SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION

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SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION LECTURE 9 HOW TO WRITE
AND EVALUATE RESEARCH PROPOSALS -- SCIENCE
RESEARCH ILLUSTRATION MAPPING THE OCEANS
FLOORS FREDERICK BETZ PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
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TYPES OF RESEARCH INQUIRIES
PROFESSION INNOVATION
SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY
Discovery Bottleneck Theory
Invention ENGINEERING
COMMERCIALIZATION System Standards
Design Processes
NATURE
MARKET
ILLUSTRATION MARIA THARP MAP MAKER OF THE
OCEANS
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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 masters 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.
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LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION
SCIENTIFIC SCIENTIFIC
METHOD REPRESENTATION (EPISTEMOLOGY)
(ONTOLOGY) SCIENCE
SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION APPLICATION (ORGANIZ
ATION) (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.
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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.
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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.
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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 Tharps 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.
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LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION
SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY
Discovery Bottleneck Theory
Invention ENGINEERING
COMMERCIALIZATION 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.
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The idea that vast tracts of the earths crust
moved across the surface, known as continental
drift, was unpopular at the time. Most
geophysicists were fixists who believed the
planets 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.
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LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION
SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY
Discovery Bottleneck Theory
Invention ENGINEERING
COMMERCIALIZATION System Standards
Design Processes
SCIENCES GOAL OF UNDERSTANDING IS EXPRESSED
IN THEORY WHICH BOTH DESCRIBES AND EXPLAINS THE
OBSERVED PHENOMENON The idea that vast tracts
of the earths 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 planets surface was static. . .
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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 worlds oceans. Rift valleys were a
feature of every ocean floor.
THEORY HERE IS THE PROPER FORM OF DESCRIPTION
PHYSIOGRAPHIC DIAGRAM.
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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 Heezens 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 Heezens grant requests
and, as Fox said, was essentially trying to ruin
Bruces career.
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LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION
SCIENTIFIC SCIENTIFIC
METHOD REPRESENTATION (EPISTEMOLOGY)
(ONTOLOGY) SCIENCE
SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION APPLICATION (ORGANIZ
ATION) (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 Heezens grant requests
and, as Fox said, was essentially trying to ruin
Bruces career.
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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 Tharps house.
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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 worlds oceans
and revealing hidden features of the earths
surface. The map showed a continuous,
40,000-mile-long seam running across the worlds
surface, like the stitching on a throbbing
geophysical baseball. Sounding like the proud
discoverer that she was, Tharp said, You cant
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.
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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.
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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.
SCIENCES 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.