Mary E. Sunderland

The Ethos and Ethics of Translational Research

Calls for the “translation” of research from bench to bedside are increasingly demanding. What is translation, and why does it matter? We sketch the recent history of outcome-oriented translational research in the United States, with a particular focus on the Roadmap Initiative of the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD). Our main example of contemporary translational research is stem cell research, which has superseded genomics as the translational object of choice. We explore the nature of and obstacles to translational research and assess the ethical and biomedical challenges of embracing a translational ethos.

Taking Emotion Seriously: Meeting Students Where They Are

Emotions are often portrayed as subjective judgments that pose a threat to rationality and morality, but there is a growing literature across many disciplines that emphasizes the centrality of emotion to moral reasoning. For engineers, however, being rational usually means sequestering emotions that might bias analyses—good reasoning is tied to quantitative data, math, and science. This paper brings a new pedagogical perspective that strengthens the case for incorporating emotions into engineering ethics. Building on the widely established success of active and collaborative learning environments, in particular the problem-based learning (PBL) philosophy and methodology, the paper articulates new strategies for incorporating emotion into engineering ethics education. An ethics education pilot study is analyzed to explore how PBL can engage students’ emotions. Evidence suggests that PBL empowers students to cultivate value for engineering ethics and social responsibility, and in doing so, redefine the societal role of the engineer. Taking students’ emotions seriously in engineering ethics offers an effective strategy to meaningfully engage students in ethical learning.

Regeneration: Thomas Hunt Morgan's Window into Development

Early in his career Thomas Hunt Morgan was interested in embryology and dedicated his research to studying organisms that could regenerate. Widely regarded as a regeneration expert, Morgan was invited to deliver a series of lectures on the topic that he developed into a book, Regeneration (1901). In addition to presenting experimental work that he had conducted and supervised, Morgan also synthesized and critiqued a great deal of work by his peers and predecessors. This essay probes into the history of regeneration studies by looking in depth at Regeneration and evaluating Morgan’s contribution. Although famous for his work with fruit fly genetics, studying Regeneration illuminates Morgan’s earlier scientific approach which emphasized the importance of studying a diversity of organisms. Surveying a broad range of regenerative phenomena allowed Morgan to institute a standard scientific terminology that continues to inform regeneration studies today. Most importantly, Morgan argued that regeneration was a fundamental aspect of the growth process and therefore should be accounted for within developmental theory. Establishing important similarities between regeneration and development allowed Morgan to make the case that regeneration could act as a model of development. The nature of the relationship between embryogenesis and regeneration remains an active area of research.

Teaching global perspectives: engineering ethics across international and academic borders

Recent policy reports on responsible innovation emphasize the need to make ethics integral to advanced engineering programs. Students, however, usually perceive ethics as a set of rules and principles embedded in codes rather than as a set of open-ended approaches and a potential source of innovative research questions. We report on the pilot offering of an intensive summer program for graduate students, Global Perspectives: Engineering Ethics Across International and Academic Borders, which aimed to shift this perspective by creating opportunities for students to explore the challenging situation of ethics within graduate engineering education and specifically to engage in collaborative, interdisciplinary ethics research. By synthesizing scholarship from the philosophy of emotion, student voice, and early engagement, we aimed to create a space for student exploration, collaborative learning, and active knowledge production. The student commentaries that follow the article serve as the programs prelimina...

Teaching natural history at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

During its centennial celebrations in 2008, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at the University of California, Berkeley paid homage to its founding director, Joseph Grinnell. Recognized as a leading scientific institution, the MVZ managed to grow throughout the twentieth century, a period often characterized by the decline of natural history. To understand how and why research flourished at the MVZ, this paper looks closely at Grinnell’s undergraduate course, the Natural History of the Vertebrates (NHV). Taught by MVZ affiliates since 1914, the NHV offers an important window on Grinnell’s approach and legacy. This paper argues that the NHV contributed to the MVZ’s long-term success by acting as, first, a gateway to natural history; second, a vector for the MVZ’s research programme; and third, a shared faculty responsibility. Grinnell’s significance in the history of science is understated, in part because his writing style de-emphasized the importance of his theoretical contributions, including his development of the niche concept, his emphasis on population thinking and geographic isolation in studies of evolution, and his effort to integrate speciation questions and genetics. Studying the NHV highlights these contributions because Grinnell freely communicated his ideas to his students. An analysis of Grinnell’s course material shows that his theoretical and methodological approach pre-dated the evolutionary synthesis and inspired natural-history research throughout the past century. Established in 1908, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at the University of California, Berkeley, recently celebrated its centennial. There was much to celebrate. The twentieth century was not generally kind to natural history, yet the MVZ managed to flourish. While many natural-history museums were forced to shut their doors and/or significantly realign their objectives, the MVZ upheld the core scientific approach of its founding director, Joseph Grinnell. The centennial provided an ideal opportunity to commemorate Grinnell, who launched a remarkably successful research programme that * Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Email: mary.sunderland@berkeley.edu. A version of this paper was presented at the biennial meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology in Brisbane, Australia, July 2009. I am indebted to Monica Albe for introducing me to the Natural History of the Vertebrates course, and to Rauri Bowie, Jim McGuire, Alan Shabel and Lauryn Benedict for allowing me to participate in the course. I am grateful to Elihu Gerson, James Griesemer, William Z. Lidicker, Lisa Onaga, James L. Patton, JimMcGuire and several anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts, and to Cathryn Carson, Karen Klitz and Craig Moritz for insightful discussions. I am thankful to the librarians at the Bancroft Library who provided assistance with the archives. I am especially indebted to James L. Patton and William Z. Lidicker, who have thoughtfully answered my endless questions. This material was based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0823401. BJHS 46(1): 97–121, March 2013.

Modernizing Natural History: Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Transition.

Throughout the twentieth century calls to modernize natural history motivated a range of responses. It was unclear how research in natural history museums would participate in the significant technological and conceptual changes that were occurring in the life sciences. By the 1960s, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the few university-based natural history museums that were able to maintain their specimen collections and support active research. The MVZ therefore provides a window to the modernization of natural history. This paper concentrates on the directorial transitions that occurred at the MVZ between 1965 and 1971. During this period, the MVZ had four directors: Alden H. Miller (Director 1940–1965), an ornithologist; Aldo Starker Leopold (Acting Director 1965–1966), a conservationist and wildlife biologist; Oliver P. Pearson (Director 1966–1971), a physiologist and mammalogist; and David B. Wake (Director 1971–1998), a morphologist, developmental biologist, and herpetologist. The paper explores how a diversity of overlapping modernization strategies, including hiring new faculty, building infrastructure to study live animals, establishing new kinds of collections, and building modern laboratories combined to maintain collections at the MVZ’s core. The paper examines the tensions between the different modernization strategies to inform an analysis of how and why some changes were institutionalized while others were short-lived. By exploring the modernization of collections-based research, this paper emphasizes the importance of collections in the transformation of the life sciences.

Morphogenesis, Dictyostelium, and the search for shared developmental processes

In the 1930s John Tyler Bonner began studying the slime mold, Dictyostelium discoideum, as a way to investigate how organisms develop. With a life cycle that includes periods of unicellularity and multicellularity, Dictyostelium raises questions fundamental to development and evolution. In Morphogenesis: An Essay on Development (1952), Bonner built on his work with Dictyostelium to inform developmental theory and practice. By exploring how Bonners early work with Dictyostelium motivated his synthetic approach in Morphogenesis, this paper presents an example of how those who studied development sought ways to gain traction in the rapidly changing life sciences. While a biochemical viewpoint of development became dominant, morphogenesis provided a way to reintroduce and emphasize biological organization at the organismal level. Bonners early work offers a window to mid-twentieth century studies of development, an understudied area in the history of science, and shows that it was a time when growing experimental evidence enabled new ways of thinking about the relationship between ontogeny and evolution, and more broadly, about how the parts of nature might fit together.

Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “The Ethos and Ethics of Translational Research”

Our target article focuses on stem cell research as an exemplar of the promises and perils of translational research. The work emerged from a series of workshops in Canada and the United States (US) with stem cell biologists, bioethicists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists, funded by the Canadian Stem Cell Network between 2003 and 2005 as the Model Systems Strategic Research Network (MSSRN) led by Jason Scott Robert and Françoise Baylis. In our essay, we reflect on the nature and dynamics of the ethos of translation particularly in the US context, though drawing on our experiences in Canada. We attempt to justify the focus on stem cell research by appeal both to history (stem cell research is one-century old, but has changed dramatically over the past decade) and to the current sociopolitical context of results-driven research (where ‘results’ are poorly understood, but typically refer to commercializable products). In this essay, we probe the desirability of translation and the roadmap to achieve it, concluding that it is premature to endorse (or oppose) translation uncritically, without sufficient attention to a range of variables, including “the landscape, the culture, the place, the people, and, of course, the languages they use” (Maienschein et al. 2008, 43). This target article generated seven open peer commentaries. In general, they can be categorized as responding to two major themes: 1) the nature of translation and of translational research; and 2) the nature of science. We are grateful for the feedback that the format of the AJOB target article provides, as it allows commentators to critically engage with the target article and explore tensions, omissions, analogies, and so on. Sometimes, this feedback is invaluable. But, the AJOB target article format also showcases criticisms based

Computerizing natural history collections.

Computers are ubiquitous in the life sciences and are associated with many of the practical and conceptual changes that characterize biologys twentieth-century transformation. Yet comparatively little has been written about how scientists use computers. Despite this relative lack of scholarly attention, the claim that computers revolutionized the life sciences by making the impossible possible is widespread, and relatively unchallenged. How did the introduction of computers into research programs shape scientific practice? The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at the University of California, Berkeley provides a tractable way into this under-examined question because it is possible to follow the computerization of data in the context of long-term research programs.

Educating the Post-Fukushima Nuclear Engineer

While the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident shook the community of nuclear engineers, it had a special significance for nuclear engineering students. What were they supposed do? How should they and could they answer questions about nuclear safety? What about their future opportunities? The incident caused many students to question their deepest convictions about all things nuclear and opened up new questions about their social responsibilities. This chapter looks to the history of nuclear engineering education to provide context for the discussions that took place during the summer school. Historically, students have seldom had opportunities to engage the socio-ethical dimensions of their work. The summer school offers evidence that today’s students are actively seeking new analytical skills and different ways to conceptualize the socio-ethical complexity of nuclear engineering problems. Moreover, students are poised to play a key role in shaping much needed curricular reforms.