1. What is science?
2. How is it done these days?

1. Age of science
2. Renaissance versus specialist
3. Theorists versus experimentalists
4. Types of research: basic, applied, technology, examples of each
5. Communication: meetings, papers, internet.
6. Peer review
7. Funding

• Science has been going on now for about 300 years and the methods by which it is done have evolved. All sorts of things are being studied: fish, atoms, comets, etc. The big picture shows that all scientific knowledge is interconnected, a web, with only a few “laws of nature” that hold it all together.

• In the old days it was possible for a person to know just about everything there was to know. The so-called renaissance man. For example, Newton made important contributions to astronomy, mechanics and motion, light, mathematics.
• Today that is impossible, and one must specialize. Not only do you choose a field, such as biology, physics, chemistry, geology, mathematics, but you also specialize within that field. So an example of a specialist now would be say someone who studies the colonization of ants. The modern scientist is so specialized that they know very little from outside of their specialty.
• But anyone, even you, can help do science. Go to the SETI site to get involved with the search for extraterrestrial life. A clone of the SETI concept is Screensaver Lifesaver, a program to help cure cancer.

• Furthermore, within a specialty there are two general types of researchers, called
1. Theorists (usually involved with mathematical modeling of things with the goal of computing an outcome purely from scientific principles).
2. Experimentalists (conduct experiments and make observations of reality) They see how the universe really works.
• The two types work together, The theorist uses experiments to see if they are computing things properly, and the experimentalist uses theory to find out where the problems lie and what problems need to be worked on.

• We can further differentiate much research into 3 categories
1. Basic Research,
2. Applied Research,
3. Technology
• Basic research is the study of how the world works in order to understand it, nothing more. Knowledge for its own sake. E.g., How do atoms bond together. What is the nature of light? Most of this is done within the university environment.
• Applied Research is the study of things that may be used to better mankind. For instance, how lasers work. (mix of university, industrial and government labs, e.g. Bell Labs)
• Technology is the application of research for commercial or industrial goals. E.g., laser printers, or making great digital TVs (industry or government labs, Lucent Technologies, NASA stuff)
• Buckeyballs, an example: Carbon has been known in two forms for centuries, graphite and diamond. In 1985 a new form was found in Texas and in England. The discovery was at first just a novelty but because it is carbon, studies continued. This is an example of basic research. In 1990 chemists in Germany and physicists here at UofA found ways to make large quantities for cheap. This is applied research. Now much work being done to use buckyballs as miniature ball bearings, lubricants, carbon-based building materials, etc. This is technology. (Image of a buckyball)

• Scientists communicate through a variety of ways.
1. Meetings, These go on all the time. Often major announcements are given at these meetings, e.g. superconductors at the Annual meeting of the American Physical Society. So you see a lot of newspaper articles around this time.
2. Papers, These are usually published in specialty journals, e.g. American Mineralogist and if especially interesting to people outside of your field then in Nature (http://www.nature.com) or Science (http://www.sciencemag.org).
3. E-mail, internet. Invented for scientists.
• Meetings: Organized by professional societies. To attend a meeting all you have to do is pay the fee. To speak at a meeting you have to send in an abstract. This is usually a short statement, maybe a couple of paragraphs long, of what you will talk about. It gets reviewed by a committee who determine if it is worth listening to. If so then you get to talk for 10-20 minutes. On occasion you will be invited to speak. They might pay your way. (An example)
• Papers. In general you write a paper, say with WORD. Then make 5 copies and send it to an editor at a journal. They always have a specific format that they want you to send it in. The editor reads it and if they think that it might be suitable, then they send it to an associate editor who reads it and if they think that it is suitable then they send it to 3-5 reviewers who read it and cut it up big time. The editor can do with the reviews as they please. If all the reviews say to publish it, then it will probably get published. In the news 3 years ago was the story of the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association who was fired because he published an article that was old and that did not pass the review process. (http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1999/01/18/ama.html) My journal recently asked that we reject more papers because too many are being submitted. No one gets paid for this. (peer review)

• Most funding comes from government. This is a direct result of the success of the Manhattan project. The major sources are NSF, NIH, DOE, NASA. The US government science budget for 1999 was ~$75 billion.
• The process is to write a grant. You must be affiliated with some sort of organization such as university or industry to do this. The individual will not get funded. Many people are adjunct faculty just for this reason.
• You send in 20 copies of your proposal. It gets read by the program director who then sends it to ~5 reviewers who rate it on a 1-5 scale. It is also read by a committee who examines the reviewer’s comments and make their own decisions. If the reviewers do not give it the highest ranking then it will not pass, if the committee does not want to pass it then down it goes.  Only 10-25% of all proposals gets funded these days. About 50% of the money goes to the university as overhead. Professors can only get 1-2 months salary out of it. If a new assistant professor does not get funded within 5 years they can be dismissed.
• What does a grant pay for?
1. Equipment and instrumentation
2. Faculty investigator’s summer salary for 1-2 months
3. Salaries for grad and undergrad students
4. Trips to meetings and field areas
5. Publication costs
6. University overhead such as library, utilities, buildings (~50% of the total grant money)
• At UofA, ~$250 million per year is brought into the university by research funding. At UofA, 2003 budget was $316 million.
• Who decides the national research budget?
  ( Bush to endorse increased spending on renewable energy)
  ( Bush wants budget to go build base on the moon and send people to Mars)