“Rescuing Biomedical Science from its Systemic Flaws”  by Bruce Alberts, Marc Kirschner, Shirley Tilghman and Harold Varmus noted the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology would be hosting a panel discussion of key stakeholder representatives on April 27, 2014 at the 2014 Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego, so we got ourselves invited.

The room at the San Diego Conference center reserved for this panel presentation was fairly well populated, but certainly not packed.

Attendees showed a great deal of interest in the material presented by the panelists, particularly those of Paula Stephan, who authored the book “How Economics Shapes Science,” which she writes about here.

As people stepped up to the microphone, they suggested solutions – ones that would solve a particular facet of this multi-faceted issue.

We feel there is a place for a bigger umbrella to envelope not only issues of workforce employment and grant levels, but to connect to the larger picture of society, as well as societal hopes and dreams for what science can bring to the table.  The large, complex, and accelerating number of global challenges bespeak a seemingly bottomless set of problems for our next generation(s) of scientists – scientists that would be well served by unfettered creativity and problem-based collaborative approaches.