than that offered by more traditional disciplinary titles.

Tables 9 and 10 summarize the current research areas of some of our respondents, comparing their current areas of involvement with the disciplines and research areas in which they had been trained as graduate students. As a consequence of an awkwardness in the design of the layout of the printed questionnaire, almost a quarter of all respondents failed to provide information concerning the research fields, as here categorized, in which they had been trained and in which they are currently engaged. However, as indicated in Appendix A, it appears fair to assume that the patterns revealed by those who did not overlook this question are representative of the total.

TABLE 9

Comparison of Current Research Areas with Areas of Most Recent Ph.D. or D.Sc. Degree.

TABLE 10

Comparison of Current Research Area with Disciplines in Which Life Scientists Were Trained.

As indicated by the diagonal of Table 9, current research in any given area is conducted predominantly by individuals who were trained in that area, varying from 49 percent of those currently engaged in behavioral biology to 85 percent of those working in genetics. Equally impressive, however, is the degree of intellectual migration among research fields. Thus, 48 percent of all those trained in morphology are now engaged in some other area, as are 39 percent of those originally trained in cell biology, 33 percent of those trained in developmental biology, and 30 percent of those trained in physiology. Maximum field retention was found among those trained in pharmacology, ecology, genetics, and molecular biology and biochemistry. Perhaps the most striking fact shown by the table is that every possible crossover was reported. Noteworthy, too, are the fields that, on balance, have either attracted more investigators than they have lost, or vice versa. The “gainers” include molecular biology and biochemistry, behavioral biology, cellular biology, disease mechanisms, ecology, and pharmacology. The most significant “losers,” in absolute numbers rather than percentages, were genetics, morphology, nutrition, and physiology, with developmental biology and systematic biology remaining approximately in balance.

Many biologists currently consider that there has been a rapid growth in the opportunities for fruitful studies in behavioral and developmental biology and in ecology. But these data indicate that, although there has been some modest influx into these fields, it is not yet particularly striking, although graduate enrollments have been affected in the predicted directions. Moreover, the changes are generally immediately lateral in the sense that most of those who have changed research areas have moved into areas in which they can apply the skills and insights of their primary training. This is most certainly the case for the 184 of 287 individuals who left molecular biology and biochemistry to enter upon studies in cellular biology, disease mechanisms, pharmacology, or physiology, as it must also be true for the 317 individuals who left physiology to enter other biological categories.

Only 741 scientists were sufficiently certain of their plans to change research areas in the future to so indicate. And again, the planned changes were, in the main, relatively conservative (Table 11) and into closely related areas, e.g., molecular biology to genetics, genetics to molecular biology, physiology to pharmacology, botany to ecology. Molecular biology will be the chief gainer (19 percent of all who plan to change), largely from cellular biology and physiology. However, it will lose a slightly larger number (20 percent), mainly to cell biology, developmental biology, and disease mechanisms. Disease mechanisms attracts the second largest group (15 percent), largely from among those now engaged in cellular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, while developmental biology also seems attractive to those in the same group of research areas (12 percent). The survey revealed a particularly interesting trend. Some ecologists indicated plans to enter behavioral biology, while a significant number of physiologists and students of disease were seriously considering switching to ecology.

TABLE 11

Projected Research Areas of Some Life Scientists.

Moreover, the perhaps not unexpected conservative migratory pattern is again evident from the responses of life scientists who intended to change the biological material with which they were working. In a general way, those now seriously contemplating such a change are, in the main, thinking of switching either to the next higher or the next lower level of biological organization, e.g., from broken cell preparations to cells or tissue culture or to molecular systems; or from intact organs to either intact organisms or cellular preparations.

Table 12 relates research areas to the principal employers of the 8,139 individuals for whom such information is available. Of this subset, institutions of higher learning employed 68 percent, the federal government 14 percent, industry 9 percent, and all other nonprofit organizations, hospitals, etc., 9 percent. Noteworthy are the high levels of employment by the federal government of those studying ecology and disease mechanisms; the government shows much less interest in developmental biology, morphology, and pharmacology. Private business employs an unusually high fraction of all nutritionists and pharmacologists, but appears to have little interest in ecology, systematic biology, or morphology.

TABLE 12

Distribution of Investigators in Various Research Areas by Principal Employer.

A small insight into the changing dynamics of the life sciences is provided by observation of the fraction of the total population within each research area under 34 years of age. This fraction is remarkably close to 21 percent for virtually all research areas, with a few interesting exceptions. Only 11 percent of those engaged in the study of disease mechanisms are within this age group, presumably reflecting the long period of residency training for physicians. In contrast, 23 percent of those in developmental biology and 28 percent of those in molecular biology and biochemistry were under the age of 34 at the time of this survey, indicating that in the recent past these two fields, as compared with the other research areas, have become increasingly attractive to young scientists. Only 18 percent of all those attracted into the life sciences from the physical sciences were within this age group, indicating that there has been no dramatic upsurge of interest in the life sciences among young chemists or physicists.

The reverse situation is in accord with the same suggestions. For the entire population, 18 percent were 50 years of age or older, but only 12 percent of those in molecular biology and biochemistry fell within that age range, in contrast with 25–28 percent in the areas of disease mechanisms, evolutionary and systematic biology, morphology, and nutrition.

Of some interest are the attributes of the group of investigators originally trained only as M.D.'s or in the other health professions. They are older, with only 15 percent under 34 years of age, but 42 percent within the age span 40–49. Logically, disease mechanisms constitute their principal single interest (27 percent of the total), but they are also represented in every other research area with the exception of systematic biology, major interests being physiology (22 percent), molecular biology and biochemistry (15 percent), cellular biology (9 percent), and pharmacology (8 percent).

The 456 women showed only a few distinct tendencies to differ from the distribution of the men. Women tended to avoid physiology, ecology, and systematic and behavioral biology, and 28 percent of all female respondents work in molecular biology and biochemistry.

POSTDOCTORAL TRAINING

Prior to World War II, postdoctoral research training experience was a privilege granted very few young scientists. Fellowships were scarce, and only the most highly talented could aspire to such opportunity. Since available research grants were decidedly limited in size, few senior academic investigators commanded the means to support eligible new M.D.'s or Ph.D.'s desirous of embarking upon the apprentice training characteristic of the postdoctoral experience. That situation no longer obtains. Postdoctoral experience has become almost the norm rather than the exception, and we are entirely convinced that this is in the national interest.

However, the situation has given rise to concern among those less closely associated with research in these disciplines. For example, agencies that provide support for postdoctoral training are uncertain of its value. Educational institutions in which postdoctoral fellows abound are uncertain of their institutional responsibility for this enterprise. Institutions that, perhaps until 1969, have had difficulty in recruiting sufficient staff to meet teaching obligations—largely the four-year colleges and junior colleges, but also a significant number of medical schools, as well as industry and some federal laboratories—have complained that the postdoctoral system is a holdup in the pipeline that, in the steady state, keeps a substantial number of bright young investigators out of the regular job market. We appreciate these problems, but consider that the benefits of postdoctoral education far outweigh these transient difficulties. Let us consider here the postdoctoral training experience of our responding population of life scientists. In the following chapter there is a summary of the numbers and activities of postdoctoral fellows in training in 1967–1968, as well as an analysis of the contribution of postdoctoral education to the operation of the entire endeavor.

Of the 12,151 investigators in the study, 5,041 had had at least one postdoctoral appointment, including 1,402 M.D.'s who had had postdoctoral experience in which research was their major responsibility. Three fourths of those who had had postdoctoral experience are now in academic life. Indeed, 45 percent of the 8,143 scientists now employed by universities had enjoyed postdoctoral experience, compared with 21 percent of the scientists in industry and 31 percent of those in the federal establishment. Taken across all disciplines, postdoctoral experience somewhat enhances the opportunity for employment in the federal government and markedly enhances the opportunity for employment in the universities. It is our impression that in universities with major commitments to graduate education and research, measured in supporting dollars and number of graduate students, faculty appointments for individuals who have not had postdoctoral experience are probably rare indeed. According to a National Academy of Sciences study of postdoctorals,^* 74 percent of all new appointees to the rank of instructor or assistant professor in 21 departments of biological sciences in 10 “leading” institutions either came from other university faculties or had just held postdoctoral appointments.

However, the trend to postdoctoral education is not universal across all biological fields. For example, of the 855 individuals with graduate training in agricultural fields, only 35 had had postdoctoral appointments. In contrast, postdoctoral training was commonplace among M.D.'s since it has become the conventional medium for obtaining research training among this group.

As shown in Table 13, postdoctoral training was less frequent among botanists (29 percent) than among biochemists (53 percent), with the other disciplines ranging in between. Postdoctoral training was frequently taken in fields other than those in which scholars had their initial doctoral experience. Thus, of the zoologists and botanists who did take postdoctoral training, less than half did so in zoology and botany departments. Again, the biochemists appear as the other extreme. Not only did a larger fraction of biochemists than other life scientists take postdoctoral training, but a decidedly larger fraction remained within biochemistry for their postdoctoral experiences. Since an additional 540 individuals who had taken their original graduate education in fields other than biochemistry sought postdoctoral training in biochemistry, postdoctoral education is a major aspect of life in biochemistry departments. Large numbers of those trained in biochemistry in graduate school later work in other disciplinary areas, while many individuals enrich their original disciplinary education by a one- or two-year postdoctoral experience in biochemistry and then, when they become independent investigators, return to their original disciplines and research areas or enter yet other research areas.

TABLE 13

Postdoctoral Experience of Scientists in a Limited Group of Biological Disciplines.

These data uphold one of the primary arguments in support of the trend toward postdoctoral experience as a normal component of the education of those who later will espouse careers in which research is a major activity, viz., that this constitutes a unique opportunity to broaden one's horizons, learn new techniques, and become familiar with the style of other subdisciplines, while profiting by the examples of different master scientists. The overall situation is reflected in the totals of Table 13. Of 5,765 Ph.D.'s in this file, 2,395 undertook postdoctoral experience, of whom 1,463, or 61 percent, extended their experience in the same disciplines in which they had studied in graduate school. But the impression that postdoctoral experience is a continuation of graduate education in 61 percent of all cases is misleading, since it is weighted by the fact that more than half of all of those who did experience this continuation were biochemists. If the biochemists are excluded, only 50 percent of the remaining scientists who undertook postdoctoral training did so in their graduate disciplines. Moreover, such an experience is but rarely a mere continuation of graduate education. This is borne out by the following consideration: In a subfile of 3,234 postdoctoral fellows, only 14 percent had taken postdoctoral education in the same university in which they had obtained their doctoral degrees, and only 6 percent in the same departments that had awarded their doctoral degrees. This migratory pattern is particularly evident among the M.D. population. However, about one third of all Ph.D.'s in agriculture and forestry who undertook their postdoctoral training—a rather small group—did so in their original universities and, indeed, in the departments that had awarded their degrees. The rather small proportion of students who remained in the same department for postdoctoral study was almost twice as great in public universities as in private universities.

In sum, it is clear that the norm for postdoctoral experience, by a wide measure, consists of apprenticeship to a different set of investigators in an environment different from that in which graduate education has been completed. Further, in the experience of our panelists, the current internal heterogeneity of the classical disciplines assured that even the postdoctoral trainee who remains within his original discipline is likely to engage in a problem remote from his graduate research experience. The biochemist who studied intermediary metabolism may later become preoccupied with the mechanism of enzyme action; the physiologist who traced neural pathways as a graduate student may focus upon ion transport across the nerve membrane during his postdoctoral years. The botanist who was concerned with nutritional requirements for plant growth may later become involved in the ecology of a cornfield, while the entomologist concerned with patterns of insect distribution may switch to a study of insect sex attractants. Intellectual inbreeding is rare in the life sciences community, and the postdoctoral experience is among the chief means of assuring the hybrid vigor of the entire enterprise.

A few notes comparing the bioscience subculture with the subcultures of the physical and social sciences may be warranted. The data in support of the following statements are derived largely from the recent National Research Council study of postdoctoral education, The Invisible University.^*

In the nation's leading academic institutions, postdoctoral experience has become the expected prelude to faculty appointment. In recent times, 70 to 80 percent of all initial faculty appointments at such institutions in physics, in chemistry, in biology departments of faculties of arts and sciences, and in the preclinical departments of medical schools have been made to individuals with postdoctoral experience either at the same or at some other institution. In contrast, initial faculty appointments in the social sciences, the humanities, and engineering relatively rarely require postdoctoral experience. The play of the academic marketplace is such that the frequency of postdoctoral experience among initial appointees to the faculty decreases with the general academic status of the institution. Postdoctoral experience is less frequent among the faculties of “developing” universities, is rare for scientists who are appointed to the faculties of liberal arts colleges, and is even less common among those who enter industry.

The converse is equally evident; 30 to 40 percent of all relatively young faculty at all universities who have not had postdoctoral experience feel this lack in their current professional lives. In all branches of natural science, promotion up the academic ladder occurs somewhat less rapidly for those who have not had postdoctoral experience, although this may reflect similar appraisal of human potential by the committees who select postdoctoral-fellowship recipients and those who recommend academic promotions, rather than the intellectual rewards of postdoctoral study. These trends are undoubtedly enhanced by the advice given to aspiring scientists by their mentors in graduate school, who strongly urge students in the natural sciences to undertake postdoctoral experience if they aspire to academic careers but rarely do so when this is not the case. In general, such mentors recommend a postdoctoral experience of about two years, with a specific senior scientist in a field somewhat different from that in which the student's dissertation research was conducted, thereby broadening his understanding of his discipline. When queried, postdoctoral students advance the same general purpose as their reason for undertaking postdoctoral study, but place more emphasis than do their graduate mentors upon the acquisition of additional research techniques.

Attempts by statistical means to assess the influence on subsequent scientific productivity of postdoctoral training are not revealing. Differences among those who took postdoctoral training immediately after graduate school, those who deferred such training for several years, and those who had no such training are trivial when measured by counting numbers of scientific publications, reviews, books written, and similar measures. What cannot be assessed by this means is the quality of the work or its significance to the field. One indicator has been reported in The Invisible University ^*: the fact that papers published by those who have had postdoctoral experience are cited about twice as frequently in the Citation Index^† as are papers by those who have not had such experience. Statistically, frequency of citation of a paper is some measure of its significance or fundamentally. It is our contention that, in all scientific fields, scientific boldness—willingness to venture beyond the frontier or to undertake large and challenging problems—is established relatively early. Certainly, if this is not encouraged in graduate school or in the immediate postdoctoral years, it is rarely evident in subsequent careers. But statistical assessment of this all-important quality is not readily feasible; hence, the enhanced opportunity to develop such habits of mind is another argument that we would advance in support of a year or two of postdoctoral study, preferably not in the same institution or with the same mentor that provided the graduate experience.

Data purporting to compare the consequences of graduate or postdoctoral study in the 10 or 20 leading academic institutions with those in other institutions are probably not completely valid. The selection process that operates at the level of admission to graduate school and then to postdoctoral study in the most productive academic laboratories already serves as a screen almost sufficient to assure the ultimate outcome. It is not readily possible to distinguish between the consequences of differences in the quality of the educational experiences in such institutions and the consequences of the quality of the initial human input. Certainly it must be undeniable that those most highly qualified will benefit most from a stimulating environment in which science is being conducted at its outermost frontiers.

EDUCATIONAL LIMITATIONS

An attempt was made to estimate the extent to which working life scientists sense deficits in the educational preparation for their careers. Respondents to the questionnaire were asked to state whether their current research programs are significantly limited by their own educational preparation in chemistry, mathematics, physics, electronics, statistics, other areas of the life sciences, or the use of computers. In all, 4,396 scientists, 30.6 percent of the entire responding population, indicated that full development of their current research effort is indeed very seriously hindered by insufficient personal training in one or more of these disciplines. Lack of knowledge of chemistry was most frequently felt to be limiting (1,766 individuals), followed by computer science (1,569), mathematics (1,427), statistics (1,136), other biological sciences (1,085), and electronics (983), with only 498 life scientists acutely aware of insufficient personal training in physics.

Scientists in academic institutions were not distinguished from those working in nonacademic institutions with respect to this pattern of perceived inadequacies, although 38 percent of academic personnel were aware of some such limitation, and only 30 percent of nonacademic scientists were. In both groups, those in the middle of the age range (35–50 years) were about 30 percent more likely to be aware of such deficits than were younger or older investigators. Again, however, age was essentially without influence on the pattern of perceived disciplinary insufficiency; the rank order of disciplines cited above for the entire population was characteristic of the youngest, oldest, and midrange investigators alike.

WITH WHAT MATERIALS DO LIFE SCIENTISTS WORK?

The panorama of the biological universe offers such remarkable and diverse organisms, ecological situations, environmental responses, and unanswered questions at levels varying from the molecular to the cosmic that it is not surprising that research biologists employ an almost equally disparate and diverse variety of approaches to the questions they put to nature. In Table 14 is displayed a representation of primary research materials and the extent to which these are utilized by those who work in various biological research areas.

TABLE 14

The Research Materials of Life Scientists.

It may come as a surprise to some that mathematical models are utilized by representatives of almost every research area, most frequently by those engaged in the study of physiology, molecular biology and biochemistry, genetics, or biophysics and, increasingly, in studies of ecology. Molecular models are to be found in virtually every biochemical laboratory, and the refined, precise models now available have become an extremely important tool for those seeking to relate molecular structure to biological function. Indeed, 46 individuals stated that such models constitute their primary materials.

It was somewhat surprising to find 6 percent of the entire surveyed population engaged primarily in the development of analytical procedures of various types. Study of molecular systems, utilizing highly purified materials of natural origin, engaged 10 percent of the total population, including one third of the biochemists. A somewhat greater proportion of life scientists were studying the behavior of subcellular organelles, isolated or in situ. Such materials are utilized by scientists, except the ecologists, in all research areas and, as one might expect, are a principal preoccupation of cell biologists and biochemists. A small proportion (3 percent) of our population, most notably the cell biologists, were learning to use disassociated preparations of living cells, from either plant or animal sources, as primary tools in their studies. Tissue culture was twice as popular and was utilized by at least some scientists, including behavioral biologists, in every research area, while intact tissues and organs claimed the attention of 12 percent of the total population, involving all research categories except ecology—most notably morphologists, pharmacologists, physiologists, and developmental biologists.

Intact individual organisms were the test objects of one third of all life scientists in the study, notably the behavioral biologists and those studying disease mechanisms, ecology, systematic biology, genetics, nutrition, pharmacology, and physiology. Decidedly smaller numbers of scientists addressed themselves to entire populations of organisms or to ecosystems.

Of interest is the fact that the pattern of use of materials by those with original training in the health professions cannot be distinguished from that of the remainder of the population; their primary research materials simply reflect the pattern of all others in the research areas in which they now engage. Accordingly, their major research materials are whole organisms (32 percent), tissue and organ systems (23 percent), subcellular fractions (13 percent), cell cultures (8 percent), and molecular systems (9 percent).

Within each research area a few individuals are engaged in comparative studies either within a single phylum or plant division or across several phyla or plant divisions. Although students of evolution and systematic biology were the most numerous such group, these were only 44 of the 123 individuals so engaged.

WITH WHAT SPECIES DO LIFE SCIENTISTS WORK?

The diversity of living nature never fails to astonish. The workings of evolution have resulted in millions of distinct species of living forms, unicellular, plant, and animal, all located in the thin web of life, which is a film on the surface of our planet. These are the objects of study for life scientists. But which species should one study? The answer depends upon the question that has been raised. Some species are of interest because they are the basis of our agricultural economy. Some make the world more beautiful and exciting; some cause disease of man, plant, or animal. Sometimes even the most obscure species provide excellent models for study of complex biological phenomena. And surely a proper object for study by man is man himself! Thus there are valid reasons for the study of a great variety of species.

Some species are of interest because they are intermediate links in a food chain, because they survive under what appear to be improbable conditions, or because they represent evolutionary extremes. Still others are of interest because they offer unique opportunities to study phenomena of general importance but difficult to analyze or observe in more common species. For example, the nerve net of the crab is of interest as a prototype of the more complex nervous system of the mammal; the response of certain insects to sugars can serve as a model for some aspects of the physiological bases of behavior; the “alarm reaction” of the clam is highly instructive with respect to certain reflex activities; the photosynthetic properties of the chromatophores of purple bacteria and of certain algae are more readily studied than is photosynthesis in a higher plant; regulation of the genome of a bacterium serves as a model for the process of differentiation in a higher organism; and the giant axon of the squid is the favorite test object of numerous neurophysiologists. Nutritionists long since seized on the omnivorous white rat as a model for human nutritional requirements, but primates may be more instructive with respect to human behavior or reaction to disease. The pig offers a surface area and mass somewhat comparable to that of man, and thus should serve as a model for human response to radiation. Comparison of the properties of hemoglobins from a wide variety of species elucidates those properties of the hemoglobin molecule that are imperative to its physiological function, and frog muscle has taught us much of what we understand of muscle physiology and its molecular aspects. The list is well-nigh endless.

And so it is that life scientists continue to study or exploit the properties of a great diversity of organisms. In a highly compressed form, this is displayed in Table 15. Each of the respondents to the questionnaire was given a choice of 58 genera, phyla, or larger divisions of the plant, animal, and microbial kingdoms and was asked to indicate no more than two that most closely described the objects of his study. Hence, the number of specific responses exceeded the number of respondents. But hundreds of investigators indicated that necessarily and properly they should indicate more than two such entries.

TABLE 15

Biological Materials Studied by Life Scientists.

Perhaps the aggregated totals are of greatest interest: 21 percent of all scientists dealt with one or another micro-organism, 15 percent with plant forms, and 54 percent with animal forms. None of the categories of living forms was totally ignored by the current activities of life scientists but, clearly, some are more attractive than others. Viruses and bacteria are the concern of scientists in each research area, particularly those who study disease mechanisms, cell biology, and molecular biology and biochemistry. Lower plants engage the attention of all but the nutritionists and pharmacologists, while higher plants attract the attention of all but the pharmacologists. Invertebrates are of great interest to the ecologists and the systematists as well as to the behavioral biologists, who see in them models for the behavior of more advanced forms. Surprisingly little attention is being given to the species of fish that dominate our commercial harvests, whereas other fish, amphibia, reptiles, and birds are receiving greater attention. Of the mammalia, man and the common laboratory rodents are the most frequent study objects. The great utility of the latter is indicated by the fact that, whereas ecologists and systematic biologists pay them scant heed and only 6 percent of all geneticists make use of their particular attributes, these species are utilized by 12 percent of the behavioral biologists and 37 percent of the pharmacologists. Domestic mammals, i.e., cats and dogs, are particularly useful to the physiologists, pharmacologists, nutritionists, and morphologists and are used to some degree by almost all other groups.

Although 5 percent of all behavioral biologists and 4 percent of the morphologists report that they work with small primates, primates are little used by workers in other scientific areas. However, there is reason to think that this reflects not the utility of these species, but the great costs involved in their acquisition and maintenance, which have inhibited, if not prohibited, their utilization for a variety of studies in which they could be extraordinarily useful.

In contrast, millions of species currently go unstudied, and many others are under scrutiny by only one or two investigators. When, from time to time, such an investigator directs attention to some unique or remarkable attribute of a seemingly esoteric species, it can rapidly claim the attention of many other scientists, an incident that has recurred many times in the past. Thus, the bacterium Escherichia coli has become the most thoroughly studied of all cells, while both neurophysiologists and molecular biologists have recently seized upon the tiny marine organism Aplysia because of its easily studied giant nerve cells. In any case, the diversity of species under study demands an equal diversity of laboratory accommodations for their culture or maintenance. This may engender substantial expenditures and contribute much to the cost of scientific investigation, particularly in extreme instances. Elaborate facilities are required for the conduct of research employing cells in culture. Inadequate accommodations, overcrowding, or infestation can render a colony of dogs or rodents useless to the investigator and give rise to misleading data. Humane considerations demand that larger domestic mammals—cats, dogs, and primates—be housed in decent quarters, be wellnourished, and be subjected to the minimum of trauma commensurate with the purposes of study. This in turn creates further serious financial requirements, which should be borne by some institutional mechanism and not met by taking funds from personal research grants made to individual investigators. Certain plants and animals require carefully controlled environments; a continuing supply of virus may require a colony of host animals, a large-scale fermentor, or a large tissue-culture facility. Most importantly, all these demand substantial expenditures merely to assure a supply of the biological entity to be studied before the research proper can be undertaken.

WHAT FACILITIES AND TOOLS DO LIFE SCIENTISTS USE?

The classic image of the biologist is an aging gentleman, wrapped in a dirty laboratory apron, in a musty laboratory surrounded by museum jars, an ancient, battered microscope, staining jars for microscope slides, and perhaps an unwashed dissecting table. If that image ever corresponded to reality, it no longer does. As the questions we ask of nature become more sophisticated and the information we seek becomes more remote from that which we can acquire with our naked senses, the requirements for the conduct of research in the life sciences become more complex. Today, in order to achieve his ends, the investigator may have to travel thousands of miles from his home base, armed with telemetering equipment, tape recorders, or remote sensors. He may require a floating laboratory, a deep-submersible vessel, a reconnaissance plane, or even a satellite equipped with infrared sensors. He may utilize the gadgetry of modern biochemistry— ultracentrifuges, equipment for optically following the course of kinetic processes on the scale of milliseconds or of molecular-relaxation times (10⁻⁹ sec), for the quantitation of visible or ultraviolet light or radioactivity. His laboratory may be what amounts to a small electronics plant equipped with the complex electronic apparatus needed for the study of neurophysiology, and his experiment may be guided by an on-line computer. Increasingly, the tools of any biological subdiscipline tend to become the tools in many other areas of biology. As we have noted repeatedly, this is particularly true of the tools of the biochemist, which have become the tools of all biologists.

Specialized Biological Research Facilities

Table 16 summarizes the replies from respondents whose completed questionnaires usefully indicated their utilization of specialized research facilities. The spectrum of such activity is broad indeed. For example, we were surprised at the high rate of utilization of controlled field areas, which seemingly are employed by participants in each of the research areas. Computer centers are available to and utilized by a strikingly high fraction of all life scientists, and general animal care facilities appear to be utilized by almost half the scientists covered by our survey. Indeed, it is difficult to correlate specific types of facilities with specific research areas. Notable exceptions include the 87 percent of all systematists and 44 percent of ecologists who utilized taxonomic research collections, the 51 percent of cell biologists who employed cell- or tissue-culture facilities, and the 76 percent of all pharmacologists who made use of general animal care facilities. The existence of the specialized facilities listed here was known to the Survey Committee, but the extent of use was not anticipated.

TABLE 16

Utilization of Specialized Biological Research Facilities.

Rarely can the cost of acquisition and maintenance of such facilities be justified by the research program of a single investigator; hence, no small or medium-sized institution can hope to have a complete selection of these opportunities for conduct of research. This has the effect of either limiting the capabilities of the staff of such institutions or so affecting their recruitment patterns that, at each institution, there are clusters of investigators whose research requires easy access to the same major research facility. For smaller institutions, this fact, in turn, may well prevent the assembly of a staff broadly representative of biology.

Major Instruments

Table 17 displays the utilization of major instruments by life scientists during 1966–1967. Like Table 16, this table is limited to those respondents whose replies to the questionnaire were found adequate to the purpose. And, as in Table 16, what is impressive is the extent of use of the wide variety of instruments listed and the relative amount of use without regard to specific research areas, again with a few notable exceptions. This table well illustrates how the tools developed for biochemical studies have become the tools of biology in general; this is evident in the use pattern of centrifuges, gas chromatographs, amino acid analyzers, scintillation counters, infrared and ultraviolet spectrophotometers, as well as electrophoresis apparatus. These common tools of the biochemical laboratory are now the common tools of the biological laboratory. Specialized uses of instruments will, however, be found in the table. For example, large-scale fermentors are used largely by biochemists; multichannel recorders are required by physiologists and pharmacologists; small special computers by physiologists. Biochemists are pioneering in the use of ultrasonic probes, and electron paramagnetic resonance and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, as well as instruments for measuring circular dichroism. The physiologists are the major users of infrared carbon dioxide analyzers, and the clinicians interested in disease mechanisms utilize complex electronic systems for monitoring human physiology, while systematists use telemetry and sensitive tape recorders.

TABLE 17

Utilization of Instruments by Life Scientists.

The utilization of the electron microscope is particularly revealing. This instrument, slowly introduced into biological laboratories in the years following World War II, is now used by investigators in every research area. In absolute numbers, those interested in molecular biology and biochemistry, cellular biology, disease mechanisms, and physiology are the principal users. But 48 percent of all those studying morphology and 44 percent of those studying cellular biology made use of this instrument. The great expense of acquisition and maintenance of these instruments prevents the figures for utilization from approximating 100 percent of those in both of the latter research areas.

One should not leave the subject of instruments without a tribute to the instrument-manufacturing industry. This highly competitive industry has frequently been a jump ahead of most life scientists. In general, instrument manufacturers have recognized needs and potential uses before the scientific community has. Yet, as each instrument has become available—e.g., ultraviolet spectrophotometers, electrophoresis apparatus, scintillation counters, electron microscopes, and multichannel recorders—not long thereafter the scientists involved have wondered how they had ever made progress before these commercial instruments became available. As the markets grow, the instruments become more refined, more reliable, and more versatile, thereby enormously enhancing the reliability, sophistication, and ease of performance of biological research. The availability of such instruments has been made possible by the very scale of federal support of the life sciences. By creating a sufficient market, the manufacturer has, in turn, been able to achieve economies of large-scale production, keeping the unit cost and sales price down. (It is ironic that, although the electron microscope was developed by an American firm, and this country is the major market for this instrument, no American manufacturer now supplies it.)

Nor should we fail to acknowledge our debt to our brethren in physics, chemistry, and engineering. From them came the electron microscope, spectrophotometers, the electron paramagnetic and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, ultrasonic gear, the great variety of oscilloscopes, x-ray crystallographic analysis systems, the laser, telemetry, and a host of other devices. To their designers and developers, the biological community extends its gratitude.

THE RESEARCH GROUP

Research in the life sciences is “small science”; only rarely is it organized around some very large and expensive piece of apparatus or facility. Whereas much research in other areas of science revolves about large accelerators, research vessels, telescopes, balloon-launching facilities, rocket facilities, or large magnets, for example, there are few parallels in the life sciences. Occasional exceptions include relatively elaborate hyperbaric facilities, primate colonies, colonies of germ-free animals, phytotrons or biotrons, biosatellites, museums, or marine-biology stations. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule, and even in these instances, the facilities in question are actually utilized by numbers of small research groups, each pursuing its own questions in its own way, while taking advantage of the availability of the facilities. In very few instances have the various groups that, collectively, used such a facility comprised a coordinated whole with common goals and objectives. The functional unit of research in the life sciences, therefore, usually consists of a principal investigator and the postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and technicians who work with him. According to data collected by the Study of Postdoctoral Education of the National Academy of Sciences,^* the mean such research group, in addition to the faculty member, is 6.1 members in academic biology departments, 7.6 in biochemistry departments, 5.3 in physiology departments, and 4.0 in clinical specialties. These may be compared with 5.8 members in physics and 8.3 in chemistry. When, however, research groups without postdoctoral are considered, these units are distinctly smaller, receding to 4.6, 3.9, and 4.0 in biology, biochemistry, and physiology, respectively, and 3.2 and 5.2 in physics and chemistry.

This scale of operation was borne out by reports from the individual investigators surveyed in the study. For all principal investigators, the mean was 6.5 persons per research group, in addition to the principal investigator himself, ranging from 4.4 for investigators engaged in studies of systematic biology to 8.0 for those studying disease mechanisms. Perhaps surprisingly, the sizes of groups were much the same in academic and nonacademic laboratories. Approximately equal numbers of co-investigators and professional staff are found in both classes of laboratories. The graduate students, who vary in academic laboratories from 1.5 to 4.0 students per group (the extremes being represented by morphology and behavioral biology, respectively), with an overall average for all biological disciplines of 2.2 students per group, are replaced in nonacademic laboratories by technicians and other supporting staff.

Thus, in general, the typical academic laboratory contains a principal investigator, a co-investigator, and one other scientist with a doctoral degree who may be a visiting scientist, postdoctoral fellow, or continuing research associate, two technicians, and two or three graduate students. Federal laboratories may have one or two postdoctorals in place of the graduate students, while industrial laboratories utilize additional technicians. The routine tasks of the laboratory are generally performed by the technicians, while the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows serve as junior co-investigators and colleagues for the principal investigator. In our view, such a research group does indeed constitute something close to optimal for the conduct of “small science,” particularly in the life sciences. Graduate students and postdoctorals are spared some of the drudgery of routine analyses after they have learned to perform such analyses and understand their limitations, and the total group combines a mixture of experience, expertise, ideas from other disciplines, and youthful enthusiasm. We can only conclude that, however haphazard the various mechanisms by which such an enterprise is funded, the average working unit is sufficiently large to attain an intellectual critical mass and to sustain the pace of exciting investigation while training the novice investigator for his future career.

Although this report gives emphasis to the research and education endeavor of the universities, it remains possible for dedicated scholars to pursue meaningful research in the biology departments of the independent four-year colleges. Biology is still mainly “small science,” and research in many subdisciplines can be conducted with relatively modest support. When access to major equipment is required, this is frequently arranged with the faculty of a nearby university or undertaken during the summer at some properly equipped institution. These efforts constitute a significant part of the total life sciences research endeavor.

There are, however, important exceptions to this “small science” pattern. Decidedly larger aggregates of scientists, focused on a single goal, have been brought together to design a biological experiment for a space probe or to study the ecology of a major biome. The integrated approach to environmental research, stimulated by the International Biological Program, promises to open new levels of understanding of the functioning, resilience, and critical sensitivities of man-dominated ecosystems. In this program, teams of ecologists, social scientists, and physical scientists— as many as 150 individuals—cooperate in the analysis of entire ecosystems, such as the Western grasslands, the Eastern deciduous forests, or the Southwestern desert. Their data are compiled, coordinated, and utilized to construct mathematical models of these large systems, one day to be integrated with models of the atmospheres of the same regions. These systems involve so many components and multiple interactions that realistic abstractions or simplifications must be designed for simulation on large digital computers. The model is a combination of mathematical expressions and statistical probability distributions representing the processes and interactions of the system, as from soil to plant or plant to animal, and the impact of temperature on energy flow. A properly designed model can be used to suggest the potentially most fruitful field experiments from among the multitude that might be conducted, to identify gaps in existing knowledge through deficiencies in model performance, and to suggest optimal courses of action in managing real-world ecosystems. In the medical schools, large groups with representatives from several clinical or preclinical departments coalesce to collaborate on some aspect of cardiovascular, neurological, or neoplastic disease. These groups can number from 20 to 200 scientists and may well serve as forerunners of an era of “big biology.”

WHAT DO LIFE SCIENTISTS DO?

The average life scientist employed in an institution of higher learning devotes about half his time to research, 10 to 20 percent to administration, a fourth to a third of his time to instruction, and the balance to assorted other responsibilities. The actual distribution, of course, varies with the type of institution and the specific disciplinary field and according to whether he has clinical responsibility. This pattern is clearly in contrast with that of life scientists employed by nonacademic institutions, for whom research is, to an even greater extent, their dominant responsibility, demanding about 70 percent of their effort, while the remainder of their time is largely devoted to administrative responsibilities. Surprisingly, nonacademic scientists report that they engage in instruction that varies in percentages of their time from 0 to 10 percent—about 3 percent for the entire group but 8.5 percent for physicians. The physicians also give a sixth of their time to clinical care and hence can devote only about half their time to research. Some pertinent data in this regard are summarized in Table 18.

TABLE 18

Percentage Distribution of Work Time of Some Life Scientists.

The same set of respondents, 6,125 scientists in academic institutions and 3,054 scientists in nonacademic institutions, were also queried with respect to whether the research in which they were engaged was basic, clinical, or applied. It was made clear that these designations were not necessarily mutually exclusive and, indeed, that an individual could check more than one of these categories if he felt that this was appropriate, particularly if he was engaged in more than one research project. Some of the resultant data are shown in Table 19. It is not surprising that scientists outside the academic world engage in applied and clinical research. But it may be surprising that 22 percent of all life scientists in institutions of higher learning indicated that their research is applied in some degree. By their own judgment, 76 percent of academically employed physicians indicate that they are engaged in basic research, and only 12 percent state that the research that they are doing is “applied” in some fashion. Quite logically, entomologists and the faculty of agriculture schools consider that a large fraction of their research is directed toward application. Conversely, while it was to be anticipated that 48 percent of all life scientists employed outside the academic world engage in applied research, the fact that 79 percent of all such scientists consider that they are engaged in some fundamental research was somewhat surprising. It indicates that the prejudices of many young scientists against careers outside the academic setting, for lack of opportunity to engage in basic research, may well be ill founded.

TABLE 19

Types of Research Conducted by Some Life Scientists.

In any case, the reader will recognize that there is no meaningful close definition of the terms “basic” and “applied” in these regards and that these indications by our respondents reflect their motivation in addressing specific problems and not the character of the work. By this measure, one investigator studying sodium transport in human erythrocytes may classify it as “basic” research; another may consider the same study “clinical,” only because human cells are employed for the purpose; and a third may view it as applied, since he hopes to develop a new drug. Taking into consideration these broad caveats, the data of Table 19 provide a useful description of the world of biological research.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF RESEARCH IN THE LIFE SCIENCES

Research in the life sciences is a substantial national enterprise in which the United States invested $2,264 million in fiscal year 1967*; of this, 30 percent was provided by industry, 4.1 percent by foundations and other private granting agencies, 1.2 percent by academic institutions from their own resources, 0.3 percent by local and state governments, and 60.3 percent by the federal government, principal patron of the endeavor. Table 20 summarizes federal expenditures for life science research in fiscal year 1968. Research supported by industry was largely conducted in-house. In all, biomedical research conducted within federal laboratories required the expenditure of approximately $435 million. In part because of the proprietary nature of industrial biomedical research, and largely because the “principal investigator” in industrial and federal laboratories functions with a large supporting organization for whose expenditures he is not responsible, it was patently impossible to obtain, by questionnaire, meaningful data concerning research expenditures from individual scientists in these two sectors. Our data, therefore, are restricted to information provided by individual life scientists employed by academic institutions and by academic department chairmen. Only the former are considered in this chapter; the latter are discussed in the succeeding chapter. The collected data, summarized in Tables 21, 22, and 23, indicate that in fiscal year 1967 the 4,046 responding academic life scientists, each of whom was principal investigator of one or more research grants or contracts, had available to them, collectively, $162,883,000 in support of the direct costs of research. The growth of this system is indicated by the fact that, in the previous year, the same investigators had available $134,726,000 and, in the prior year, $115,319,000. It is most unfortunate that we have no data for the same group in fiscal years 1969 or 1970, and, hence, no realistic data base with which to examine the consequences of the alterations in federal funding of science that have occurred since our questionnaires were distributed.

TABLE 20

Federal Obligations for Research in Life Sciences, by Agency and Discipline—Fiscal Year 1968 (In Thousands of Dollars).

TABLE 21

Financial Support of Academic Research in the Life Sciences (In Millions of Dollars).

TABLE 22

Numbers of Research Grants and Contracts Awarded to 4,046 Academic Life Scientists.

TABLE 23

Average Size of Research Grant (Direct Costs) in Thousands of Dollars.

It will be seen that, using our categorizations of the life sciences, molecular biology and biochemistry commanded one fourth of all reported support, a substantial fraction of which went to individuals with appointments in clinical departments. Following, in rank order, were physiology (17 percent) and disease mechanisms (14 percent). Only 1 percent of the total support went to scientists who stated that they were studying morphological problems and 2 percent, each, to those engaged in behavioral biology and in the study of systematic biology and evolution, with other research areas distributed in between.

The magnitude of support reported for the research area of disease mechanisms is disturbing in that, proportionally, it is very significantly under-represented. While the relative support per research area for all other areas may be considered a reasonably fair indication of the fraction of total national support that they command, this is surely not the case for disease mechanisms, presumably due to the disproportionately low response to our questionnaire by clinical investigators. Thus, it is highly doubtful that the support of research directly concerned with disease mechanisms by the National Institutes of Health is only 15 percent of its extramural research program, since half of its total extramural research support is granted to clinical investigators.

Caution is necessary in interpreting these data, however, because of the failure of the questionnaire to be sufficiently precise in guiding the respondents. Although “disease,” broadly taken, is the concern of clinicians and pathologists, there are no aspects of the study of disease, other than access to human patients, that are unique to their endeavors. In addressing himself to cardiac disease, the clinician may actually function as a physiologist who studies vector cardiography or analyzes the composition of blood obtained by catheterization of one of the cardiac chambers; or he may be concerned with the etiology and pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and so utilize the techniques and understanding of the biochemist or nutritionist. Concerned with a hereditary disorder, he may consider himself a human geneticist; if studying changes in the architectonics of the brain, he may view himself as a morphologist or even a student of evolution. If engaged in elucidation of the causative agent of an infectious disease, he may function, variously, as a cell biologist or a biochemist, while, if he is testing a drug in the hope of finding a successful therapeutic procedure, he is, at least for the time being, a pharmacologist. Accordingly, it is entirely possible that students of disease, its etiology, pathogenesis, incidence, or therapy, may well have indicated that their current research area lies in some category other than “disease mechanisms,” thus unintentionally distorting the interpretation that might be applied to these data.

The pattern of support from the National Science Foundation contrasts with that from the National Institutes of Health. Both supported molecular biology and biochemistry more heavily than any other category, but, whereas the National Institutes of Health also contributed in a large way to the study of physiology and disease mechanisms, the National Science. Foundation was clearly the principal supporter of systematic biology. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of the Interior, while contributing only 4 percent and 1 percent, respectively, to the total support of these life sciences, were particularly concerned with ecology. The principal thrust of support by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which contributed only 1 percent of the reported federal total, was in physiology, while only the Department of Agriculture and diverse industrial contributors allocated as much as one seventh of their research funds to studies involving nutrition.

Of interest is the fact that, whereas the voluntary societies were organized to combat the dread diseases, only 22 percent of their funds went to scientists who classified their own research as bearing directly on disease mechanisms, whereas one third of their support went to investigators in molecular biology and biochemistry, and one seventh each to studies of physiology and cellular biology. Clearly, the administrators of these societies were sufficiently understanding of the problems involved in treating and preventing these diseases to recognize the need for relevant basic research.

Table 21 indicates clearly that indeed the federal government is the principal patron of these areas of scientific endeavor. Three fourths of all funds in direct support of research derived from the federal government, while one sixth of such funds was provided out of the academic institutions' own resources. The low figures quoted for support by state and municipal agencies refer to direct granting activity, but the state budgets for the public universities contributed in major degree to the 16 percent of all directly research-supporting funds that are stated to have come from the institutions' own resources.

Particularly disappointing is the low order of contribution to research support provided by industry, private foundations, voluntary societies, and individual contributors shown in Table 21. This is the consequence not so much of a low frequency of granting activity as it is of the relatively small awards actually made by these sources, as shown in Tables 22 and 23. Thus, the average grant from industry was only $4,000, that from the voluntary societies, $10,000, and that from private foundations, $13,000. These figures are in contrast to grants from the National Science Foundation ($14,000), the National Institutes of Health ($30,000), and the federal average of $25,000.

Of some interest is the pattern of support by discipline. Typical grants in nutrition, ecology, and systematic biology are of the order of $15,000 per year, whereas grants to investigators in most of the other research areas were about twice as large.

Utilization of Research Grants

Typically, a research grant is utilized to provide consumable supplies, major and minor equipment, salaries of technicians and clerical staff, travel and publication costs, stipends for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting investigators, as well as a variable fraction of the salary of the principal investigator not to exceed that fraction of his annual effort invested in the research project in question. Uniquely, research grants to clinical investigators may require expenditures in support of the basic costs of maintaining patients in hospitals; other grants may provide for unusual purposes such as ship time, international travel either to meetings or for work in the field, and, increasingly frequently, computer time. The relative distribution of expenditures among these various areas from research grants in support of research in the life sciences was not ascertained by the present study. However, data describing the general patterns of funding by the National Science Foundation are summarized in Table 24.

TABLE 24

Utilization of Funds from an Average Two-Year Research Grant in the Life Sciences—National Science Foundation—1968.

Research Support as a Function of the Investigator's Age

In a general way, increasing research support comes to the academic investigator as he gains seniority in the system. As shown in Figure 34, this is clearly true for investigators supported by the National Institutes of Health and most other sources. The figures shown for “all sources” represent the simple arithmetic means for all grants from all sources. Because of the relatively large number of small grants from the National Science Foundation, industry, foundations, and voluntary societies, the mean grant size for all sources is decidedly less than that shown for the National Institutes of Health. Nevertheless, the trend is quite apparent: individual research support attains a maximum at 50 to 60 years of age and declines thereafter. This phenomenon is scarcely visible for the National Science Foundation, largely because this beleaguered agency strives to stretch its available resources as far as it can to support all qualified applicant investigators whose proposals fall within its purview, thus markedly reducing the amount of money available per applicant investigator.

FIGURE 34

Research support of life scientists as a function of their age. (Source: Survey of Individual Life Scientists, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research in the Life Sciences.)

RESEARCH INSTITUTES

The preceding survey of the major parameters of the world of biological research fails to convey the myriad arrangements for both research and education in biology. It ignores the dozens of small research institutes in which excellent investigators quietly pursue their research, occasionally with profound impact on the conceptual development of biology. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for Quantitative Biology has had a brilliant record of achievement, and its summer courses have trained virtually all those who have led the modern development of virus and bacterial genetics, a major segment of molecular biology. Developmental biology and some aspects of neurophysiology have received great stimulus from the research and education programs of marine-biology stations such as that at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Much of the current understanding of neurochemistry and the physiology of the brain has been obtained at small research institutes under private or state auspices, while ecology has grown at a multitude of field stations remote from their parent institutions.

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS

Natural history museums, with their combinations of scientists, research collections, and field stations are unique non-degree-granting academic institutions for research and graduate training. Quite apart from its role in public education through exhibits, a natural history museum contributes to the acquisition of scientific knowledge in two principal ways.

1.

Its staff of scientists may engage in original research in systematic biology, evolutionary biology, ecology, geophysics, astrophysics, oceanography, and many other fields of science, depending upon their academic training and scientific interests. While many museum scientists depend on specialized collections in conducting their investigations, an increasing number engage in field and laboratory experimental studies of living organisms, or of ecological problems in natural settings. Their collections provide the basis for taxonomic-classification services necessary to many other scientists and also provide a base line for ecological studies.

2.

The combination of resident scientists, research collections, and field research facilities provides intellectually attractive settings for visiting scientists. The number of graduate students who receive part or all of their graduate training in natural history museums is impressive and increasing.

Natural history museums, as both forums and research settings for systematists, ecologists, and environmental scientists, are becoming increasingly important as a national scientific resource, despite a long history of public neglect.

BIOLOGICAL DISCIPLINES

For brevity and conciseness, we found it useful to structure all the life sciences into a dozen research areas. But this should not conceal the rich and diverse infrastructure of the life sciences. As we have seen, classical disciplinary labels have lost their meaning, but one could readily describe a hundred or more subdisciplines based on the work of groups of likeminded scientists who have blended the approaches of several older disciplines in attacks on some specific subsets of biological problems. A few examples are cited in the following paragraph.

Photobiologists, well versed in optics and the physics of light, are variously concerned with the mechanism of vision, the events in photosynthesis, the emission of light by bacterial and animal forms (the biological purpose of light emission by all but fireflies being not at all evident), and the photoinactivation of enzymes and viruses. Neuroscientists bring the skills of electrophysiology, cellular biology, molecular biology, and communications theory to bear on studies of information processing in the nervous system. Oncologists, focusing on the essential nature of the transformation of normal cells into malignant ones, are similarly a group apart, borrowing from every major discipline that may be of help, while vascular physiologists necessarily borrow from hydrodynamics and studies of urban traffic flow as they study the operation of a capillary bed or a major blood vessel. Physical anthropology is a subdiscipline that contributes to the total endeavor while it provides a bridge from the biological to the social sciences. It is the study of the bodily manifestations of human variation—in particular, the description of human body size, shape, and function in the light of man's history—and the role of heredity, environment, and culture in bringing about man's present diversity. The biological anthropologist aims to understand human physical variation and to apply his knowledge for human betterment through medicine and engineering.

As concern with the environment grows, an increasing number of physicians and biologists of many backgrounds have generated the area of research and practice called “environmental health,” the concern of one of the panels of this survey. More sophisticated understanding of this field should permit society to enjoy the fruits of an advancing technology, a superior living environment, and freedom to develop a society with fewer restraints and tensions. Past effort is minuscule compared with the magnitude of the problem. Since the problems increase with increasing population density and developing technology, efforts at controlling the environment, and thus the health of the population, must keep pace. Indeed, in a very real sense, students of environmental health serve technology by providing the knowledge permitting its benefits to be enjoyed without adventitious adverse effects on the health of man and, more broadly, on the environment of man. Thus, support of an adequate level of competence in environmental health is indispensable to a society that elects to make optimal use of the fruits of technology. Accordingly, the environmental-health resources of the nation must first be expanded to catch up with the problems now with us and thereafter be developed, along with technological development, to provide an adequate preventive program. Current support of research in environmental health probably lies between $30 million and $50 million per year; support for training for both research and practice is between $9 million and $18 million per year and is known to support (in 1969) 974 candidates for the master's degree, 981 candidates for the Ph.D., and 148 postdoctoral fellows.

A broad federal policy is needed, with a long-range plan of attack upon the whole problem of environmental deterioration and with better identification of the separate missions and responsibilities of the several federal departments and agencies. Only with such a policy will it be possible to develop in an orderly way the required training programs to supply the personnel needed for both research and practice, both within and outside the government, necessary to build a strong foundation for effective control programs against environmental-health hazards, a foundation that must rest on the entire current understanding of the life sciences.

Thus, the world of research in the life sciences is marvelously diverse. Tens of thousands of scientists in a thousand institutions contribute to its progress. They migrate between institutions, between classes of institutions, and between subfields of biology. They are quick to seize upon any new instruments or techniques, without regard to whether these are initially devised for use in the physical sciences or for some other research area in the life sciences. Biochemistry has become the language of biology, providing the bridge to the physical sciences, but it has yet to be applied to the farthest reaches of organismal biology. The federal government is the principal sponsor of the entire endeavor and, for the indefinite future, only the federal government can sponsor an effort of this magnitude. Its success will affect all aspects of our lives, and its conduct has become one of the central purposes of our civilization.

Footnotes

*

Basic Data Relating to the National Institutes of Health 1969, Associate Director for Program Planning and Evaluation and the Division of Research Grants, National Institutes of Health. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1969, p. 4.

*

The Invisible University: Postdoctoral Education in the United States, Report of a Study Conducted under the Auspices of the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 1969.

†

Science Citation Index; An International Interdisciplinary Index to the Literature of Science. (Published by Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia.)