Lacanilao, F. (2008). 50 years of DOST, 30 years of NAST -- Bakit tayo kulelat??

(This article was written by Dr. Flor Lacanilao, noted marine biologist, and a faculty member of the prestigious Marine Science Institute of UP Diliman. This article was sent by newsletter to members of a mailing list, which includes me.)

Next week DOST and NAST will again celebrate S&T week. DOST is also celebrating its 50th year and the NAST is on its 30th Annual Scientific Meeting. But through these years, as I have shown in previous articles, no less than 10 (now 12) Asian countries have left us behind in science & technology and national progress. Our S&T performance has hardly improved in 1981 to 1995; and this poor performance would have continued if not for the publication increase from UP in the last 10 years.

The basic cause of our failure to move forward is poor evaluation of research performance (recall the essentials of the development -- research, science, and technology, where research is the basic component). DOST and NAST continue to rely on peer review or personal judgment, when we don't have enough experts in science and social sciences, or scientists, to do the job. Most of those evaluating such performance in the country lack research publications as sole or lead author in peer-reviewed international journals (simply defined as those covered in Science Citation Index or Social Science Citation Index).

For example, "Silliman U Wins CHEd Best Research Award" is the title of a news report (Inquirer, 3 Feb 2007). It says, the evaluation committee is composed of the following: Emil Javier (President of NAST and National Chair of AGHAM), Saturnino Ocampo Jr (CHED commisioner), Filimon Uriarte Jr. (Academician, NAST), Fortunato de la Pena (DOST Usec), and Mario Lamberte (USAID).

Note that the evaluation is at the highest levels of our research enterprise, yet none of those in the panel is a scientist as defined above. How then do they evaluate research output?

Similarly, The DOST's "50 great men and women of science" selected in connection with its 50th Anniversary are mostly nonscientists (http://www.science.upd.edu.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=196&Itemid=1). How could it be possible that those in the panel simply didn't know what "men or women of science" mean when they made their own criteria of selection? Worse, could they have not known that they were making a mockery of the process? I wonder how our true scientists in the list feel being honored with such company.

I would like again to call on our scientists to do something about our problems in science, first by studying carefully their basic causes under Philippine context. (For example, is peer review, which is a common practice in developed countries, good for us?) Then they should know the consequences or symptoms of poor RP science to society. And this will lead them to our poor children still suffering from malnutrition or dying of hunger and disease.

What the above is saying is that it is one thing to be a scientist and another to be a literate scientist. As one physicist says, "How can we have science literacy without literate scientists?"

Perhaps it is appropriate to quote (while thinking of RP science) from Bruce Alberts, the new editor-in-chief of Science, "Why did I accept this position? In many ways I see it as an extension of my 12 years as president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS). . . . I soon became painfully aware of the many opportunities to spread science and scientific ways of thinking that are being missed--in our failure to teach science as inquiry to most students, in our overly narrow definition of scientific careers in universities, and in the inadequate recognition of the truly international nature of science" (Science 319:1307, 2008).

How is the Star Science column addressing these concerns? For example, are the articles of Ed Padlan on science literacy educating the public to be science literate? Are they helping train our graduate students to do research properly? Ed is a highly published scientist in international peer-reviewed journals.

Let me remind again our scientists, particularly the members of NAST, with the following: "Scientists who mute their voices to avoid irritating colleagues do not help the overall science program" (Dan Koshland, editor-in chief emeritus of Science). Who else are to blame for the presence on non-scientist members and officers of our national science academy?

This challenge is aimed at being able to say that our NAST will be like the US National Academy of Sciences where, "Membership in the NAS is a widely recognized sign of excellence in scientific research" (PNAS 102: 7405-7406, 2005). This is only the first step.

Then the NAST will be like the academy of sciences elsewhere in the world where, "such bodies serve to sustain excellence within the scientific community itself, to foster informed public discourse on science-related issues and to provide policy-makers with sound advice on these issues, encouraging rational decision-making" (Nature 450: 762, 2007. Editorial).

I think with such changes in the NAST, the DOST will be able to improve its ways of science administration. An important result of which is for scientific knowledge to provide the raw materials for generating technologies, for improving education, and rational decision-making. Then we can look forward to catching up with neighbor countries that have left us behind. One indicator will be fewer children dying of hunger and disease. Isn't this reason enough why you are doing or have done research?

On debate and conversation

(The following is my response to Gibby Gorres, who seems to think our school silences dissent. I give my nuanced agreement.)

Gibby, "discursive comatose"? I like the sound of that phrase!

I think that talking about UNITAS is a little like talking about the weather without a thermometer. What "thermometers" are we using? Camaraderie? Family? Granted; but how do you measure them? Beso beso absence of conflict no dissent? That's fine--for fairyland. But on earth, what? To me, UNITAS is not about the absence of conflict. Much less their prevention: I think the more competent people are in an institution the more conflict--or more precisely, disagreement--there SHOULD be. What good institutions have is a process of turning conflicts into productive activities. In institutions of inferior quality, where there are no such processes, silenced conflict gives rise to backbiting and dissent of the bad kind; loss of unity and corruption set in.

I equate the saving process with debate and conversation.

Debate and conversation are the public and private versions, respectively, of the act of "sifting opinion". Sifting opinion is not the same as "exchange of facts", "lectures", or "Q&A". People talking animatedly in the promenades or exchanging comments on blogs are not necessarily conversing (your blog is unique because it TRIES to promote conversation, although many comments sent to you show that few people catch on). Sifting happens when the parties put all their doctrines, tastes, and prejudices on the table for everyone to dissect, the purpose being for the parties to go away transformed.

We should enjoy the transformation; but what keeps us from benefiting are our lack of knowledge, poor language skills and mismanaged emotions.

You may ask, with 26 units a semester of liberal arts why don't people have facts at their fingertips? Some try to mask their poverty with pedantry. From my experience as a teacher, I think one of the roots of the problem is that many don't know how to read--or generally, many don't know how to LEARN. I think my diagnosis is reasonable because there is a correct way of reading that alone ensures that facts become part of oneself, not just part of one's memories. You and I know that the correct way is to read a minimum of 3 times: 1) to grasp the essential point; 2) to understand the logic; and 3) to critique the work as a source of knowledge. Most people read once and underline. No wonder.

How about language skills? Many people have a message, but we don't see it. Why such lack of articulate self-expression? Because we don't make the effort to speak straight. Our problem as Filipinos, the writer Paul Dumol once said, is not that we don't speak English well; it's because we don't speak Filipino well, either. In this university, if you speak straight English or Filipino you are considered elitist. No matter. In my classes, grammatical and punctuation errors--not to mention errors of logic and vocabulary--can mean a failing mark for the course. But I understand the problem, so I give students the chance to revise. However, I can not correct their papers in other subjects, their text messages, and their blogs. (There are exceptions of course: some students actually teach me things; they're the ones I respect the most.) We try to hide our lack of language by hiding behind "art" and "creativity". I've heard it said that our students are creative; to me it's not a good sign.

How about emotions? We know friends who get into an argument once and then refuse to talk to each other for the rest of their lives. No wonder we fear debate. You and I once got into a "shouting match" and enjoyed it. Why? Because we both followed rules that ensured courtesy and respect.

We use rules such as the Asian Parliamentary format to manage knowledge, language, and emotion. Conversation, too, has rules. I think that people today are simply not familiar with them. Thus, they come to fear what would otherwise be enjoyable and productive conflicts had these rules been known. You must consider that this "discursive comatose" is, in part, a problem of skill. I would not ascribe it to policy.

You understand these rules, that is why you can write so passionately about these things. Understand, however, that the Danube wasn't cleaned in a day. But at least you have a thermometer to propose to the people: the KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULES. This is UNITAS. This is where you must begin.

The Spaceman and the Cowboy economies of Kenneth Boulding

Kenneth Boulding's famous 1966 paper The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth presented the idea of the Earth as a zone of finite resources. That is, as a spaceship. His ideas could be illustrated using a systems diagram (left), which provides a good introduction to modeling in general.

For this introduction I used the systems diagram of the Simulistics program (simulistics.com) and Odum and Odum's model for a renewable resource that appears in the book Modeling for All Scales (2000, Academic Press).

One can see why this model describes a population inside spaceship: the resource R is being supplied at a fixed rate but is being drained at a rate proportional to the size of the population. On the other hand, by removing the outflow from R one can turn this into a cowboy economy, that is, a land vast and rich where "seldom is heard a discouraging word".

The cowboy economy corresponds more to the way we think, but the above model is the way “reality” is. Boulding gave two recommendations how we can make our world more like the spaceman economy it should be.

First, lessen consumption rate. Consumption may be described as disposal minus recycling. Thus, one way to decrease consumption rate is to increase recycling. Another is to lessen supply (like toilet paper, when its supply is low disposal rate is low). And another is to increase prices.

Second, increase the stock of R. This may be brought about through technology, such as genetic engineering, which can draw the maximum from nature. Another is to simply plant more.

But what Boulding is really saying goes bigger than all that. He is asking no less than we change the way we study and do economics. He says that we should shift from an emphasis on production (measured by GDP and GNP) and instead shift to measures of stock. One way this can come about is to value intellectual creations, such as technology.

One insight from all this is that mathematics is a language. The diagram above is a model, and so is its mathematical formulation, written as a system of differential equations. Mathematics is a language that allows one to communicate with the computer. It is a motivation to understand that it is a language that allows us to communicate with some of the most powerful tools created by man, computers. It is a universal language, one that can be used to interrogate nature itself. "How are you, tree?" is not a question nature can answer, though it could answer this: "How is your oxygen production rate today?"

We just have to realize that like all languages, mathematics can not express the full reality of things. It remains useful to understand aspects of these realities, however.

On the Gaia hypothesis and how students are graded

The difference between a scientific and a non-scientific hypothesis is an important one to learn in a science class. A scientific hypothesis is one that is open to the possibility of being proved false. Referring to Lovelock’s The Gaia Hypothesis, Table II, column (C) labeled Earth Without Life is what makes the Gaia hypothesis scientific. It does this because it predicts the data we should obtain were the hypothesis false.

To be falsifiable does not mean that a hypothesis is actually false. Neither does it mean that a non-scientific hypothesis is not worthy of being studied.

Going on further, we discussed a very simple model of a system:



The logic of the model is that the earth as Gaia performs certain processes, notably the transfer of matter, energy, and information in a controlled manner. The A’s are the inputs, the B’s the outputs, and C is the control. Lovelock did not present data from A or C, but rather the output, from B. He compared the atmospheric components of Earth, Mars, and Venus, and showed that the B of earth is markedly different from those of the other planets.

What made the difference? Life.

Taking off from this example, we showed that processes are more difficult to study than their results. It is not easy to tell who is brilliant, but it is much easier to see who is productive. I explained that I graded students not on the basis of their intelligence or their study techniques, but on their output. I pointed out that talent is useless without output, and that good papers produced by students are useless unless published.

Do we know enough to lift all bans on GMO's?

(LR: Minerva Tabije, Abraham Guiyab, Grant Delfin, Stacey Gutierrez, Nino Runes, Joaquin Montesclaros)

21 May 2008. The debate was on whether knowledge today was sufficient to justify lifting all bans on genetically modified organisms.

Government (Tabije, Gutierrez, Delfin) argued that there have not been sufficient evidence to show that GMO’s are unsafe for human consumption. They further argued that the development of commercial products like Flavr Savr tomatoes, beta-carotene enhanced food, salt resistant plants, and a variety of medicines and vaccines provide solutions to the world’s food and health problems. GMO’s save lives.

Opposition (Guiyab, Runes, Montesclaros) argued that is not sufficient evidence about the long term risks of GMO’s, particularly the ecological risks. They argued that effects such as the loss of biodiversity, the evolution of insect resistance, and the spread of resistance genes, could take several generations to observe. Furthermore, if a serious adverse effect is observed, it will be impossible to recall the errant genes, for they would have spread through nature. GMO’s are a Pandora’s box.

This debate involved weighing the short term benefit of saving lives against the long term risk of ecological damage. The way to solve the dilemma is to ask whether the evidence now allows us to predict the long term risk. To assess this, it is necessary to know the details of how genetic modification is performed. These details differ somewhat from one organism to another; thus, the assessment should be made on a case-to-case basis.

As chief adjudicator, I felt that it was Government’s job to show data that 1) suggest there is little risk to health; and 2) suggest there is little ecological risk, which would include a discussion of the technology and its inherent flaws. The Government was not very clear on these.

On the other hand, the Opposition provided data on potential risks. They cited the case of the monarch butterfly, the larvae of which are killed when they ingest large amounts of genetically modified pollen (modified to contain an inserted insecticidal peptide). Although genes do spread in the environment, their argument that they do through the food chain is, however, inaccurate.

Nonetheless, we gave this to the Opposition because we did not think Government was able to satisfactorily rebut the ecological argument of the Opposition.

Are socialist measures the best way to protect the environment?

(LR: Mando Manikis, Inigo Taojo, Cheneil La Madrid, Kristeen Saguinsin, Denise Ramos, Carla Santos)

20 May 2008. The debate today was on whether the Philippine government should adopt socialist measures as the best way to protect the environment.

Government (La Madrid, Taojo, Santos) argued that the means for protecting the environment are too expensive for private companies to invest in; private enterprises are run by a profit motive that discourages such investment. They singled out the following industries as those which should be the object of government control: public transport, emissions testing, logging, healthcare, and education. They described, for example, that government control of public transport would result in all buses having environmental technology; besides, government could also dictate salaries and organization which would lessen bus lines and traffic, lessening pollution.

Opposition (Ramos, Saguinsin, Manikis) argued that such measures are unrealistic in the Philippine context. Where, they ask, would the government get the money for these environmental technologies? Taxes? They argued that the Philippine economy is not one that would raise the kind of money needed, even from high taxes.

We gave this to the Government mainly through defects in the Opposition’s strategy. They failed to underline their most important and relevant argument, namely, that the Government’s position was impracticable or unfeasible.

As a policy debate, Government was obliged to demonstrate need, benefits, and practicability. We think that need and benefits were demonstrated; Opposition tried to show that the Government’s position was not practicable, and they had a point.

However, this argument of the Opposition came near the end, and even then was not clearly articulated. Before they got to that, they first argued intensely that socialist measures violate fundamental rights, lead to corruption, and tend towards communism. They cited examples of inefficiently run government agencies like MWSS and GSIS, and the large investments of the private sector in corporate social responsibility; they cited Jollibee. The audience felt, however, that the Opposition failed to show what these arguments had to do with environmental protection. As to MWSS, GSIS, Meralco, and Jollibee, these are not even in the industries listed by the Government as those they wished to take over.

Government was, therefore, not refuted.The audience further noted that the Government was more able to articulate its position clearly and consistently, thanks to the Government team’s expertise in verbal expression. We underscore here the importance of mastering verbal expression, especially English, as a means of convincing others of the merits of one's ideas.

Does society corrupt man?

(LR: Christopher Siy, Carla Santos, Sabrina Tan, Pia Baria, Steph Sol, Abby Canlas)

19 May 2008. The debate today was on Rousseau's theory that society corrupts man.

Government (Tan, Santos, Siy) gave two major reasons why it does. The first was that the very idea of common good necessarily means that people will have to limit some their desires, but such desires never disappear. The result is that people find ways of “outwitting” others to get these desires, and this leads to corruption. The second reason is that society “defines” what is right and what is wrong. In effect, if there were no definitions, there would be no corruption.

Opposition (Canlas, Sol, Baria) argued that although society puts limits and makes definitions, it is man himself who decides on his actions. Therefore, the source of corruption is human decision. Error, which leads to corrupted decisions, comes from man’s wounded nature. In fact, they added, society exists in order to educate man in correct conduct. It certainly is not society’s intention to corrupt.

The audience gave this debate to the Government because of this argument: Both sides agreed that corruption was a vicious circle, with society corrupting man (government) and man corrupting society (opposition). Thus, the motion holds true; Government was not refuted.

In effect, Government used an argument very difficult to destroy. The only way Opposition could have gotten around this, I think, would have been to use an analogy. In a murder, we say that the gun killed the victim, but we do not imprison the gun. Opposition could have made the case that society is, like the gun, amoral. Then they could have used Government’s definition of corruption as “moral degradation” to argue that moral actions, and therefore corruption, can only arise from free decisions. An amoral object is amoral precisely because it does not make free decisions. Such objects may, indeed, cause evils, but they can not be said to cause corruption in the moral sense. Difficult, but playable.