More on Myriad, its implications beyond medicine, and what I think would have made more sense

Yesterday, when I heard the news about the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Myriad gene patenting case (read yesterday’s post for details), I was frustrated for two reasons. First, my newsfeed was full of headlines saying that genes could no longer be patented, which only sort of partially reflects the true implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Second, I was frustrated by the fact that the Supreme Court’s decision only sort of partially dealt with the fundamental issue in the whole case.

To be fair, the split ruling, which invalidated Myriad’s patents on isolated human DNA, did effectively address the immediate concern over patient access to genetic testing services relying on the naturally-occuring BRCA1 and BRCA2 sequences. Myriad no longer has a complete monopoly over the BRCA tests. This may provide some relief to other labs wishing to offer the test (and patients hoping to receive it at a competitive cost), but the immediate benefits are likely going to be short-lived: Myriad’s patents were due to expire by 2015 anyway, and such single-gene testing methods are rapidly losing steam as it’s becoming feasible to sequence whole genomes at a lower cost than the individual tests. So yes, it’s a win, but beyond the ideological victory, it seems too little, too late.

In its compromise — overturning patents on isolated DNA while upholding patents on synthetic cDNA — the Court failed to recognize that the central problem with gene patents is that our genetic information, in whatever chemical form it is expressed, is inherent to nature. It’s not a human invention. And as I argued yesterday, the process of creating cDNA from a naturally-occuring sequence is completely obvious to anyone working in the field. It’s a standard procedure — and indeed cDNA often forms the basis for many applications of genetic engineering.

Take plant biotechnology, for example. Let’s say I find a plant that tolerates stress extraordinarily well, and I can attribute that tolerance to a specific gene. If I wanted to isolate that gene, I probably wouldn’t go digging through the chromosomes looking for the sequence — there’s a lot of extra “junk” in the chromosomal DNA sequences, stuff that isn’t functionally relevant for my purposes. Instead, I’d go looking for the active version of the gene, its “transcript” — the mRNA molecule that has already had all the junk taken out and only contains the information that’s relevant to me. The end product, when I copy that mRNA transcript, is cDNA.  According to the Supreme Court’s ruling, that sequence I’ve just copied is no longer a product of nature, and I could patent it, as is, even before I’ve done anything useful with it. Of course, the next step might be to take that cDNA and introduce it into a crop plant, thereby conferring stress tolerance to that crop. I could also patent that. But unlike the first step of merely arriving at cDNA, in applying it, I’ve done something inventive.

But I could have just as easily stopped at the cDNA step, taken my patent on the cDNA, and effectively blocked anyone else from doing anything useful with it. If anyone wanted to use my gene, they could certainly  (thanks to yesterday’s ruling) go back to the original source and re-isolate it, but the process would result in the creation of a cDNA identical to the one I have a patent on. To make matters worse, many  patents don’t just cover a single unique sequence; they cover that sequence and anything closely related to it. This is intended to stop people from taking my patented sequence, making a minimal number of changes that have no functional relevance, and calling it a different sequence. However, the nature of genetic information is such that genes with similar functions tend to have similar sequences. Nature does not often completely reinvent the wheel. And since cDNA represents the essential functional part of a gene — the instructions that actually produce something — it also tends to reflect the least variable regions of the original DNA sequence. So one patent on a cDNA can, intentionally or not, create widespread barriers to the application of similar genes.

So yes, the ruling against patents of isolated naturally-occuring DNA is a win, but I don’t think it will have a lot of meaningful impact on the biotech industry. The industry will go on operating in an ever-increasing tangle of gene patents (pardon me, cDNA patents), and the outcome is essentially the same: companies will still have the right to own the basic genetic building blocks, regardless of whether or not they’ve done anything inventive with them.

Here’s what I would have preferred to see happen, and what I think would have been far more consistent with the legal precedent cited in the ruling. Throughout the Myriad case, all of the decisions have cited Diamond v. Chakrabarty  as the relevant precedent for determining whether isolated DNA or cDNA have “markedly different characteristics from any found in nature.”  The case surrounded the patent eligibility of a genetically-modified bacterium that could clean up oil spills. Was the bacterium a product of nature, or had the modifications resulted in something entirely new? The Court ruled that the genetically-modified organism was patent-eligible, because of its markedly different characteristics arising from human intervention.

While I thought Diamond v. Chakrabarty was kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison with Myriad — looking at a whole organism  with obvious human invention vs. isolated pieces of DNA, the case does present a compelling standard for biotechnology-related patents. The oil-eating bacterium became patentable at the point where its character, as a result of human invention, became unlike anything found in nature. Makes sense.

Rather than allowing patents on every individual building block, why not regard the building blocks as open technology, and provide patent protection on the unique products that arise from combining  different building blocks in different ways for different purposes? Isn’t that the essence of innovation — taking the pieces that are available and assembling them in creative ways to solve problems? It’s kind of hard to foster this kind of innovation when one person owns all the blocks, or each block is owned by somebody different and you have to come to some agreement about how the blocks can be used.

We now live in a world of big data and synthetic biology. We have so much information about different genes from different species, and the technology to combine them in infinitely diverse ways. Yet, today, the first step in any biotechnology project is to establish freedom-to-operate — navigating the potential patent land mines that litter the landscape.

With Myriad, the Supreme Court sought to strike a balance between the established expectations from 30 years of gene patenting practice, and supporting ongoing innovation. I get that. But I wish they could have looked farther ahead than the implications of Myriad and seized the opportunity to clear a path for future innovation that isn’t based on who has access to which building blocks.

 

The Myriad Gene Patent Decision – the right answer to the wrong question

Today, the Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated ruling on the patent eligibility of human genes. It marks the end (for now anyway) of a long-standing debate about whether our genes are a product of nature, or whether, once isolated, they become patentable matter. The Supreme Court issued a split decision, which I’ll come back to in a minute.

First, for those unfamiliar with the case, a bit of background. In the early 1990s, two genes, named BRCA1 and BRCA2, were discovered, and it was found that mutations within these two genes were associated with a markedly increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers. The DNA sequences for these genes were then patented by a company called Myriad Genetics, and these patents effectively gave Myriad the exclusive right to isolate BRCA1 and BRCA2 from patients and provide genetic testing based on the sequences. When others started offering genetic tests for mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2, Myriad claimed their patents were being infringed, and well…threw a fit. Some years later, a group of doctors and patients and patient advocates filed suit against Myriad, arguing that, as DNA sequences, BRCA1 and BRCA2 were products of nature, and therefore not eligible for patents under US patent law. The District Court initially sided with them, and ruled Myriad’s claims to the sequences invalid, but this ruling was disputed and eventually overturned through two subsequent decisions (here and here) by the Federal Circuit Court. Now, the Supreme Court basically faced two fundamental questions:

1. Is “isolated DNA” distinguishable from naturally-occuring DNA, as far as the “product of nature” patent exclusion is concerned?
2. Are human-made copies of genes (complementary DNA or cDNA) different from isolated DNA, insofar as the “product of nature” exclusion is concerned?

In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled (correctly, in my opinion) that isolated DNA is a product of nature and should not be patentable. The process of removing a piece of DNA from a chromosome does not alter its sequence in any meaningful way. The information it contains is identical to that which is naturally-occuring. In rendering these patent claims invalid, the Court has effectively removed Myriad’s monopoly on clinical testing based on isolated samples of BRCA1 and BRCA2 from patients — a clear victory for medicine.

The second question, however, was not so straightforward. The Court upheld the Federal Circuit Court’s previous ruling that synthetic cDNA is not a product of nature, and therefore is patentable, at least as far as the product of nature exclusion is concerned. Although the sequence of the cDNA is inextricably derived from the sequence of the naturally occurring DNA, the court ruled that “the lab technician unquestionably creates something new when cDNA is made.”

I question the logic here. While it’s clear that cDNA is not a naturally-occuring chemical substance in and of itself, the Court concedes in its opinion to Question 1 that “Myriad’s claim is concerned primarily with the information contained in the genetic sequence, [emphasis theirs] not with the specific chemical composition of a particular molecule.”

The Court obviously understands that it’s the information in the sequence that’s important, and yet argues that cDNA is patentable…even though from an information standpoint, cDNA is a direct copy of a naturally-occuring sequence! What gives?

Let’s step back for a bit of a genetics lesson (which, incidentally, is also fairly plainly described in the full-text of the Court’s decision):

Each of your chromosomes is made up of long strands of DNA, which contain sequences for specific genes. You can think a chromosome as analogous to a library, containing hundreds of individual books, or genes.

Within each book, there is the useful information (i.e. the content) and some other bits that provide structure but aren’t really part of the content itself (i.e. the table of contents, chapter divisions, index, etc.)  If you were going to make a copy of the book, and your primary concern was the information, you might copy just the content, and not bother with the table of contents or the index.

Something similar happens with your genes. Each segment of DNA corresponding to a particular gene contains some useful “instructions” (called “exons”) and some not so useful structural bits (called “introns”). When your body decides to copy, or transcribe, a gene, it naturally cuts out all of the extra stuff, so the instructions (the exons) are all that’s left. This trimmed-down copy of the instructions is called mRNA, and it’s this molecule that’s read or “translated” by your cells to produce proteins — the functional products of the genetic instructions.

To make cDNA in the lab, what we’re essentially doing is making a copy of naturally-occuring mRNA — that trimmed-down version of the original gene sequence.

Technically speaking, the Court is correct that cDNA is “different” from naturally-occuring DNA in that the original sequence contains all of the instructions plus all the extra bits, whereas cDNA only contains the instructions. But cDNA is made from mRNA, a naturally-occuring molecule, which is made from the original DNA, also a naturally-occuring molecule. From an information perspective, the cDNA still encodes the identical protein as the mRNA. And since it’s the information, not the chemical composition, that’s at issue here (as the Court already conceded), how is cDNA something “new”?

Even if I were to accept that, strictly-speaking, cDNA is not a product of nature, there arises an entirely different issue concerning patent eligibility, that the Supreme Court has completely ignored (and even says so, in the footnote!). All they’ve done in this ruling is decide whether DNA and/or cDNA are to be considered “products of nature.”  This is only one criterion for determining patent eligibility. Another major criterion is that the invention must not be obvious to someone “having ordinary skill in the art.”

In its ruling against patents of naturally-occuring DNA (Question 1, above), the Court acknowledges that the processes Myriad  used to isolate DNA “were well understood, widely used, and fairly uniform insofar as any scientist engaged in the search for a gene would likely have utilized a similar approach.”

In its ruling supporting patents of cDNA (Question 2), however, the Court adds a footnote stating, “we express no opinion whether cDNA satisfies the other statutory requirements of patentability,” referring to sections 102 (novelty) and 103 (non-obviousness) of US patent law.

Conveniently, they’ve decided to call cDNA patentable without bothering to examine the question of whether making cDNA is also as obvious to someone skilled in the art as isolating DNA was in the first place!  (Hint: It is!)

Could this leave the door open to a challenge of cDNA patents based on section 103?  Seems obvious to me…

(But, hey…I don’t really understand the law.)

The chicken, the egg, and the red herring: strange bedfellows on the path to self-discovery

In the beginning, I was a writer. And/or a scientist. Which came first, I’ve never really been able to tell. On the surface, science seems the clear winner. I had my first microscope at age five, and a seemingly inexhaustible interest in the natural world — flowers, stars, animals, rocks — I just needed to know things. The spirit of inquiry was firmly engrained long before I ever stepped foot in a classroom.

But then, so too, were stories. Already an avid reader by the time I started school, I took easily enough to writing, but it wasn’t until I was much older that I saw writing as something central to my identity. I just thought it was something everyone did. Science, on the other hand, clearly did shape me from the start, and there was a name for it made me: I was a nerd.

I would go on being a nerd throughout my formal education and into my professional career. And I’d keep writing about it the whole time. Looking back, it seems as though I’ve spent much of my life treading parallel paths, never quite committing both feet to one or the other. At times I’ve tried to bridge them, and at other times, they’ve left me feeling torn, divided, even inadequate at both.

It’s taken me a long time to set aside the chicken or the egg debate about which came first or which is more important, and accept the fact that this is just who I am. Now I have two degrees in science, a diploma in writing, and a job that allows me to thrive in the space between these two boxes I’ve never neatly fit into. Officially, I’m neither scientist nor writer, and I’ve never been happier.

Somehow, in transitioning into my not-science/not-writing career, I seem to have stumbled upon the right mix of both. At first, I suppose I just chalked the position up to being a “good fit.” It’s been a welcome change to be able to bring the best of both worlds to my work without feeling the pressure to identify with one camp or the other. After years of trying to reconcile the science/writing dichotomy, I was happy enough to have found a balance between the two that I never really thought to question how not-science/not-writing could ostensibly be such a good fit for this scientist/writer.

Last week, it hit me. I was at a conference for experiential educators — a mixed bag of people involved in everything from campus recreation to residence life. It was an altogether different crowd and different atmosphere than I was used to, and as a relative newcomer to the world of student services, I wasn’t quite sure at first how much I’d have in common with this group. What would I, a student research coordinator, find to talk about with people who run recreational sports programs?

Before I had time to worry about it, however, I attended a session on experiential learning theory, facilitated by none other than a campus rec guy. I’d seen the theory before, and as a scientist, it seemed rather intuitive to me. You have an experience, you reflect on it, learn something from it, and then apply what you’ve learned to new situations. It’s the same kind of iterative process that underlies our research. But here was a campus rec guy talking about it, to a room full of people who used this same model as the backbone for a range of completely different programs.

I realized then that in spite of all our differences, we are indeed a community of peers. That regardless of our different educational backgrounds and career trajectories, regardless of whether we are working on residence leadership or study abroad or service-learning programs, we are united by a common purpose: to help students realize their potential by supporting them in high-impact experiential activities. What I have in common with these people who are so different from me is a deeply-held value for the benefits of learning by doing. More than that, my science/writing background, when superimposed over the various models of experiential learning, finally makes sense. I am not just a scientist/writer; I am a person who has lived and learned my entire life through a combination of experimentation, observation, and reflection. Science and writing are merely the tools I’ve used to do it. They are to me what rope courses and sailing lessons are to the outdoor leadership people — a means of experiencing and reflecting on the world and ourselves.

When I look back now at my own educational and professional history, the practise of experiential learning, whether I recognized it as such or not, has always been a common thread. It’s there in my record of high school absences, spent dodging classes I didn’t see as relevant for the real-life experience and meaningful mentorship I found working in libraries. It’s there in my undergraduate experience, where research and science writing — both non-academic experiences — became the dual pillars of my subsequent career. It’s there in the methods I’ve used in my own teaching — avoiding multiple-choice tests, taking students into the lab, challenging them to step out of their academic comfort zones and into the messiness of real-world problems. I’ve used writing to help students process information without realizing that what I was doing, in fact, was closing the loop of experiential learning.

Could it be that in all this time of striving for a balance between science and writing, I’ve missed the bigger picture? That maybe the reason my not-science/not-writing career fits so well is because I finally get to work by the same principles and values that I’ve always lived by? That I no longer feel the pressure to identify as either a scientist or a writer because I finally get to just be myself?

A fireside lesson in science communication from the woefully misinformed

Having spent the better part of my research career working in the field of plant biotechnology, I’m no stranger to scientific controversy. As a researcher, I’ve met my fair share of people — including other scientists — who hold strong opinions about genetically-modified food: about whether it’s safe for humans and the environment, whether it’s really needed to address global food security, whether it should be labeled, who really benefits (other than biotech companies and patent attorneys), and even why, as a biotechnologist, I should burn in Hell.

I’m not easily rattled by a scientific debate.

I’m well-versed in the arguments both for and against, and my personal opinions on the issue are neither black nor white. I’ve spent much of my career immersed in the scientific evidence and the best I can settle on personally is an evolving shade of grey — biotechnology is not inherently good or bad, neither panacea nor Pandora’s Box. When it comes to a debate, as a scientist, my default setting is to keep calm and consider the evidence.

But last weekend I was sitting around a campfire with a couple of my scientist friends when an acquaintance (not a scientist) started challenging us on various scientific topics — from genetically-modified foods to factory farming to Angelina’s double mastectomy. It was by far one of the most exasperating evenings I’ve ever spent discussing science. It was also perhaps one of the most educational in what it highlighted about the challenges of modern science communication.

When I started writing about science, I had an editor who encouraged me to focus on the art of translation — turning technical jargon into something accessible by a reader he fondly referred to as “Joe Lunchbucket.” Joe Lunchbucket was the reader who browsed the paper over a ham sandwich and would only read a science article if it was wrapped with a shiny, friendly bow that said “Gee whiz, this is cool, you gotta see this!” In time, however, I learned that translation wasn’t enough. It’s hard to get people excited about science for science’s sake — there has to be a compelling story, something for the audience to connect with above the science itself. After years of being trained as a researcher to strip the humanity out of my writing, I had to learn to put it back in, to stop “writing about science” and start writing about people and the process of discovery.

Joe Lunchbucket made me a better writer, but now I think he’s a relic of a simpler journalistic era. Science communication is far messier today than even when I first dipped a toe in the water a decade ago. It’s no longer fundamentally about telling a good story or making sense of the jargon, although those skills are still vital. Now it’s as much about rising above the noise, fighting fiction with fact, battling stubborn misperceptions, and countering fear-mongering emotional arguments with…logic?

If only it were that easy…

Case in point: our opponent in last weekend’s campfire debates was a middle-aged woman, raised in a small rural town, no post-secondary education. What she knows about science, she’s learned from decades-old high school lessons and the internet. She’s health-conscious and environmentally-conscious and I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that her motivation to be informed about issues she cares about is sincere. But this is a person who still believes, despite her “research”, that a woman shouldn’t run because her uterus might fall out, that commercial chickens are no longer raised with legs, and that wheat gluten is an evil product of genetic engineering.

How do you even begin to argue with a person who reacts to information without having even a basic understanding of it? How do you dispel misinformation about science with a person whose sole connection to the subject is grounded in emotion rather than logic? How can you compete calmly against sensationalist drivel?

I can tell all the stories I want, I can counter with facts based on peer-reviewed literature, I can even empathize with the difficulty of distinguishing the good information on the internet from the bad. But who am I but a scientist? I’m one of the people who once made a living advancing the very technology she fears. Why would my knowledge of the subject come as any comfort to her? What have I done to earn her trust?

Granted, it also doesn’t help that stereotypes persist about scientists being cold and unfeeling and distant,  or that we have a government that wants its scientists to cater to commercial interests, undermining our ability to represent ourselves as objective, trustworthy sources of information. But what have we done as researchers, to help ourselves?

I think we have done science a disservice in separating the process of doing science from the process of communicating it to the public. As researchers, our professional obligation is to publish our work in peer-reviewed academic journals, to share it with other researchers. We write in a technical language and publish in a medium that largely excludes the public. We can partially address the issue of access by insisting that publicly-funded research be made available free to the public, and I’m a strong advocate for such open access initiatives. But access alone isn’t enough. It doesn’t do anything to address the issue of comprehension.

To support access without comprehension only opens the door to the further spread of misinformation — perpetuated by well-intentioned (and sometimes not so well-intentioned) people who understand just enough of the scientific detail to get it wrong. Traditionally, we’ve relied on professional journalists to get the story right — sometimes with mixed results. Now we have a whole slew of advocacy groups and “citizen journalists” who flood the internet with their own interpretation of the science. The loss of journalistic gatekeepers isn’t necessarily a bad thing as public engagement is concerned, but as researchers, it’s clear that we can’t continue to rely on others to get the story right. We can’t shut ourselves out of the public conversation and then expect our voices to be respected. Now more than ever, researchers need to be proactive in engaging directly with the public.

We’re also working in a political climate that is becoming increasingly hostile to basic research. Researchers are under significant pressure from the government and funding bodies to deliver short-term economic outcomes — to focus on applied, industry-friendly research with commercial applications. So far, the pushback from researchers seems to focus on the threat to academic freedom, but does anyone outside of academia really understand what that means? Will Joe Lunchbucket have any sympathy for a bunch of tenured Ivory Tower white coats complaining that they can no longer do whatever they want?  The threat to academic freedom is very real and very serious, but it’s not an argument that’s going to resonate with people who don’t really understand what researchers do. And as long as we’re relying on other messengers to explain the value of research to the public, we’re hardly in a position to complain that the public doesn’t comprehend the severity of the situation.

When I first got involved in science writing and outreach as an undergraduate student, one of my professors responded with an air of disgust: “What self-respecting scientist does that?”

At the time, it was enough to temporarily shake my conviction. But a decade later, I wonder what self-respecting scientist can afford not to?

Zen and the art of not hating running

It may have been a weak moment. I blame February. February is cold, dark, and confining, just the thing that would make me agree to something on a whim that I might regret later.

In February I sat down to lunch with some friends, and an hour later returned to my office having agreed to participate in a 5K run in which the sole purpose — other than charity — is to be repeatedly colour-bombed until you stumble away resembling a technicolor Smurf.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Just one problem, though. I am not a runner. I’m not even particularly fit. I’m the type of person who pokes around the edges of fitness the way small children play with their vegetables instead of eating them. Kickboxing was fun, but that wasn’t so much for the fitness as for the opportunity to hit things repeatedly and with substantial force. Then I tried an early morning mixed fitness class with a perky trainer named Brian* [*note: His name may have been changed to protect his identity.** (**Or maybe not.)], but he was a bit too happy for my sleepy, under-caffeinated self. He would stand there all smily and smug with his arms crossed as we alternated between weights, cardio, and standing on our heads. I was not amused. Then there was a spin class in which the instructor would try to motivate us with visualizations, like imagining we were passing a dump truck on the highway. Really? Chasing imaginary vehicles on a stationary bike gave me an inkling of what my cat must go through in pursuit of the pesky red dot. Finally I settled on swimming — a good, low-impact, full-body workout that also provides stress relief, provided you’re not stuck with a bunch of noobs who can’t read signs and swim in the wrong direction. If there was such a thing as aqua-kickboxing that involves pretending to drown perky trainer Brian and people who swim in the wrong direction, I’d be all set. But there’s not.

This brings us back to running. Clearly, not my first choice. Or even my second or third* [*or fourth depending on whether you count the time I tripped over an aerobics step before the class even started...]. Suffice it to say, it’s probably a good thing that I just said “yes” to the 5K without thinking, because if I had enough time to think, I surely would have found plenty of reasons not to do it. In the end, however, I chose to do it for pretty much only one reason:

Because I can’t.

General fitness woes aside, running has always been the thing I sucked the most at. I couldn’t even run a convincing three-legged race in grade school, never mind a race in which I wasn’t being dragged along by another person strapped to my leg.

I think that’s precisely why I feel compelled to do it now. It’s not (just) about fitness. It’s about resetting my own expectations. You see, the part of me that says “I don’t run” is the same part that once fled in a cold sweat at the very mention a black tie dinner and the necessity *gasp* of an evening gown, the same part of me that then confronted a Spanx-loving dress Nazi and lived to tell the tale. Somehow, that part of me emerged not only in an evening gown, but with a newfound sense of possibility and a love of bright and happy shoes. So, red shoe, blue shoe, green shoe, running shoe? Why the hell not?

But let’s not be fooled by optimism. Running is hard. Beginning running, especially when you’re about as nimble and fleet-footed as a pair of Clydesdales, is really hard. And not hating it?  Sigh.

You hear people talk about getting a “runner’s high”, or about the Zen of running, but when I first stepped onto the treadmill, all that came to my mind was the theory of relativity: the faster you go, the slower time goes. Time doesn’t fly when you’re not having fun.

But here’s a confession: I’ve stopped hating running. I wouldn’t call it Zen and I certainly wouldn’t call it fun, but as time goes on, I find that my hostility toward running has lost its edge. Maybe it’s just a consequence of my body now being otherwise occupied with its continuous state of muscle repair, or maybe it’s actually getting easier, I don’t know.  Here’s what I do know so far:

1. Music is essential. Half of my motivation is an ever-changing playlist that provides a balance between music familiar enough to get lost in, and varied enough to keep things interesting when the run gets tough. How else would you imagine Eminem and Dr. Hook on the same playlist?
2. Have a buddy. And by buddy, I don’t mean someone to run with. That’s what music is for. I mean a person who won’t let you quit, that you can still be friends with after they won’t let you quit. I am fortunate to have two — one is an avid runner; the other, like me, began running only begrudgingly. One appreciates the small victories (i.e. “Yay, I ran today!”). The other prods (i.e. “Are you strength training?”). Together, there’s no getting off the hook.
3. Keep it simple. When you start off not being able to run for a minute, and you’re staring down a 5K on the calendar, beginning seems a daunting task in itself; there’s such a long way to go. As useful as it is to have a goal and a deadline, I’ve learned it’s best not to think about it too much. The frustrating thing about trying to do something you’re not very good at is that in order to get anywhere, you first have to give yourself permission to suck at it. And then, even with a training plan and the best intentions, there are still days when progress still feels slow. On those days, I have to keep it really simple: Did I run today? Was it more than I ran yesterday? Am I still breathing?  If the answer is yes, it’s progress. Another day that running didn’t kill me.

Two months of it not killing me may still be a long way from Zen, but it’s not a bad start.

May the Fourth (be with you): reflecting on a year of change

May the Fourth. It’s a day revered by geeks the world over, a little play on words that, like the Konami Code or the number 42, elicits a wee happy dance from our inner nerd every time it comes around. But while it’s not like me to shy away from nerd pride or let pass an irresistible pun, my allegiances have long rested elsewhere — I’m a Star Trek fan with a grammar obsession; it’s March 4th, not May the 4th, that makes my heart swell and my pancakes look like ampersands.

That was, of course, until last year. Last year, on May the 4th, I was settling into a post-conference vacation in Phoenix when I got a call. A week earlier, I’d interviewed for a new job, and I was being offered the position. It was the news I’d been hoping for, but it still caught me a little off guard. I’d been contemplating a career change for months, but in the span of a few whirlwind days, the idea had transformed into action, and suddenly, in that moment, the prospect of life after science became real. This was the start of a new chapter, and there would be big changes ahead. For the rest of the day, whenever a stranger would say “May the Fourth be with you,” I couldn’t help but think that yes, perhaps it finally was.

Even now, when I look back, it still has a surreal quality about it. It simultaneously feels like it happened a lifetime ago, and only yesterday. If you’d asked me a year ago to predict what my life would be like now, I couldn’t have guessed. In truth, I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it much. My biggest fear was not the uncertainty of the path ahead, but that I might succumb to doubts that could hold me back. I needed to embrace change as the way forward, and so I chose — against all my Spock-brain instincts — to find comfort in momentum rather than in details.

So what have I learned, a year later?  Well, for one, that I absolutely made the right choice. It’s always a relief when something that seemed like a good idea at the time turns into a best case scenario, and perhaps never more so than when it involves a life-altering career decision. I felt good about it at the time, but to look back now and know that I’m truly better off is hugely empowering. I no longer feel like I’m following a path of someone else’s design, or that I must fit neatly within the boundaries of Profession X. I’m neither fully a scientist nor fully a writer, and after years of trying to reconcile the two, I’m finally in a place where the in-between actually makes sense.

I’ve learned there is a big difference between doing what you’re good at and doing what’s meaningful. I’ve  always loved science, and by all external measures, I was reasonably good at it. But while I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of it — the questions, the problem-solving, the learning by doing — in the end, I grew weary of the “paper tiger impact” of the publish-or-perish culture. It’s people, not papers, that drive science forward, and no matter how good I was at writing papers, there was little personal satisfaction in succeeding at a system that judges the value of a person by his or her publication record. Even if you are lucky enough to write an influential paper, it never writes back to you to tell you that you did a good job or that you helped to make a difference. People do, and I would much rather be judged for my human impact, however slight, than for my h-index, however large. In stepping out of the numbers game, I’ve reconnected with academia on a human level, and in the process, regained a sense of purpose and a simple joy in finding things out.

I’ve also learned that the notion of “work-life balance” is a fundamentally flawed construct. It treats work and life as though they exist on two entirely separate planes, and in so doing, elevates “work” in itself to be as important as everything else that constitutes “life.” It’s a false dichotomy that makes balance impossible. Work is a part of life, and thus, it’s not “work-life balance” that we should be concerned about, but simply “life balance.” A year ago, I thought that the biggest adjustment to my lifestyle would be working a 35-hour week for the first time in my career. I both craved and feared this arbitrary boundary between my work and my life. It’s taken some time to overcome old habits and attitudes, but my relationship to my work has changed profoundly. The result is that my life now involves more of “everything in moderation” and less juggling, sacrifice, and resentment. As for balance? I’ve learned it’s not just about keeping all the balls in the air — it’s more like a kind of equilibrium, a give and take within a system whose limits are defined and respected.

Related to that, perhaps the biggest change — or at least the one other people tend to notice — is that I’m a lot calmer and happier than I was a year ago. The stress and exhaustion that led me to the brink of burnout is long gone now, replaced by a renewed sense of optimism and resilience. I feel stronger, inside and out, than I have in a long time. And contrary to what people sometimes say, I haven’t become a different person — I’ve simply become more like the person I always knew I could be.

Or, as Yoda might say, “my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.”

The difficulty of communicating science simply

In my double-life as a writer and a scientist, I’ve always had an interest in writing about science in way that is accessible to a general audience. As an undergrad, I remember coming out of some of my classes feeling the way you do when you have a secret you can’t wait to tell somebody, a mental itch just begging to be scratched. Only science wasn’t secret. It was right there, all around us, all the time. So whenever I learned something really cool, I couldn’t help but write about it immediately to my closest non-scientist friend, librarian, and confidant. She’d send me relationship advice, and I’d reply with something like “Have you ever seen a starfish flip over?”

This might explain why I still live alone with my cat and an autographed calendar of half-naked firemen. But I digress.

My point is, this was before Facebook and YouTube and Wikipedia; I couldn’t just send a link to what I wanted to share  – I had to actually try to explain it.

Within a year, I got a job writing profiles of researchers for university publications that were targeted to the general public. My job was to go talk to scientists, find out what they did, and figure out a way to share it with people who might  only have a passing interest in the topic. I had to wade through the jargon and simplify the science without “dumbing it down”  (a phrase, by the way, that I detest for its inherent condescension). It was a challenging task, made all the more difficult by the researchers’ frequent inability to express what they did in simple terms.

It got no easier when I became a researcher myself, and had to learn how to communicate just as effectively with the jargon as I did without it. The jargon was both a necessity and a barrier to effective communication, a double-edged blade that I’ve spent the better part of my career trying to master, with no shortage of red ink spilled in the effort. Along the way, I’ve tried to share what I’ve learned with my colleagues and students, so that they too might become more effective jugglers of jargon and the public understanding of science.

But it’s not just about effective communication. One of the benefits of being forced to explain a difficult concept in simple terms is that you must change your perspective, and in the process of seeing something again with a beginner’s eyes, you can come to a deeper understanding of the subject  yourself. You stop taking the jargon at face value and begin asking yourself “what does this really mean?”

Recently, this xkcd comic prompted the creation of the Up-Goer Five Text Editor, which challenges users to explain a difficult concept using only the “ten hundred” (thousand isn’t on the list) most commonly used words. Researchers in several disciplines have already jumped to the challenge and tried to describe what they do using this limited vocabulary.

Of course, I had to try it.

The scope of the challenge was evident as soon as I tried describing oilseed biotechnology without being able to use the words “plant”, “seed”, “oil” or “fat.”  Couldn’t use “science” or “lab” or “research” either. Even “affect” and “effect” are off the list, which meant I would have to get over my scientific squeamishness about saying one thing “causes” another.

Here is what I came up with:

I try to understand how living things work inside. Lots of things happen in our bodies all the time, even when we’re sleeping, which is pretty amazing! But we don’t understand very much of it. Knowing about what happens inside us (in our cells) is important because then we can learn what is good or bad for our bodies. Sometimes we hear about food that is good or bad for us. What does that mean?  Our food changes what happens in the cells of our bodies, and it can make us feel good, or it can make us sick. If we know what kind of food makes us feel good, we can try to make more foods that keep us feeling good, or fix the things that make us sick.

How do we do that?

Our food also comes from living things. Like us, the living things that we use for food also have stuff happening inside their cells. This can cause them to be good or bad for us when we eat them. By changing what happens in the cells of the living things we plan to eat, we can make more and better food. This will help us to not get sick. Sometimes, we can also change the way the living things we eat are grown so that they can grow in places where they would usually die (like places where it is really dry and there is no rain). This helps people grow food in places where they don’t already have enough food.

Now, I’m not sure I would suggest that we all start talking this way — after all, we’ve evolved beyond a vocabulary of “ten hundred” for a reason. But aside from the challenge of conveying a difficult concept simply, this exercise also really makes you aware of the words that aren’t nearly as common as you’d think. Perhaps it will make you think twice about the words you do choose the next time you have to explain something in plain language, when the question is not “can you use the word?”, but “should you?”