This Side of Paradise

SCIENCE SITS balanced somewhere between the possible and the actual. Emanating from a private world of thought, science is rarely the straightforward and successful march to accomplishment that so many imagine. Hesitation, compromise, public courage and private honesty are all needed to bridge the gap from the implicit to the explicit. And it takes time. Time to become aware of one's own ideas. times to test those ideas. and time to doubt those ideas. And in a world of shrinking grants and budgetary stripmining. time is running out faster than the money that pays for it.

But somehow, science keeps its won time and June Goodfield in An Imagined World. listens for its special rhythm. It is surely an uneven one--one marked by doubts and detours. impasses and retreats. Science is often a process of impulsive decisions and leaps into darkness. Long silences are followed by the harsh cries of results. and data and--with luck--maybe even a little understanding comes through.

June Goodfield, a historian of science, steps inside this process of scientific discovery, inside the struggle known as basic research. She moves into the laboratory of an immunologist. Anna Brito (her real name is not given) for five years, taking notes, recording conversations, and asking questions. She partakes in the late night seances that pass for discussions in labs around the world. She charts the double dialectic of the scientist:the external one between subject and object. and the internal one between ideas and hypotheses. She is, in effect, our tourguide--herding us past centrifuges, culture rooms, refrigerators, through a forest of pipettes, beakers and flasks and all the time trying to make the sweet smell of ethanol and the simple beauty of a petri dish come to life. Part observer part nuisance part cheerleader. Goodfield's mission is to describe the complex psychology of creative thinking.

Goodfield chooses for her example. Anna Brito an immunologist studying lymphocytes the white corpuscles of the blood. Lymphocytes are the body's soldiers patrolling the blood on the lookout for invaders. They are microsopic warriers: cells that defend us from the bacteria viruses and parasites that constantly attack us.

Every scientist has a series of questions they try to answer, and Brito's involves patients with Hodgkin's disease a cancer where these lymphocytic soldiers, are nowhere to be found. They simply disappear from the blood circulation. But no one knows why. Are they destroyed or are they hiding? Are they trapped in some part of the body where they don't belong? If they are hiding, what causes this strange behaviour and is it the reason for the occurrence of Hodgkin's?

These questions consume five years of Brito's work (1975-1980) and yet still remain unanswered. Although Brito has publiched papers, given lectures and established a clear picture of her answer, it remains an incomplete picture, subject to criticism and still unproved. This is the stuff of basic research--it is not a simple reading of facts: it is a series of ever interpretations linked to one's findings.

BUT IF THIS BOOK were merely a record of experiments and results, it would appeal only to scientists. and this is not Goodfield's intent. With simple clarity she spends as much time on the method of attack as she does on the results. and in such sections she adds her own voice to the book. For Imagined World is not simply a journal: it is annotated. commented on and probed. Thus, the science we see is the science Goodfield wants us to see. One wonders then--what is Goodfield's vision?

By all accounts it is a romantic one. She feels affection for the lonely self-doubting scientists who work late into the night. For Goodfield, solitude reflects the quality of science. We are continually told that science is best done when one is solitary, both literally and scientifically. While this is sometimes true. often it isn't. Science is increasingly done in interdisciplinary groups. Such exchanges of ideas are as critical to the process as the most private of thoughts. Very rarely do scientists sit for days simply thinking. except of course for that small breed of theoreticians.

Goodfield's second romantic image is revealed by her quoting the aphorism of Rousseau "Hypotheses are the revelation of genius." For Goodfield, pure ideas and intuition are the stuff of research, the rest is technical, petty, routine and boring. But the refrain "ideas are cheap" is quite common in labs. Experiments, data. techniques and results are the requirements for ideas. the true ingredients of successful science.

Her third characterization of the scientific process. that if one waits. one may witness "an instant of the 'inductive leap'," is arguable. This eureka vision of science rarely holds trus in a profession where one plans series of experiments in advance and where individual projects take many months.

YET IN MANY WAYS, Goodfield's views are colored by those of her subject. Dr. Brito. Thus it is critical to ask if Brito and her lab are typical of today's biology. The answer is probably negative. One has only to note that few scientists would let an observer hang around for five years. even one as thoughtful and optimistic as Ms. Goodfield.

But Brito is exceptional in other ways that make her both an interesting subject of a book and a misleading example of the modern researcher. Unlike most, she is an intellectual pariah. "Her position on Hodgkin's disease was, for the five years of this book. a minority one. She simply worked on a hunch. albeit one in accord with many observations. but still just a vision. But while she has been proved correct in some ways, most scientists do not put themselves out on a limb as Dr. Brito did. Brito bravely defends her attitude. "To be frightened of making mistakes is to be in prison. But no matter how appealing, she is an anomaly in a world where most scientists (especially young ones) are afraid to take risks. to pursue initiatives that might not get funded. This need to collect "safe results" is created by a grant system that favors explainable results and not projects with "potential." In a world that favors conventionality. individuality is rare.

Novel research is most often done by those who have made it within the system (and so are able to set aside money for exciting possibilities) or by those who simply circumvent establishment funding altogether. In this latter category is Peter Mitchell. 1979 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry who. when deprived of research money, funded his own lab in order to pursue the work which lead to his prize. But not every scientist is independently wealthy like Mitchell and not many have the guts of Brito.

Brito is also unusual in her ability t resist the temptation to rush publication. to anticipate date before hard facts are available. She is correct that ideas are "better. safer, surer" when looked at critically at length, but in a world of publicity seeking scientists who use press conferences to announce results and where speed in publishing is essential for grants and recognition, she is an anomaly.

All of which makes Brito's lab an unusual place to work. It is not hierarchical or internally competitive like most. Its workers are not strapped by anxiety. To work for her seems like fun. Her lab is. as virologist Max Delbruck once said, "a playground for serious children who ask ambitious questions."

Her lab is also unusual because it employs a large number of women in its projects. This may be accidental or it may be due to the fact that Brito looks to work with other women. But it is unusual. Biology after all is still (although less than other sciences) a male dominated profession.

But most uncommon is the fact that for five years. Brito's lab made very few mistakes. There are few deadends. few projects abandoned. few egos hurt. No wonder they're all happy!

Goodfield was fortunate to latch onto an exceptional lab at a productive time. But she depends too much on the flow of experiments, the blow-by-blow description of discovery to keep her book moving. There are no add personalities that stand out. no irreverant wits. Perhaps Brito's preference for "having quiet technicians and completely bland people around" really is wonderful. ("They don't notice anything wrong...They keep us all sane," Brito claims.) But this lack of funny incident, of weird quirks is what separates the book from other inside tours of biology, such as Horace Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation. Judson made the most of personalities. of squabble. of anecdotes; this dirt makes his book memorable. Goodfield is content to let the madness come from the pace of research rather than from its participants and she's not always successful.

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE SOME factual miscus (all specimens viewed in an election microscope are dead), some undefined jargon (what is a "referee?"), the only real technical flaw is the need for a glossary. Still, Goodfield's book has its virtues. She gives us a clear look at a scientific Athens--a society of intellect held together by the bonds of mutual curiousity--a republic of the mind.

The greatest service Goodfield provides however, is simply her love in describing for the layman modern science and its workers. Popularizing science is a necessary project in a democratic culture where such work is subsidized by universities and government agencies. Yet since the time of Einstein (who was the first to write two accounts of his theories one for the public and one for the profession), science has slithered further and further away from the layman. Although popularization is becoming more common, in many ways it is also becoming less accessible. And science has become for many, a secret brotherhood dealing in hidden knowledge. Goodfield's book, whatever its laws, is valuable for dispelling this myth and for bringing science and its workers back to its unknowing sponsors.