SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION LECTURE 9 HOW TO WRITE AND EVALUATE RESEARCH PROPOSALS -- SCIENCE RESEARCH ILLUSTRATION: MAPPING

1. SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION LECTURE 9 HOW TO WRITE AND EVALUATE RESEARCH PROPOSALS -- SCIENCE RESEARCH ILLUSTRATION: MAPPING THE OCEANS FLOORS FREDERICK BETZ PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

2. TYPES OF RESEARCH INQUIRIES PROFESSION INNOVATION SCIENCETECHNOLOGY Discovery Bottleneck Theory Invention ENGINEERINGCOMMERCIALIZATION System Standards Design Processes NATURE MARKET ILLUSTRATION: MARIA THARP – MAP MAKER OF THE OCEANS

3. Stephen Hall described the scientific career of Marie Tharp in geologoy (Hall, 2006) “Marie Tharp was an English and music major as an undergraduate before obtaining a master’s degree in geology at the University of Michigan — a degree possible only because the geology department there opened its doors to women after World War II began. She possessed a keen mind, a garrulous personality and, by the time she arrived in New York in 1948, another degree, in mathematics.” All those qualities help explain why she was hired by the geology department at Columbia University. But not as a scientist -- as a technical assistant. She eventually ended up working with a hulking, quick-tempered graduate student from Iowa named Bruce Heezen. Against considerable odds, Tharp and Heezen rewrote 20th-century geophysics.

4. LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION SCIENTIFIC SCIENTIFIC METHOD REPRESENTATION (EPISTEMOLOGY) (ONTOLOGY) SCIENCE SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION APPLICATION (ORGANIZATION) (TECHNOLOGY) THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENCE IS INTO DISCIPLINES HOUSED IN UNVERSITY DEPARTMENTS. THE DEPARTMENTAL STRUCTURE PROVIDES VOCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISCIPLINARY SCIENTISTS AS COLLEGE TEACHERS. THE CREDITIONAL REQUIRED FOR TEACHING ELIGIBILITY IS THE PHD DEGREE IN THE DISCIPLINE. ADMINISSION TO THE DISCIPLINE BEGINS IN A PHD GRADUATE PROGRAM.

5. One day in 1952, Heezen gave Tharp a stack of soundings (sonar measurements of the ocean depth) for the Atlantic Ocean with the injunction, “Here, do something with these.” These measurements were anything but systematic; they merely reflected the paths of research ships plying the Atlantic. Tharp and an assistant set out to plot the depth measurements on huge sheets of paper. At first Tharp would create the two-dimensional profile of the sea floor for each ship track. As they gathered more data, she then began to imagine those numbers and profiles into a three-dimensional, underwater landscape with mountains and valleys and sloping plains on the sea floor, normally invisible under miles of water. It was not just science but also a supreme act of rigorous creativity, because she had to intuit the lay of the land in many places where measurements were still missing.

6. LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION SCIENTIFIC SCIENTIFIC METHOD REPRESENTATION (EPISTEMOLOGY) (ONTOLOGY) SCIENCE SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION SCIENTIFIC METHOD INVOLVES OBSERVATION, MEASUREMENT, DESCRIPTION: “. . .measurements . . . reflected the paths of research ships plying the Atlantic. . . . Tharp would create the two-dimensional profile of the sea floor for each ship track. . . As they gathered more data, she then began to imagine those numbers and profiles into a three-dimensional, underwater landscape with mountains and valleys and sloping plains on the sea floor, normally invisible under miles of water.

7. As details of the ocean floor emerged, Tharp noticed a fascinating feature. A well-known mountain range running down the Atlantic, known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, appeared as expected. But as Tharp’s careful drafting made clear, there was also a valley that ran down through the middle of the mountain range. It was a hugely important geophysical feature. This “rift valley” marked a dynamic seam in the crust of the planet, the boundary of huge continent-size plates where new portions of crust rose from the interior of the earth to the surface like a conveyor belt and then, in a geological creep known as “drift,” moved outward in both directions from the mid-ocean ridge.

8. LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION SCIENCETECHNOLOGY Discovery Bottleneck Theory Invention ENGINEERINGCOMMERCIALIZATION System Standards Design Processes ONE OF THE GOALS OF SCIENCE IS DISCOVERY OF NATURE: “there was also a valley that ran down through the middle of the mountain range. It was a hugely important geophysical feature . . . . the boundary of huge continent-size plates where new portions of crust rose from the interior of the earth to the surface like a conveyor belt and then, in a geological creep known as “drift,” moved outward in both directions from the mid-ocean ridge.

9. The idea that vast tracts of the earth’s crust moved across the surface, known as continental drift, was unpopular at the time. Most geophysicists were “fixists” who believed the planet’s surface was static, and Tharp later remarked that a scientist could be fired for being a “drifter” in the 1950s. But she was the first to see the signature of plate tectonics on the surface of the earth, and Heezen was the first of many scientists who rudely dismissed it. “Girl talk,” he said. “It cannot be. It looks too much like continental drift.” It took Tharp the better part of a year to convince him.

10. LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION SCIENCETECHNOLOGY Discovery Bottleneck Theory Invention ENGINEERINGCOMMERCIALIZATION System Standards Design Processes SCIENCE’S GOAL OF ‘UNDERSTANDING’‘ IS EXPRESSED IN THEORY WHICH BOTH DESCRIBES AND EXPLAINS THE OBSERVED PHENOMENON: “The idea that vast tracts of the earth’s crust moved across the surface, known as continental drift” BUT NEW THEORY IS NOT EASILY ESTABLISHED IN A SCIENCE DISCIPLINE WITHOUT STRONG EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE THEORY: “Most geophysicists were “fixists” who believed the planet’s surface was static. . .”

11. “Almost on impulse,” Tharp said, she and Heezen decided to make the mapping project even more ambitious. They would create a “physiographic diagram” of the ocean floor — a kind of map that shows a landscape as it would appear from a low-flying airplane. Their first map, published in 1957, showed the North Atlantic. Over the next 20 years, they would map the underwater landscape of all the world’s oceans. Rift valleys were a feature of every ocean floor. THEORY HERE IS THE PROPER FORM OF DESCRIPTION – PHYSIOGRAPHIC DIAGRAM.

12. Maurice (Doc) Ewing, the brilliant and autocratic director of what is now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia, remained famously unpersuaded by the growing evidence of continental drift and began to clash with Heezen over both ideas and ego. Heezen had become a tenured professor, but Ewing did what he could to thwart the mapping project. He refused to share important data about the sea floor with the map makers — data that Heezen’s graduate students sometimes surreptitiously “exported” to Tharp and her assistants. Ewing stripped Heezen of his departmental responsibilities, took away his space, drilled the locks out of his office door and dumped his files in a hallway. Most important, Ewing blocked Heezen’s grant requests and, as Fox said, “was essentially trying to ruin Bruce’s career.”

13. LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION SCIENTIFIC SCIENTIFIC METHOD REPRESENTATION (EPISTEMOLOGY) (ONTOLOGY) SCIENCE SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION APPLICATION (ORGANIZATION) (TECHNOLOGY POLITICS WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY IS OVER SCIENTIFIC REPUTATION AND THE ACCESS TO RESOURCES REPUTATION ENABLES: “Ewing stripped Heezen of his departmental responsibilities, took away his space, drilled the locks out of his office door and dumped his files in a hallway. Most important, Ewing blocked Heezen’s grant requests and, as Fox said, “was essentially trying to ruin Bruce’s career.”

14. In the mid-’60s, as this academic feud began to poison the ocean-mapping project at Lamont, Tharp relocated the entire operation to her home in South Nyack, N.Y. She did this partly because of lack of space at Lamont, Fox acknowledges, but also partly because of the political problems. As Tharp later noted, Ewing “tried unsuccessfully to fire Bruce, who had a tenured faculty position at Columbia, but he did fire me.” Although Tharp and Heezen fought like cats and dogs over the accuracy of the map, the adversity with Ewing united them. . .” Despite the institutional obstacles at Columbia, work on the ocean map continued with support from the U.S. Navy and the National Geographic Society. The off-campus mapping project eventually took over every room in Tharp’s house.

15. In the 1970s, Heezen and Tharp collaborated with an alpine landscape painter from Austria, Heinrich Berann, to create what is still considered one of the most beautiful maps in the history of cartography. The “World Ocean Floor,” published in 1977, looked as if someone had pulled the plug on a globe-size bathtub, draining all the water from the world’s oceans and revealing hidden features of the earth’s surface. The map showed a continuous, 40,000-mile-long seam running across the world’s surface, like the stitching on a throbbing geophysical baseball. Sounding like the proud discoverer that she was, Tharp said, “You can’t find anything bigger than that, at least on this planet.” Bruce Heezen had printers’ proofs of the map with him in 1977 when he suffered a fatal heart attack on a research vessel off the coast of Iceland.

16. LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION It is important for government science administrators to avoid the sometimes personal politics in research and fund research strictly upon a criterion of research merit: “Despite the institutional obstacles at Columbia, work on the ocean map continued with support from the U.S. Navy and the National Geographic Society.” Good scientific theory results in a accurate representation of a phenomenon, and representation often requires visual interpretation of quantitative description: “In the 1970s, Heezen and Tharp collaborated with an alpine landscape painter from Austria, Heinrich Berann, to create what is still considered one of the most beautiful maps in the history of cartography.”

17. SUMMARY: LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENCE IS INTO DISCIPLINES HOUSED IN UNVERSITY DEPARTMENTS. THE DEPARTMENTAL STRUCTURE PROVIDES VOCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISCIPLINARY SCIENTISTS AS COLLEGE TEACHERS. THE CREDITIONAL REQUIRED FOR TEACHING ELIGIBILITY IS THE PHD DEGREE IN THE DISCIPLINE. ADMINISSION TO THE DISCIPLINE BEGINS IN A PHD GRADUATE PROGRAM. SCIENTIFIC METHOD INVOLVES OBSERVATION, MEASUREMENT, DESCRIPTION. ONE OF THE GOALS OF SCIENCE IS DISCOVERY OF NATURE. SCIENCE’S GOAL OF ‘UNDERSTANDING’‘ IS EXPRESSED IN THEORY WHICH BOTH DESCRIBES AND EXPLAINS THE OBSERVED PHENOMENON. BUT NEW THEORY IS NOT EASILY ESTABLISHED IN A SCIENCE DISCIPLINE WITHOUT STRONG EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE THEORY. POLITICS WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY IS OVER SCIENTIFIC REPUTATION AND THE ACCESS TO RESOURCES REPUTATION ENABLES. It is important for government science administrators to avoid the sometimes personal politics in research and fund research strictly upon a criterion of research merit. Good scientific theory results in a accurate representation of a phenomenon, and representation often requires visual interpretation of quantitative description.