Pascal's Pensées

I initially planned to write a post reviewing the “Neurotechniques: New Approaches to Understanding Mind, Brain and Behavior” workshop at the Italian Academy at Columbia University over the weekend. 

The workshop on neurotechniques at the Italian Academy at Columbia sure was illuminating.

However, while we arranged for video recording, it turns out that it will be a while before the footage becomes available. Therefore, we will go ahead with a post without the videos (at first) shortly. Stay tuned. The workshop itself was very illuminating. I appreciate the patience.

You bet.

And that’s it for this year. Stay tuned for an upcoming review post where I will be commenting on some macro-trends and how they manifested themselves at the meeting.

Hope to see you all next year.

Neurocinematics

Is being presented now (1-5 pm).

Join the live blogging/poster presenting experiment.

Come to the poster and comment below.

The sun is setting on SfN 2010

First a brief preview of how my last day will unfold, if everything goes to plan.

I will spend most of the morning at the minisymposium on Synesthesia. Synesthesia has already been a hot topic at this meeting, but this should be a worthy closer. Session 720, Room 29D. I intend to spend the rest of the morning at the theme D posters (sessions 773 to 791,  poster boards FF7 to AAA1).

I will then retreat in order to prepare for our poster presentation in the PM. You should consider checking it out: Presentation 912.6, poster board LLL67. First of all, I am presenting on things that are in many ways much more “high level” than I usually do, at this meeting. Second, the entire session seems interesting. The guys on the neighboring boards will be presenting on amputation desire, the ratio of white to gray matter in musicians, neuroanatomical correlates of high creativity, HIV psychosis, the value of freedom, among many others.

So I will conclude the meeting in the same way I started it: Presenting. I appreciate the symmetry. Then getting my stuff from the hotel and going to the airport to take the red eye home. And that’s it.

On a deeper level, some considerations arise with the dawning of the last SfN day.

The first one would be:

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After establishing this, we should perhaps look for the underlying mechanism that drives these judgments. Obvious to me seems this one:

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Obviously there are others, but I’ll leave it at that. In any case, one thing is clear to me: This meeting went by way too fast.

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You probably won’t agree with me on this one, but I feel strongly about it: The meeting feels much emptier and somewhat “lighter” this year. I know that the reported attendance of close to 32,000 is in line with expectations (good for the Society), but something feels off. It is relatively easy to get seated at restaurants (sometimes at the last minute), even “hot” sessions feel less than entirely full and the lines at the concession stands seem shorter (not that I would suggest to buy anything there). All of this was unthinkable at SfN 2004 or 2007 in San Diego – to say nothing of the meetings in between. Even Atlanta 2006 felt crowded in comparison.

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Where is everybody? Also, one might consider that – while the SfN membership numbers keep rising continuously, meeting attendance has flatlined for years. Therefore, the yield is down, way down.

These are the numbers. Blue: SfN membership, Black: Meeting attendance, Red: Yield (Meeting attendance/membership)

See the figure (numbers from SfN, figure is mine (Matlab is your friend)).

What is going on here? It seems most plausible that the reported meeting attendance numbers are real but that the lower yield indicates that a different mix (grad student/post-doc/faculty) of members attends the meeting and that they are “using” the meeting in different ways. Also, I wonder how the attendance count (“once you check in, you never check out”), affects this. Perhaps people are leaving earlier than usual, which might well account for the felt drop in attendance.

To summarize the trends figure on the right, it seems that membership is at an all time high whereas yield is close to an all-time low within the reporting period (2006 was the all-time low, with a yield only a hair above 0.70). Meeting attendance has effectively plateaued in the past 5 years (with an all-time high water mark in DC in 2005). Yield seems to be somewhat related to attractiveness of meeting venue, but seems to be even more strongly tied to economic conditions, in particular the economic condition of scientists. In the truly “fat” years, yields exceeded  1, as in San Diego 2001, where the meeting attracted many of the membership base as well as disproportionate numbers of vendors. This reflects the economic boom of the late dot-com bubble times around 2000. There seems to be about a 1 year delay between developments in the general economy and the time they impact the meeting, which makes sense. Moreover, we see low yields in times of economic distress, for instance in 1994 (1 year after the recession of 1993) or now. The 2006 drop is unusual both in its sharpness and severity. Moreover, membership fell as well in 2006, which is rare. What happened? It is actually quite simple. Based on the budget requests by two US presidents (Clinton and Bush), the NIH budged effectively doubled between fiscal year (FY) 1999 and FY 2003. Those years saw annual budget growth rates of 15% or more. However, the NIH budget has remained essentially flat after FY 2003. If one takes inflation into account, it might even have dropped in real terms. These macroeconomic developments have personal consequences. The individual PI who received large R01 awards with relative ease in 2000 or 2001 saw that funding expire in 2005 or 2006, with little chance for renewal.

Plenty of people in front of the convention center. What's on their mind? Brains, probably.

And so – without funds – they didn’t/couldn’t go to the meeting, some of them couldn’t even remain members. I didn’t plot GDP growth or R01 funding rates as well, as the graph was getting too busy. 

We don’t have enough data points (yet) to seriously model this without blushing, so I will leave it at these observations for now.

Also, this is not to say that there were still – in absolute numbers – plenty of people around.

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Summary: Manic Monday is already upon us. A lot of painful choices have to be made, particularly in regards to the social calendar in the late PM.

Here is what I said before the day went by:

>I encourage you to attend Patrick Kennedy’s speech on the Neuroscience of moon landings. From what I understand, he is the real deal when it comes to the things he is slated to talk about. >Ballroom 20 (where else?), 1-2 pm.

>Be there. I will.

And oh boy, did he deliver. I am not known for my optimism regarding the state of politics. As a matter of fact, I could justfully be accused of taking a rather dim view on the intents and purposes of most politicians. So I was not quite prepared for his “presentation”, which was actually much closer to a political rally than any other I’ve ever seen at SfN. As a matter of fact, it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen at SfN – it was an actual political speech. He impressively illustrated that one doesn’t have to have a PhD in order to have or care about mental illness. The address was extremely powerful and heartfelt.  When Kennedy related his lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder and how it has marred his entire life, it became apparent that this topic is personal to him. This is an issue Kennedy clearly cares about very deeply  – more than once, he was on the verge – as was I. Moreover, his considerable passion for the issue was clear. He was effectively shouting more than once, as well (in a good way). In short, it was a galvanizing and highly successful speech. The use of visual analogies was brillant and effective. He conjured the image of a highway that we have to build instead of focusing on individual diseases and topics (as we do now). In this highway-based system,  we would not forget about the specific issues, but they would be represented by  off-ramps to specific topics, while the focus remains on the highway, the big prize. He emphasized the importance of this common goal by linking it to another heroic human achievement: The moon shot. Something that was unimaginable when it was announced by JFK in 1961. Today, we face a quite similar challenge, but one that involves the exploration of inner space.

Patrick Kennedy doing what he does best, at SfN 2010

This challenge surely is daunting, but we should not be daunted. We should be energized by the magnitude of the challenge, it sure is worth it. Kennedy cited numbers making clear that we can’t afford not to do this, in the long run (something to the effect of a  loss to the US economy on the order of a trillion dollars annually, due to diseases of the brain and mind). The speech culminated with his announcement of a brain research foundation and initiative (moonshot.org), as well as the crucial need to “vote your mind” (the rationale being that representatives *will* listen if they realize that something is a priority for their constituents). Overall, Kennedy’s highly emotional and sincere speech was quite effective in conveying his message. At several points in his speech, he was interrupted by spontaneous applause. He also received a standing ovation in the end.

The only part of the speech that fell completely flat was his choice of framing many of the urgent needs for brain research in terms of the need to help and “rescue” military veterans. This illustrates the importance of knowing your audience. In this regard, the international ivory tower differs sharply from main street USA. I’m sure that this part of the speech would have been a wild success with most audiences, but not this one. In brief, I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of neuroscientists are – at best – indifferent in their attitude towards the military, defense spending and veterans issues. At the end of this part of the speech, Kennedy actually asked the attending veterans to get up to receive some appreciation (in the form of applause) for their service from the audience. An awkward moment, to be sure. Out of an audience of thousands, no one got up at first, then – reluctantly – a handful of people.  They did get their applause, though. Not surprisingly, during the Q&A session, Kennedy was also questioned on why he coached the urgent need for brain research almost exclusively in terms of veterans affairs. He defended his choice of emphasis by noting that neither political party can afford to give up on the very people that kept us safe from the terrorists. He also noted that the defense budget not only dwarfs all other discretionary spending, but that it also is the only pot of money that is still growing. Finally, he pointed out that the mental health issues of veterans are increasingly salient and well documented, such as their much increased likelihood of committing suicide, their much heightened likelihood of incarceration, and so on. The other issue Kennedy was pressed on during Q&A was that the speech seemed a tad nationalistic, given the fact that almost 40% of SfN members are now residing outside the US. Kennedy clarified that it will in fact take an international effort and cited the international space station as an example of international cooperation. And with that, this particular presentation ended.

There is a lot more that happened on that day, and I will elaborate on it as soon as I get around to it.

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Summary: Another beautiful day in paradise, another busy day at SfN.

I spent most of my morning at the posters of two Theme D sessions: Visual Cognition, Attention & Decision Making I and Vision: Spatial Attention. Most notable: The social cohesion in my field is amazing. Virtually all the people who came to my own poster (session) yesterday are now at these sessions. It is always the usual suspects.

For the rest of the morning, I caught the tail end of the “Multisensory interactions” nanosymposium, mostly the synesthesia talks. Eagleman was excellent as usual. At the very end of that session something quite strange happened: The speaker just simply didn’t show up. No one knew where he was. The moderator had no choice but to dismiss the session early. I have seen people cancel due to illness or volcanoes before, or even send a substitute (coauthor) speaker. But I have never witnessed a flat out no-show for a talk (this does happen for posters).

I spent the lunch break at UCSD, visiting the lab of a friend.

Most of the afternoon, I was attending a symposium on cortical plasticy and its limits.

The rest of the PM session was spent at the motion posters, where one again encounters virtually the same people as in the previous two poster sessions I attended. The social correlation in my field is high.

Welcome to SfN 2010

Sorry for the delay in posting, but the reasons will soon become apparent. Also, note that this post was written somewhat in haste. I will update it later. Generally speaking, these “live” or near-live dispatches will have to be just that: Dispatches. I will put all overarching observations in a meta-post at the end of SfN, summarizing the meeting.

The good news is that the – long awaited – SfN is finally getting underway.

The bad news is that I made a big mistake. I usually (by luck of the draw) present on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday at SfN. Have never presented on a Saturday or Wednesday before (as this year). So the mode of operation that I arrived at over the years is to arrive on the first day of the conference and leave on the last day. This served me well, but might have to be modified for cases in which I am presenting on the very same day.

To make a long story short: I stepped off the plane, took a taxi to the convention center and basically went right to my presentation board and start the presentation. I started a little earlier (than 1) and stayed a little longer (after 5). The poster was extremely well attended and received. Not bad, you would think. Normally, yes. But I essentially talked non-stop for what I estimate must have been almost 4 hours. For a presentation like this, one should budget at least 20 ounces of water per hour of speaking. Probably more. That sounds like a lot, but is actually an empirical figure. As I came straight from the airport, I had only one small water bottle with me. That was gone within half an hour. I’ve given a lot of poster presentations over the years, but I think I have never been as hoarse as at the end of this one. Of course, this was also related to the nature of the presentation this year – more on that later.

Right outside the airport

Immediately after the poster presentation, I was having dinner with an old friend of mine and his wife. Immediately after that, I went to the mentoring event, which was really quite curious. Then, I went looking for some sort of remedy for the hoarseness, which was surprisingly hard to come by (by New York standards). And then, I just passed out.

I will elaborate on all of this later, but have to go back to the conference now. Which brings me to somewhat of a conundrum. Who exactly are the SfN bloggers blogging for? I doubt the people at the actual conference will have any time to check out much of anything, except the actual conference.

Random impressions:

*The guards seem to be even more on edge than usual. They follow all rules and regulations to the t. And they are not afraid to use physical force to enforce the rules. Not that that happened to me, but I’ve seen it. For instance, you can’t cross back into the poster hall after 5 pm, no exceptions (retrieving a poster, looking for friends, etc.). Also, you can’t access the poster hall before it officially opens, unless you physically carry your own poster.

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Is being presented now (1-5 pm). By yours truly.

This is a live blogging/poster presenting experiment. The first of this kind, to my knowledge.

Comment below.

The crucible of the unknown graduate student

This is it. The meeting officially starts tomorrow.

How will my day look like? Busy.

Due to the fact that my flight was unilaterally pushed back (thanks, Continental), I will be missing the “Dialogues on Society and Science” (sigh). Instead, I will have to go straight from the airport to my poster board (OO15) to present my poster (1 to 5 pm).

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Note to self: Go a day early if the meeting is as far away and as important as this one. I’ve done this before, but wanted to save the extra hotel night this time… a questionable choice.

Note1: Make sure to bring your credentials (they were likely mailed to you. If not, pick them up at registration). The guards will not let you advance to the poster session without credentials, presenter or not. No exceptions.

Note2: It can be confusing to navigate the big hall, so here is a primer. Poster boards are organized from A1 through PPP34. The posters usually envelope a hard core of exhibits (vendors), which are organized from Aisles 100 through 4233. However – this year – it looks more like the poster boards “hug” the exhibits in horseshoe-formation bayside. My “own” poster board is located just off the Carl-Zeiss both. Should be fun. Of course, it is somewhat euphemistic to call it mine. I just checked. That poster board sure sees a lot of action throughout the meeting.

Note3: Perhaps the most important link of the entire meeting. Here is how you get wireless internet access at the convention center. Hope it works.

Note4: I mentioned that SfN seems to like good weather. Looks like that panned out…

This better be true. What is the reliability of these predictions on the west coast?

I am somewhat bummed that I won’t get to see all the other motion posters, as I will be presenting my own during the visual motion session. I think I will submit my poster to the visceral pain session next year. That way, the other people in my field could see my poster, and I could see theirs. I understand the rationale behind grouping the posters, but some decorrelation might be nice.

Immediately after the poster session, I will be having dinner with an old friend of mine. After that, I will be at the mentoring event. After that, I will check into the hotel. And such – barring potential late night surprises – will be my first day at the meeting.

Also, check this out (figure from “Google Trends”): The buzz is supposed to hit a real frenzy within a couple of days. Some things are notable about this figure: 1) The lawfulness – small annual blip in May for abstract submissions followed by a large spike in the fall for the actual meeting – looks like SfN has a pulse.

Nice trend... From Google Trends.

2) Search volume is increasing. This is in sharp contrast to the falling trend lines for most keywords, including “neuroscience” itself; at least there is only a minor seasonal “high school/college” modulation, unlike for math or psychology. The negative slopes for most keywords result from the fact that this is not absolute, but RELATIVE search volume, scaled by total traffic.

Bethesda, lol.

Therefore, the slope of the trajectory for any given keyword would be expected to be negative. This should be very encouraging to the Society. 3) The New York Juggernaut can be spotted even here. 4) The NIH leaves its signature everywhere, but why do they keep googling it?

Happy conferencing.

Good news: Up to this point, San Diego county experienced an unusually calm fire season this year.

San Diego 2010. Note the clear sky.

Many people don’t seem to remember this, but last time the SfN meeting was held in San Diego – in 2007 – the meeting was in jeopardy almost right up to the last moment. Due to the infamous “ring of fire” around San Diego, it was unclear whether planes would be able to land, or whether the city would be in any position to host a meeting of this magnitude. Luckily, things turned out alright in 2007 as the fires abated just in time for the meeting.

With regard to natural disasters, SfN has been lucky in the past. SfN has been a frequent guest in New Orleans. As we all know, New Orleans was devastated by hurricane Katrina in late August 2005. Fortuitously (for SfN), the 2005 meeting was held in Washington DC, whereas the 2006 meeting was slated to take place in New Orleans. Had the meeting calendar been offset by just one year, the Society would have had little choice but to cancel the meeting in 2005. As things were, the Society had enough lead time to move the venue for 2006 to Atlanta and the one for 2009 (initially supposed to be in New Orleans) to Chicago. These moves were not entirely uncontroversial, as New Orleans was a popular venue. But SfN has not given up on New Orleans completely. At this point, a return to New Orleans is planned for 2012 and 2015.

San Diego 2007, one week before the meeting.

Anyway. Looks like we are ready for takeoff this year.

At this point, the conference is as far away in time, as the meeting itself is long.

The time, it is ticking away...

This begs the question:

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This goes to 100

Most races are defined by the distance that the runner is required to go. The varying parameter is time: How fast can you do it? Not so with the SfN meeting. The duration of the meeting is fixed at precisely 100 hours. Of course, you can always show up late and leave early, but it really is the mileage that varies – how much can you get out of it?

Presumably, you will want to maximize your personal yield. At the risk of beating a dead horse: Organization is critical for a (scientifically as well as professionally) successful meeting, as already alluded to here and here. The name of the game is then: How to get organized for SfN in order to be organized at SfN?

But why does this need arise? The reason for the need to organize is that in 2010, a total of 17095 official conference presentations of all kinds are squeezed into the time frame between Saturday 1 pm to Wednesday, 5 pm. Technically, there are workshops and (paid) short courses taking place before Saturday – this is known as the “premeeting” – but is is understood that the meeting itself begins with the Saturday PM session. This is also when the vast majority of the attendees starts to arrive.

The 8 days of SfN: Meeting and pre-meeting.

Curiously – as the graph on the right bears out – there is also a full program on the last day, Wednesday. Anecdotally, I know that quite a few people will be missing this, as they are already on their way back home.

But let us take a moment to contemplate the duration of the meeting in relationship to the offerings. As mentioned above, starting on Saturday at 1 pm and ending on at Wednesday 5 pm corresponds to 4 hours and 4 days, which – conveniently – works out to 100 hours (360,000 seconds or 6,000 minutes) or one hectohour.

If all presentations were held back to back in one long continuously streaming track, we could squeeze all of them in by allotting 21 seconds to each of them. Now, keep in mind that the meeting is only actually in session for about half of these 100 hours (from 8 am to 8 pm); there is a slight imbalance due to the late start on Saturday and early ending on Wednesday, which works out to 51 “on” and 49 “off” hours during the meeting. Taking this into account, there is only a little more than 10 seconds available for each presentation.

This is the core reason why the structure of SfN – in this regard – resembles the brain itself: Everything is necessarily going on in a massively parallel fashion. It has to. Given that – with a little good will – one can count 100 parallel tracks at SfN, this affords just shy of 18 minutes per presentation (on average). A much more reasonable number.

But you still are only one person and – as far as we know – can only be at one place at one given time. In addition, there are strong local correlations in space and time – you cannot randomly access any point in the conference center from every other point without incurring a transit delay. This puts severe constraints on what you can actually attend, particularly if the convention center is as sprawling as the one in Atlanta (as momentous and majestic as it might be otherwise). Thankfully, the one in San Diego is much more compact.

SfN Atlanta 2006

So you have to make do with your 51 hours (3060 minutes), somehow. That assumes that you spend 8 am to 8 pm at the actual meeting. This will be taxing. You have to jealously guard this time. You have to quite shrewd about what you attend and what not.Therefore, getting organized is key. It is absolutely imperative. You tend to reap at the meeting what you sow in the preparation beforehand.

So how to get organized in time?

Two words: “Meeting planner” andTriage. Technically, that is 3 words, but oh well.

Vintage Meeting guides

First of all, you should consult the meeting planner. In the old days – prior to the meeting – the Society actually sent out booklets that listed all presentations for every individual day. As part of the “SfN thinks green” initiative, this was abandoned first in favor of CDs (one could install a meeting planner software), then in favor of online resources. In this day and age, these resources abound. First of all, you can still download the old-style booklets in PDF format from the SfN website: Scroll to the bottom of the target page. Also, they will probably still be handed out on request when picking the meeting credentials and/or lanyards (they were last year). I am not a Luddite, but these can actually come in quite handy when you are on the ground at the actual meeting (not so much beforehand). At past meetings, I typically carried the booklet of the day, just in case. But we do live in modern times. There are all kinds of ways to bring the meeting experience into the 21st century. This starts with the official SfN meeting planner, which also contains all the abstracts. You can also download the meeting planner to your favorite mobile device (including iPad, Kindle and Blackberry). There is a wide variety of third-party software to enhance the meeting experience. You can find most of it with a cursory Google search. For instance, RIKEN is hosting a cool tool that allows you to find “related abstracts” based on the keywords in the abstract. It seems to work quite nicely.

But what do you do once you find all these amazing abstracts? You will have to triage. Over the years, I worked out a quite elaborate system, but I abandoned it again in favor of one that has the advantage of simplicity. Basically, I assign a “priority score” to each presentation. Note: You really want to do this on the level of presentations, not sessions. It is easier to just select some sessions that roughly correspond to your interests, but both in talks and posters, the questions answered are usually so specific that a general interest in the subject area of the session is not sufficient – you really have to have an interest on the level of the presentation (and the specific question they seek to answer) to fully appreciate them. This is different for symposia and minisymposia as well as for lectures, which are either aim to address a larger issue in a coherent way or to give an overview over an entire field, respectively. Anyway, I assign a priority score to each presentation, as follows:

3: The highest score. I absolutely have to attend this presentation and I will stay at it (if it is a poster) however long it takes to understand precisely what was done and what was found. This category is reserved for stuff that will hurt my research if I don’t know about it. This category is also the narrowest/smallest of the categories. It includes things like if someone is actively working on the very same project and is presenting a poster on it (ouch), or if it introduces a cool new method that everyone in my field will start using once the meeting is over. Things like that.

2: This category includes things that are likely to aid my research if I know about it. Most presentations in this category deal with things that are closely related to my own research interests.

1: This is a very diverse category. It includes things that are merely interesting, not necessarily relevant to my own research.  There will be plenty of that. It also includes presentations by people who I know present extraordinarily well, or the presentations of friends (to see what they have been up to). In short: Interesting stuff, regardless of relevance.

0: Everything else. Subjectively (!) neither interesting nor relevant. But keep in mind that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That is why it is impossible to create one meeting schedule for everybody. You really have to make your own, fitting it based on your personal background.

Why do you need these numbers? Once you arrange the presentations you want to go to in a neat meeting timeline, you will notice that there will be painful conflicts. Actually, these will abound. To reduce this pain, it is advisable to possess a clear-cut scoring system that allows to quickly adjudicate multiple claims on the same time slot.

So that is the general heuristic: Use the meeting planner to find everything that is relevant and/or interesting, then arrange it in a timeline, then assign priority scores. Once done, you are ready for the meeting.

Note: While posters and talks do make up the bulk of the meeting in terms of quantity of presentations (97%), it can be argued that some of the other presentations make up in terms of the quality. This is particularly true for symposia and especially for lectures.

Not every presentation is a poster or a talk

These are usually delivered by the most senior figures in the field. Neuroscience allstars, if you will. These lectures typically present the perfect opportunity to gain an understanding of a field slightly outside your own. To forestall disappointments: The correlation between speaking ability and research accomplishments is not quite 1 (but it is also certainly not 0).

Disclaimer: It has been noted that this blog is currently somewhat focused on SfN review/preview. This is true and the reasons for that are obvious. We will return to a more varied programming after SfN.

What do Frank Gehry, Jeff Hawkins and the Dalai Lama have in common?

The SfN "Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society" lecture speakers 2005-2010

They were all previous speakers for the “Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society” SFN lecture series.

The series was introduced in 2005, and has featured one such lecture every year since. Keep in mind that SfN is an evolving (adaptive?) entity. For instance, minisymposia were introduced as late as 2004. The current form of the meeting is a very recent creation, liable to change again.

This lecture series has not been entirely without controversy. The first such lecture – by the Dalai Lama in 2005 – triggered a serious row, including a threatened meeting boycott by some scientists, an online petition (which is still online), as well as editorials in Nature, the New York Times, and many, many others. The sentiment of the critics was that SfN should not give a forum to a non-scientist theocratic dictator to spew his superstitious venom. Despite all these preliminary excitement, the actual meeting, including the inaugural “dialogues” lecture by his holiness went off without a hitch, and most 2005 attendees agree that the Dalai was positively lovely in his presentation.

More recent choices by the society have been “safer”, and without any notable controversy. An alternative explanation for this calm is that scientists might perhaps have gotten used to the notion that non-scientists are allowed to speak at SfN.

In any case, one of the appealing features of the “Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society lecture” is that it starts the meeting off with a bang. It typically starts at noon on Saturday, to be followed by the first content session at 1 pm. This year’s speaker is Glenn Close, who is slated to speak on the issue of mental health and the importance of continued research on the underlying basis of mental illness.

The introduction of this lecture series is actually quite ingenious, as is lends some much needed glamor to the meeting, spiking public curiosity (and media attention) in what would otherwise “just” be the annual gathering of many a bench scientist (aka the common “lab rat”).

More importantly, it does highlight a serious issue in contemporary science (and society). Currently, a genuine dialogue between science and society is both direly needed and in short supply. We all know about Snow’s division between the sciences and the humanities, with all its undesirable consequences (for a reminder, see here). Sadly, this division has been joined by a gap of even greater magnitude, namely that between Science and Society itself. The details of this matter will have to remain the subject of a future post, but let me be clear that I think that this chasm is enormous and currently only bridged by extremely narrow, fragile and – at best – noisy channels. Misunderstandings between Science and Society abound. This is quite tragic, as (basic) science is ultimately funded by society. Conversely, almost every way in which our everyday life differs from that in the 16th century (or for that matter, ANY century), is owed to science in one way or the other (simplifying the complex relationship between science and technology for the sake of argument). In other words, this relationship is crucial. Ideally, it would be characterized by a symbiotic, mutually beneficial exchange (progress for money). Recently, this relationship has been gummed up by all kinds of ideological trench warfare, ranging from animal rights terrorism to evolution/creationism “debates” to the arguments over anthropogenic climate change.

The current relationship between science and society?

As tempting as the assertion might be, the point is not that the scientists are always right, whereas the ignorant society is always wrong and that the enlightened scientists just need to educate the witless and benighted public. No – the point is that dialogue is crucial. Dialogue that is characterized by mutual respect and an understanding that the common greater good is in jeopardy if a spirit of benevolence does not prevail.

In this sense, while the “dialogues” lecture series is certainly not sufficient, it is a necessary start. An involvement of high profile figures in the public awareness is perhaps a good way to clear the path for a much wider dialogue. For this, the Society should be commended.