SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION FREDERICK BETZ PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY LECTURE 3 PROGRESS IN SCIENCE

1. SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION FREDERICK BETZ PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY LECTURE 3 PROGRESS IN SCIENCE ILLUSTRATION: SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY OF DNA

2. SCIENTIFIC METHOD • ‛Science’ is the discovery and understanding of nature. • Science is a set of activities for research about nature. • The explicit goals of scientific research are: • to discover new kinds and aspects of nature and • to understand nature through observation and experimentation • resulting in the development of theory. • Scientific knowledge accumulating through observation and experimentation is abstracted into scientific theory • and validated by further observation and experimentation. • The way to conduct observation and experimentation to develop and verify theory is called the ‛scientific method’.

3. INFORMATION MODEL OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD UNIVERSITY S1 T1 NATURAL THING SCIENTIST OBSERVATION SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS DISCIPLINE THEORY T2 S2 NATURAL THING SCEINTIST PREDICTION SCIENCE INVENTS INSTRUMENTS FOR OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT. INSTRUMENTATION DEPENDS UPON SENSORY FOCUS AND UPON SENSITIVITY. EXPERIMENTS USE INSTRUMENTS TO OBSERVE AND ABSTRACT THE PROPERTIES OF NATURE THROUGH CONTROLLED EXPLORATION OF NATURE. THEORY IS THE GENERALIZATION OF THE ABSTRACTIONS OF NATURE AS PHENOMAL OBJECTS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS. PREDICTION IS A FORECAST BASED UPON A CAUSAL EXPLANATION OF THE THEORY.

4. PREDICTION IN PREDICTION, THERE MUST BE A TEMPORAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NATURAL EVENTS: EVENT “A” PRECEEDS EVENT “B” IN TIME. NECESSITY AND SUFFICIENCY ARE THE TWO LOGICAL FACTORS IN AN EXPLANATION. PRIOR EVENT “A” CAN BE EITHER NECESSARY OR SUFFICIENT TO THE LATER OCCURANCE OF SUBSEQUENT EVENT “B” EXISTENCE OF PRIOR EVENT “A” TO RELATIONOCCURANCE OF SUBSEQUENT EVENT “B” CAUSAL RELATION NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT PRODUCTIVE RELATION NECESSARY AND NOT SUFFICIENT ACCIDENTAL RELATION NOT NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT THEMATIC RELATION NOT NECESSARY AND NOT SUFFCIENT DISCIPLINARY FIELDSTYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS PHYSICAL SCIENCES CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS SOCIAL SCIENCES AND MANAGEMENT PRODUCTIVE RELATIONSHIPS HISTORY ACCIDENTAL RELATIONSHIPS HUMANITIES THEMATIC RELATIONSHIPS

5. EXAMPLE -- BIOLOGICALSCIENCE -- UNDERSTANDING THE PERFORMANCE OF BASIC RESEARCH AT UNIVERSITIES -- DEVELOPING THE THEORY OF THE THE TRANSMISSION OF HEREDITY --DNA

6. Case Study -- Origin of Biotechnology This case illustrates how the university part of an R&D infrastructure establishes the science base for the radical innovations that create new industries. The historical setting was the century of biological research from the 1870s to the 1970s that established the science base for the new biotechnology industry, which began in the late twentieth century. Although new industries begin upon the innovation of a radically new basic technology. The rate of occurrence of these has depended upon the rate of scientific progress -- which often has taken a long time. For example, the final scientific event in creating the science base for the new biotechnology was a critical biology experiment performed by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer in 1972 that invented the technique for manipulating DNA -- recombinant DNA. The scientific ideas that preceded this experiment began about one hundred years earlier.

7. How is life reproduced? This answer required many stages of research to be performed, including: 1. Investigating the structure of the cell. 2. Isolation and chemical analysis of the cell’s nucleus, DNA. 3. Establishing the principles of heredity. 4. Discovering the function of DNA in reproduction. 5. Discovering the molecular structure of DNA. 6. Deciphering the genetic code of DNA. 7. Inventing recombinant DNA techniques. This question about life is the basic ‘inquiry’ about nature – scientific inquiry. The stages of research are the ‘scientific issues’ in the inquiry.

8. BIOLOGY: The Structure of the Cell By the early part of the nineteenth century in the then new scientific discipline of biology scientists were using an eighteenth century invention of the microscope to look at bacteria and cells. Cells are the constituent modules of living beings. They saw that cells have a structure consisting of a cell wall, a nucleus, and protoplasma contained within the wall and surrounding the nucleus. In 1838, Christina Ehrenberg was the first to observed the division of the nucleus when a cell reproduced. In 1842, Karl Nageli observed the rod-like chromosomes within the nucleus of plant cells.

9. Discovery and Chemical Analysis of DNA Science is a system containing disciplines; and the techniques and knowledge in one discipline may be used in another discipline. In 1869, a chemist, Friedrich Miescher, reported the discovery of DNA, by precipitating material from the nuclear fraction of cells and called the material nuclein. Subsequent studies showed that it was composed of two components, nucleic acid and protein. While these studies were occurring, there also were continuing improvements in microscopic techniques. For the microscope, specific chemicals were found that could be used to selectively stain the cell. Paul Ehrlich discovered that staining cells with the new chemically-derived, coal-tar colors correlated with the chemical composition of the cell components. This is an example of how technology contributes to science, for the new colors were products of the then new chemical industry.

10. In 1873, A. Schneider described the relationships between the chromosomes and various stages of cell division -- the process of mitosis -- which is the phenomenon of chromosome division resulting in the separation of the cell nucleus into two daughter nuclei). From 1879 and over the next decades, Kossel and Miescher and Levine ) laid the clear basis for the determination of the chemistry of nucleic acids. As early as 1914, Emil Fisher had attempted the chemical synthesis of a nucleotide (component of nucleic acid, DNA); but real progress was not made in synthesis until 1938. Chemical synthesis of DNA was an important scientific technique necessary to understand the chemical composition of DNA. By 1950 the detailed chemical composition of DNA was finally determined -- but not yet its molecular geometry. Almost 100 years had passed between the discovery of DNA and determination of its chemical composition.

11. The Principles of Heredity Simultaneously from 1900 to 1930 (while the chemistry of DNA was being sought) the foundation of modern genetics was being established. Understanding the nature of heredity began in the nineteenth century with Darwin’s epic work on evolution and with Mendel’s pioneering work on genetics. Modern advances in genetic research began in 1910 with Thomas Morgan’s group researching the heredity in the fruit fly. Morgan demonstrated the validity of Mendel’s analysis and showed hat mutations could be induced by x-rays, providing one means for Darwin’s evolutionary mechanisms. (Later in the 1980s, an international ‛human genome’ project would begin mapping the entire human gene set.)

12. The Function of DNA in Reproduction While the geneticists were showing the principles of heredity, the mechanism of heredity had still not been demonstrated. Was DNA the transmitter of heredity, and if so, how? In 1928, Frederick Griffith found that a mixture of killed infectious bacterial strains with live non-inectious bacteria could create a live infectious stain. In 1935, Lional Avey showed that this transformation was due to the exchange of DNA between dead and living bacteria. This was the first clear demonstration that DNA did, in fact, carry the genetic information.

13. Structure of DNA We have seen the long time and the many lines of research and different disciplinary specialties which all together was necessary to discover the elements of heredity (genes and DNA) and their function (transmission of heredity functions). Yet before technology could use this kind of information, one more scientific step was necessary -- understanding the structural mechanisms of the DNA mitotic process. This step was achieved by a group of scientists that were to be later called the ‛phage group’ and would directly give rise to the modern scientific specialty of ‛molecular biology’ – and hence to biotechnology.

14. Critical to the operation of the phage group was the funding support of the Ford Foundation. A program officer in the Foundation decided to support the exploratory research involving both biologists and physicists. Watson, a graduate from the Phage Group, went to Europe upon a post-doctorate fellowship from the Ford Foundation. The Rutherford Lab was a research center in Cambridge.

15. LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE The innovations of new basic technologies (that create new industrial structures and devices) arise from progress in science and technology. This progress is organizationally created in the institutional infrastructure of a nation (which performs scientific and technological advances). This can be called the science and technology (S&T) infrastructure of a nation, (or as it is sometimes called, a national research & development (R&D) system).

16. The first problem on technological innovation about the S&T infrastructure arises from the issues of when and how industry needs scientific progress. Since industry uses technology directly, and not science, industry needs new science only indirectly and: (1 ) when technological progress in an existing technology can not be made without a deeper understanding of the science underlying the technology, (2) when new basic technologies need to be created from new science. The second problem about an S&T infrastructure arises from the fact that the university and not industry is the primary performer of science progress. Thus industry must look to the university for progress in science, but then universities traditionally have advanced science not in forms directly usable by industry nor in a timely manner.

17. Accordingly, the practical issues of a nation's science & technology policy are: • How can firms use universities to stay technically competitive in a world of rapidly-changing science & technology? • (2) How can universities obtain funds from both industry and government to support the advancement of science and respond to industrial needs for science in appropriate forms and timely manners? • (3) How can a government best direct its R&D support to facilitate partnerships between universities and industries?