Fellow Specialists Research Articles

Coping with the DAS in Science

For over 30 years, I have been a regular reader of Science and have finally decided to protest against the DAS (dreaded abbreviation syndrome) I meet in so many articles. Like many equally busy colleagues in the sciences, I first scan (FS) an article in the following order: title, abstract, first paragraph (FP), bold-type headings (BTH), figures and captions (FC), and last paragraph (LP), with a few glances at the body of the article (BA) to see if something catches my eye. If this quick perusal (QP) reveals anything of possible interest, I read the article more completely. In a recent issue (4 Dec. p. [1858][1]), the following BTH caught my eye: “The LGS and deglaciation.” I did not immediately remember what LGS means and had to search clear back to the abstract to decode it. A few lines down, I read about concentrations of Cl− and NO3−in the LGM. It's fair enough to expect me to know the abbreviations in the PT (periodic table) if I'm reading Science, no matter what my specialty. However, as I read on in the BA, I stumbled on the DCR, the YD, and the GISP. This was a geology-related article, close to my own field, and I began to feel annoyed that the DAS had forced me to jump out of my normal QP to read back several paragraphs in search of the meanings of those abbreviations. Likewise, the FC sent me back through the text to decode them. Wondering if this were a special problem of GRA, I looked through articles in several other fields. There, too, my attempts at QP stumbled against the DAS. We talk a lot about scientific literacy (SL) these days, and yet we seem to accept the DAS problem, with specialists continuing to communicate with their fellow specialists in obscure codes. Science , as an interdisciplinary journal, ought to set a better example by communicating in good, solid, plain English as much as possible. If it's that important to save a few lines of space, a possible solution would be to have the first footnote of each article list all of the abbreviations. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.282.5395.1858

The history of black business in America: capitalism, race, entrepreneurship

The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship. By Juliet E. K. Walker (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998. Pp. xxv, 482. $56.25 cloth.) Juliet E. K. Walker has written a volume that belongs in every library and that many will want to purchase for their personal reference collection. One of Twayne Publisher's series, Evolution of Modem Business, The History of Black Business in America, appears in clear, readable prose for an audience composed of both fellow specialists in business history and the broader general public. Calling her study introductory and building on her own previous exploration of American entrepreneurship in Kentucky and Illinois, particularly Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier (1983) and on the work of historians such as Loren Schweninger, whose Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915, appeared in 1990, Walker traces major themes in the history of American participation in business. She also critiques previous accounts of black enterprise by well-known sociologists and historians. In a time when many researchers prefer micro-history, she presents a tour deforce of synthesis and original research that carries readers through 400 years. Walker intends to bury myths about black business found in the work of sociologists E. Franklin Frazier (the idea that black consumers do not support black business and that African-Americans lack an entrepreneurial tradition), and especially, Nathan Glazer and Patrick Moynihan's contention that, most importantly, blacks historically had failed to develop a pattern of saving (p. xvii-xix). In contrast to most business historians, Walker stresses the role of governments in various periods in creating opportunity for whites. Revising Alfred Chandler, for whom the visible hand was management practices, Walker argues that the transformative visible hand consisted of government subsidies and support for white business. Placing the history of black enterprise within the larger context of the history of business in what became the United States, Walker argues first, that the legal framework consistently favored whites and discouraged black business; second, that, when African-Americans succeeded in carving out and developing profitable sectors, such as music production and beauty products for mass markets, whites have regularly tried to take over; third, that black business in urban areas often lost out to immigrant business people, who had advantages of education and capital; fourth, that only during the post-civil rights era were government programs available to black business and then only in a limited way; and finally, that today, as for the last 400 years, white racism continues to inhibit the progress of black entrepreneurs and managers. Going far beyond previous scattered accounts of AfricanAmerican enterprise and synthesizing much previous scholarship, Walker traces the origins of independent economic activity by Blacks to business traditions found in precolonial West Africa, that is, to what her chapter title calls African Diaspora Commercial Survivalisms. Africans brought to America came from states propelled by a high degree of both individual and communally based profit-oriented entrepreneurial activities (p.1) in agriculture, construction, fishing, craft and merchant guilds. Debunking the stolen myth, Walker emphasizes the role of states, rulers/politicians, merchants, business people, and military in the African supply side (p. 17) of the transatlantic market in human merchandise. Part of the marketability of people from certain regions consisted in their skill and experience with certain activities, such as mining, cattle-raising, and the culture of rice. Considering the use by enslaved Africans of the colonial period of their slave provision grounds, Walker traces this institution to West traditions and experiences and argues that Eugene Genovese, among others, was wrong to see these plots of ground as merely a means by which Africans learned to get along without a master. …

What plant ecologists can learn from zoology

Biology, like all sciences, is increasingly compartmentalized. This helps us to interact more easily with fellow specialists, but also tends to shield us from useful cross-fertilization with other fields. For example, plant and animal ecologists have established largely distinct research traditions over the years. Botanists studying population ecology, interspecific competition, and ecological and evolutionary aspects of sexual reproduction can benefit by importing more of the conceptual advances occurring in zoology (and vice versa). Botanists working on plant-animal interactions have a similar opportunity to shed light on their questions by learning more about the animals. For example, botanists studying pollination may be unaware of some modern advances in animal physiology and behaviour which undermine a typological view of pollination systems. Similarly, botanists studying loss of seeds to granivores may be unaware of details of animal behaviour that can cause granivores to benefit the plants in surprising ways. These examples illustrate how improved communication with zoology can enrich plant ecology. To remove barriers to communication we suggest some individual and collective actions that plant ecologists can take.

History and the Public: Legacies of the Progressive Era

In 1931 Carl Becker summoned his fellow professional historians to adapt their knowledge of the to Mr. Everyman's present needs. His call reflected a growing realization that the historical profession and the public had come to view history fundamentally different ways. Contending that history the academy and public was in lowest common denominator the same, Becker attempted to counter his colleagues' perceptions of an ever-widening gap between the two genres., In the half century since Becker's address, other historians have echoed his concern, wondering why communication between professional historians and the general public has steadily diminished even while the public's search for a usable past remains intense. In part, the divergence between professional historians and the public the twentieth century has been a result of specialization and the concentration of historical scholarship within colleges and universities. As universities employed more historians, advancement the historical profession resulted from publishing articles and monographs specialized disciplines for fellow scholar-teachers across the nation, rather than participating a variety of local historical enterprises for a general audience.2 Professional historians employed federal agencies since the 1930s, the National Archives, State Department, Pentagon, and National Park Service, also came to address their work largely to fellow specialists government, universities, and historic preservation.

Reply to Questionnaire

I've read and reread your letter and questions but remain puzzled. Symposiums of this sort are normally geared to possible action—'Is too much money being spent on high-tech medicine and not enough on preventitive medicine?', 'Should the UTQ devote more of its space to politics?', and so forth. Here I can't see what is being aimed at, not explicitly anyway, and facing your plethora of questions I feel as if I were trapped amid the labyrinthine options and permutations of a diet sheet. Moreover, when I read or dip into journals like the New York Review of Books, Commentary, and Scientific American, I see no lack of intelligent academics writing clearly for intelligent non-specialist readers without talking down to them and without losing sight of the fellow specialists waiting to pounce on them in the correspondence columns. Nor is the prose in high-tech journals like Critical Inquiry always hopelessly coruscated.

The health of mathematics

How is mathematics doing? This is a question worth occasional examination. Today the answer must be: It's doing well, but at the same time, it's also doing badly. There are many indications that it's doing well, for example, in the numerous important problems which just now have been settled. For finite simple groups we now have a complete list headed by the monster. The famous Weil conjectures on diophantine equations have been settled, using a considerable part of the intended heavy new machinery of algebraic geometry. Paul Smith had conjectured that a periodic homeomorphism of a 3-sphere with prime period and leaving a knot fixed must be conjugate to a rotation of the sphere; thanks to the joint efforts of five or six people, we now know that Smith was right. The Poincar6 conjecture has been settled in dimension 4, and the original proof has been substantially clarified; this leaves the original conjecture in dimension 3 as a challenge. Many other new and interesting results have been achieved, and more mathematicians than ever before are hard at work in all sorts of directions. Some of these directions seem to show relatively little recent major progress (lattice theory, homotopy groups of spheres, etc.), but there are other specialities which exhibit spectacular current progress: algebraic geometry , mathemat ical physics (Yang-Mil ls and super Lie algebra), hyperbolic geometry (3-manifolds), computer science (will P equal NP?), and many others. Now such enhanced activity in a particular direction usually reflects a general perception that there are currently real chances for major progress in that direction. Also, occasional shifts in the dominance of particular fields have long been a feature of mathematical progress. For example, the beautiful prospects for functions of one complex variable made this a dominant field early in this century; it is rumored that in France opinion dictated that the true objective of any mathematician must be that of discovering some extension of the big Picard theorem. It was only much later that there was comparable emphasis on several complex variables. After World War I, analytic number theory deve loped and f lourished, as did abstract algebra (Noether and Artin) and linear operators on Banach space (Wiener and Banach); all these fields experienced a subsequent decline. After World War II, algebraic topology for a while held a central position which it gradually lost to differential topology and analysis. Shifts such as these are inevitable, but there can be concern that too many mathematicians, trained in some once lively field, have stuck with that field as it became mired down in complications--as, for example, the complications with the nondenumerable Abelian p-groups and the unmanageable spectral sequences which might have (but did not) compute all the u n k n o w n higher homotopy groups of spheres. Perhaps one needs a wider awareness that specialties can become unprofitable (most of us do not like to give up), plus some re t reading process for those who would like to shift fields. At present it may be that too many of us talk only to our fellow specialists at seminars and meetings concentrated on that specialty. The publ i shed literature of mathematics is in trouble. Too much is published, as may be suggested by the size of the current volumes of Mathematical Reviews. The suggestion is confirmed by the considerable number of superficial papers better left as preprints and the large number of dull preprints better left unwritten. At the same time, too little is published. In fields ranging from category theory to hyperbolics

Generalization and the interpretation of science and technology

In scientific and technical communication, intelligibility is primarily a cultural problem, to which carefully formulated generalizations, rather than streams of data, are the only solution. Preoccupation with simplicity, or clarity, or `correctness' is a poor substitute for a careful consideration of what the reader can and cannot be expected to understand. The writer who will overcome his prejudices against generalization in order to convey the concepts which his reader does not share with him should be able to communicate more effectively at three levels: (1) to his fellow specialists, (2) to specialists in other fields, and (3) to concerned laymen.

The Education of the Younger Starred Scientists

A SUMMARY as to the education of the two hundred fifty scientists first starred, by vote of their fellow specialists as distinguished in research, in the sixth edition of Cattell's American Men of Science issued last August, is of interest, as is brief discussion of some of the changes in the education of the younger starred scientists as compared with those selected earlier. The present discussion is somewhat comparable to studies made by Cattell of the older groups1 and to one made by the present writer in this JOURNAL.2 The two hundred fifty most recently starred scientists received their undergraduate training in more than I 20 colleges. Only eleven conferred the Bachelor's degree on four or more of the subsequently starred scientists who tell where they obtained their first degrees: Harvard, I4; California and Michigan, Io; Chicago, 9; Princeton, 7; Yale and Cornell, 5; Massachusetts Tech., Northwestern, Pennsylvania, and Stanford, 4. The following graduated three each: Albion, Amherst, Brown, Columbia, Hopkins, Illinois,

Clinical Studies in Pathological Dreaming

In the year 1896(1) I directed the attention of my fellow specialists, in the course of details of observations relating to two women, to the subject of pathological dreaming, till now only slightly investigated, and showed how intense hysterical dreaming states had been developed from previous reveries. The literature which has appeared since then contains but few references to this matter.