Penn Science Policy and Diplomacy Group

Opinion: Clearing the Air About Unenforceable Policies by Kristina Victoreen Is a policy without enforcement really a policy, or is it just an aspiration? That question has been on my mind lately, in two different contexts, both related to the air we breathe. First, there’s Penn’s new “Tobacco-free Campus” policy. I first noticed the signs in November, when they quietly popped up here and there around campus. As someone who has spent many a lunch hour going from bench to bench all around campus in an often-vain attempt to find a place to sit and eat my lunch without having to breathe second-hand smoke, I was really excited to see those signs. But I confess I was much less excited when I went online and read the actual policy, particularly the section on enforcement. You can read it here . What it seems to say is that there is no enforcement, and if you have any questions, ask the person you report to or your Dean. In other words, Penn wants you to not smoke but ...

by Arpita Myles Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS is a global health problem that has terrified and intrigued scientists and laypeople alike for decades. AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, which is transmitted through blood, semen, vaginal fluid, and from an infected mother to her child [1] . Infection leads to failure of the immune system, increasing susceptibility to secondary infections and cancer, which are mostly fatal. Considerable efforts are being put into developing prophylactic and therapeutic approaches to tackle HIV-AIDS, but there is also interest in understanding how the disease became so wide-spread. With the advent of the Ebola and Zika viruses in the last couple of years, there is a renewed urgency in understanding the emergence and spread of viruses in the past in order to prevent those in the future. The narrative surrounding the spread of HIV has been somewhat convoluted, but a new paper in Nature by Worobey et. al , hopes to se...

by Chris Yarosh It is very easy to become wrapped up in day-to-day scientific life. There is always another experiment to do, or a paper to read, or a grant to submit. This result leads to that hypothesis, and that hypothesis needs to be tested, revised, re-tested, etc. Scientists literally study the inner workings of life, matter and the universe itself, yet science often seems set apart from other worldly concerns. But it’s not. The terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut and the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis have drawn the world’s attention, and rightfully so. These are genuine catastrophes, and it is difficult to imagine the suffering of those who must face the aftermath of these bouts of shocking violence. At the same time, 80 world leaders are preparing to gather in freshly scarred Paris for another round of global climate talks . In a perfect world, these talks would focus only on the sound science and overwhelming consensus supporting action on climate change, and...

by Chris Yarosh This past March , the National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced a new funding mechanism designed to stabilize the biomedical research enterprise by creating new career paths for PhD-level scientists. That mechanism, called the NCI Research Specialist Award (R50), is now live. Applications (of which there will likely be many) for the R50 will be accepted beginning in January, with the first crop of directly-funded Research Specialists starting in October 2016. More details about the grant can be found in the newly released FOA . Why is this a big deal? In recent years, there have been increased calls for reform of the biomedical enterprise. More people than ever hold PhDs, and professor positions (the traditional career goal of doctorate holders) are scarce . This leaves many young researchers trapped somewhere in the middle in postdoctoral positions , something we've talked about    before   on this blog . These positions are still considere...

by Chris Yarosh When we think about the role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in biomedical research, we often think only in terms of dollars and cents. The NIH is a funding agency, after all, and most researchers submit grants with this relationship in mind. However, because the NIH holds the power of the purse, it also plays a large role in dictating the scope of biomedical research conducted in the U.S. It is noteworthy, then, that the NIH recently delayed  some high profile grant applications related to one type of research: chimeras. Chimeras , named for a Greek mythological monster composed of several different animals, are organisms that feature cells that are genetically distinct.  In the lab, this commonly refers to animals that contain cells from more than once species. Research into chimeras is not new; scientists have been successfully using animal/animal (e.g. sheep/goat) chimeras for over 30 years to learn about how animals develop. Human/anima...

By Ian McLaughlin Earlier this month, postdocs and graduate students from several fields met to candidly discuss the challenges postdocs are encountering while pursuing careers in academic research.  The meeting began with an enumeration of these challenges, discussing the different elements contributing to the mounting obstacles preventing postdocs from attaining faculty positions – such as the scarcity of faculty positions and ballooning number of rising postdocs, funding mechanisms and cuts, the sub-optimal relationship between publications and the quality of science, and the inaccurate conception of what exactly a postdoctoral position should entail. From [15] At a fundamental level, there’s a surplus of rising doctoral students whose progression outpaces the availability of faculty positions at institutions capable of hosting the research they intended to perform [10,15] .  While 65% of PhDs attain postdocs, only 15-20% of postdocs ...