Our updates for September 2022, including new grants. 👀
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New Science
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Facilitating the creation of the 21st century institutions of basic science, starting with the life sciences.
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Can we tear chloroplasts from their eukaryotic hosts and enable them to flourish, on their own, once again?
This summer, a Fellow explored tools to transfer DNA into the organelle's genome, thus making progress toward a "free-living chloroplast."
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Pathogens constantly evolve. We funded a fellow to design small peptides that target various sites on SARS-CoV-2 & fuse them to nanobodies. The goal is to build a "universal immunotherapy" that retains efficacy against new viral strains.
Our second essay:
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Studying organisms in isolation — as in cell culture — destroys the myriad signals, from neighbors and surroundings, that maintain a cell's identity.🧫
Our historical focus on individual cells has led to amazing discoveries, but we can do better.
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We funded five young scientists this summer. Each joined a lab in Boston or Berkeley. Their high-risk biology projects explored the potential for free-living mitochondria, universal immunotherapies, and more. This week, we're sharing their projects with you. 🎉
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To improve academic science, let's study the law. New essay by explains how Consequences, Evidence, and Adversaries could all bolster reproducibility. #AcademicTwitter
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In the dozen years after solving DNA’s structure, all but one of the 18 scientists who received a Nobel Prize in molecular biology were supported by Rockefeller Foundation funds.
Learn more about their funding principles and history in our latest essay:
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Thanks for reading the essay, which can be cited using doi: 10.56416/480pmz. If you have ideas for an essay about the history of science, please email us: newscience.org/team/ //
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This essay by includes advice for modern science philanthropies, like , and ourselves. It draws directly from Rockefeller archives, program officer diaries, and a slew of other materials.
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Weaver's team made grants based on an informal application process. They were always wary of "creating long-term dependence;" grants, often, were contingent on a researcher finding matching funds for their ideas. Funding could be pulled, too; this happened to Linus Pauling.
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Director Warren Weaver's background was in physics; he had little domain expertise in the people he funded (like Linus Pauling, Max Delbrück, and T.H. Morgan). He coached his program officers to circumnavigate the globe and "triangulate to excellence."
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Rockefeller's Natural Sciences team were "highly opinionated," and "focused on the organizational and social environments of research institutions," more than specific ideas.
Grantmaking officers were "foxes," not hedgehogs. A job inquiry from Leo Szilard was deflected.
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In the dozen years after solving DNA’s structure, all but one of the 18 scientists who received a Nobel Prize in molecular biology were supported by Rockefeller Foundation funds.
Learn more about their funding principles and history in our latest essay:
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We're assigning DOIs to all of our published essays, so that their impact on metascience and basic life sciences research can be quantified. 🎉 Example here:
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Once again, New Science publishes something very much worth reading -- hat tip to
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For 350 years, scientists have been urged to "reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style." But have we gone too far? A brief history of science writing & style.
newscience.substack.com/p/scientific-s
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We're excited about new publishing platforms (like ) that are conveying research in a more relaxed form, in new styles and formats.
But we still don't know what science loses when journals impose strict word limits and structures.
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The classic opinion piece by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, too, used metaphor to attack prevailing evolutionary ideas. It has been cited more than 10,000 times. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs
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Rigid publication formats "kill the life of science" because they strip journals of prose and metaphor.
"Kepler...tried to work out the notes sounded by each planet [and] discovered laws that describe how the planets trace elliptical paths about the Sun."
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The APA was among the first to publish a "publication manual," in 1937. One member was not happy: "If we insist upon cramping his style and insisting upon arbitrary form...we may make uniform pages, but we kill the life of science."
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Before WWII, editors were strapped for submissions. Many took up the pen themselves, or asked for their friends to submit papers, to fill journal pages. Only one Einstein paper was ever peer reviewed (and didn't require peer review until 1973).
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The IMRAD style (Intro, Methods, Results, etc.) was adopted bc of rapid growth in the science community post-WWII. As the government doubled its investments in academic labs, a surge of papers followed. Editors adopted rigid formats to keep up with the deluge.
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For 350 years, scientists have been urged to "reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style." But have we gone too far? A brief history of science writing & style.
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A few years ago, I compiled a list of papers that were repeatedly rejected but nonetheless stood the test of time and became very influential.
Please suggest additions to the list.
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Time-ordered transcription recordings. Seems an amazing tool for developmental biology & more. 👀
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I’m excited to introduce our Retro-Cascorder, out today in @Nature! This molecular device logs barcoded receipts of gene expression in a temporal genomic ledger. Sequence the ledger --> recover the history of gene expression. nature.com/articles/s4158
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Excited to be growing the core CR team!
We aim to launch 10-20+ moonshot science projects over the coming yrs, and will need exceptional people with the right mix of ‘crazy’ and ‘grounded’ to accelerate our core org + FROs across ops, talent search, etc.
5 roles open now 👇
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Come join us & the incredible teams @E11BIO @CultivariumFRO on our moonshot mission to revolutionize science.
Our goal is to accelerate scientific research by targeting key bottlenecks with Focused Research Organizations (FROs).
Check out our open roles: jobs.lever.co/convergentrese
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"My program officer at NIH recommended that I include a “pro-amyloid collaborator” in my grant application." 🤡
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NEW: An essay by Rachael Neve, one of the pioneers of Alzheimer's research. She has many provocative thoughts about academia and NIH priorities:
goodscienceproject.org/articles/essay
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so stoked to be working alongside this incredible group of people!!
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Today we announce the recipients of our inaugural summer fellowships. Five fellows, six labs, three months. Projects will probe the origins of endosymbiosis, map protein binding sites, and more. Each has transformative potential.
Read the announcement: newscience.org/2022-summer-fe
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And our monthly newsletter, with additional updates:
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Today we announce the recipients of our inaugural summer fellowships. Five fellows, six labs, three months. Projects will probe the origins of endosymbiosis, map protein binding sites, and more. Each has transformative potential.
Read the announcement:
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We're hosting a summer party in Boston w/ @Convergent_FROs and @newscienceorg, June 10th at 7pm. Scientists, science funders and biotech folks are welcome! Add your details here if you'd like to come: forms.gle/5B4Nnt3ktLgV3d
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Hey everyone, me and a few friends close to EleutherAI have (re)started a Discord community dedicated to open-source machine learning for biology. Here is an invite link: discord.gg/hq4BvpkGaW.
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If you’re an independent writer/researcher/youtuber interested in writing a piece like this, but would need support to do it, please DM or email me sharing some previous work! Depending on context Open Phil may be able to help.
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Finally finished ’s electronic doorstopper on the NIH newscience.org/nih/. Lots of interesting details.
In the spirit of putting your dreams out into the world, I’d love to read similar opinionated pieces on some other public institutions below:
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Spent Saturday nerding out w some v optimistic twitter friends irl for the first time - everyone was even lovelier than expected even tho I am extraordinarily bad at predicting heights! 🙏 for organizing #metascience 📈
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New: In 2006, Congress set up an oversight board meant to streamline the NIH. It hasn't met in 7 years, and its members don't know why
statnews.com/2022/05/09/the
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After reviewing the announced 2022-23 stipends for bioscience and humanities/social science Ph.D. programs at twelve institutions, we found that only TWO universities, Princeton and Brown, pay more than the local cost of living. Public universities pay even less. 2/x
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To read more pieces like this in the future, consider signing up for our newsletter newscience.substack.com.
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