Not unexpectedly, Jim Watson retired last week as Chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), about a week after a series of controversial remarks that got him, yet again, in hot water. In his statement (which, mysteriously enough, didn't come from a CSHL or other institutional e-mail address but from a Gmail mailbox), he says "the passing on of my remaining vestiges of leadership is more than overdue".

I guess one would have to agree with him. Over the years, the scientist who achieved immortality by giving us the structure of DNA has found himself too often in the eye of the storm for making comments that rub too many people the wrong way (a selection of them can be found here and here).

Why he has chosen to stay in the public eye for so long and tarnish his image with inappropriate comments, only he knows. But the other day, reading a blog in a newspaper that covered Watson's latest faux pas, you could read several comments along the lines of "What else would you expect of someone who stole Rosalind Franklin's data?" and other things to the same effect.

Is this really the way we will remember Jim Watson? I hope not, and therefore think that his retirement arrives at a good time, before this collateral damage to this legacy is still minor.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every so often, we get letters like the one below:

"Sadly I don't agree with you, the work was already acknowledge by the ... community and got a keystone scholarship. I am working in the field for more then 12 years, I think it is important and novel to so it will get a far review. I think that science and importance has nothing to do with your decision, I am sure that if this work was coming from a different lab, with a different PI sending it it was treated differentially and get a far chance and reviewed. Not surprising, I am not the only scientist that think that reviewing is about politics. Thanks for the time and consideration, I am sure this is the last manuscript I am sending to your Journal."

What can I say? Our internal review process is not about politics. What benefit would we obtain from rejecting a good paper? This is not to say that we don't make mistakes, but I can categorically say that we don't like it when we make them. And if the paper had come from a different lab, the outcome would have been the same. As I hinted in my previous post, we sometimes turn down papers from very accomplished scientists.

Now, if there are scientific arguments to challenge our decisions, we'd love to hear them, as we sometimes do reverse them. But as I said before, angry letters like the one above don't really do much for us.

Now, about this being "the last manuscript", is that a promise?

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The other day I was talking to some scientists at a meeting, and one of them told me that some journals take advantage of the announcement of the Nobel Prize to send you an e-mail highlighting the papers from the Laureates that they have had the privilege to publish.

I don't know about you but such a marketing strategy strikes me as somewhat cheeky. I don't think there are plans to do the same here at NPG but, if other publishing firms are currently entertaining a similar strategy, here's an idea to turn it on its head -- send e-mails highlighting the papers from the Laureates that your journal has REJECTED and the name of the publication where they were ultimately published.

Hey! Maybe one could even use this information to develop some sort of journal ranking that could complement the infamous impact factors.

It's a shame that confidentiality issues get in the way of such an idea because, if you were to send such an e-mail, people would surely be talking about your journal...

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last month, my friend Jose Obeso invited me to a think-tank meeting on Parkinson Disease in Pamplona. It wasn't July, which is when you get a chance to run with the bulls. But even if it had been, Jose told me that he wouldn't let me run with them. "Too dangerous", he said. He also explained to me that you simply can't run all the way from the encierro (the point from which they release the bulls) to the plaza.

Broadly speaking, there are three stretches, and you have to pick one: 1) the beginning, which is uphill, making it harder for the bulls even though they are fresh; 2) the middle one, quite tricky owing to the curves and how crowded it is; and 3) the end, straight and flat, although the bulls are tired by the time they get to it.

I don't want to push the analogy too far, as those who know me are aware of how much I like to make fun of bad analogies, but I'd say that the meeting also released three bulls that people interested in Parkinson ought to fight. I won't dwell on them in detail, as there will be an article coming out of the think tank, and I wouldn't want to steal their thunder but, in broad terms, they are:

1) The definition of Parkinson -- When we talk about the disease, is it just one disease? Is early-onset Parkinson the same thing as late-onset? Are the genetic forms the same as the early-onset forms? Are genetic forms even the same as the idiopathic forms? There are several other ways to slice the Parkinson pie, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to make sure that we are talking about the same disease before trying to solve it.

2) Models of Parkinson -- A lot of the work on oxidative damage (a favorite idea in the Parkinson field) has been done in cultured cells, and people are painfully aware of the shortcomings of the chemical models, including the use of MPTP. It seems that the field is in desperate need of new models, particularly those that exploit the insights from genetic forms of Parkinson.

3) Mechanisms in Parkinson -- There seems to be a deep disconnection between the solid data coming out of the genetic analyses and what's going on at the level of the mitochondria in the dopaminergic neurons. In a nutshell, Parkinson remains a mechanistic black box. And if this is the case even when we have a good genetic starting point, the situation regarding idiopathic forms of the disease is even more bleak.

After all, maybe the analogy isn't too bad, because I'm certainly not discovering anything those in the field know already. Alas, it would seem that many people in the field do prefer running away from these three bulls rather than chasing them. One of my readings of the meeting was that, until these issues aren't tackled head on, the Parkinson field will not see the breakthroughs it's been looking for.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)