SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION

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SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION FREDERICK BETZ PORTLAND
STATE UNIVERSITY LECTURE 3 PROGRESS IN
SCIENCE ILLUSTRATION SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY OF
DNA
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• SCIENTIFIC METHOD
• ?Science is the discovery and understanding of
  nature.
• Science is a set of activities for research about
  nature.
• The explicit goals of scientific research are
• to discover new kinds and aspects of nature and
• to understand nature through observation and
  experimentation
• resulting in the development of theory.
• Scientific knowledge accumulating through
  observation and experimentation is abstracted
  into scientific theory
• and validated by further observation and
  experimentation.
• The way to conduct observation and
  experimentation to develop and verify theory is
  called the ?scientific method.

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INFORMATION MODEL OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
UNIVERSITY
S1
T1
NATURAL THING
SCIENTIST
OBSERVATION
SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS
DISCIPLINE
THEORY
T2
S2
NATURAL THING
SCEINTIST
PREDICTION
SCIENCE INVENTS INSTRUMENTS FOR OBSERVATION AND
EXPERIMENT. INSTRUMENTATION DEPENDS UPON SENSORY
FOCUS AND UPON SENSITIVITY. EXPERIMENTS USE
INSTRUMENTS TO OBSERVE AND ABSTRACT THE
PROPERTIES OF NATURE THROUGH CONTROLLED
EXPLORATION OF NATURE. THEORY IS THE
GENERALIZATION OF THE ABSTRACTIONS OF NATURE AS
PHENOMAL OBJECTS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS. PREDICT
ION IS A FORECAST BASED UPON A CAUSAL EXPLANATION
OF THE THEORY.
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PREDICTION
IN PREDICTION, THERE MUST BE A TEMPORAL
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NATURAL EVENTS EVENT A
PRECEEDS EVENT B IN TIME. NECESSITY AND
SUFFICIENCY ARE THE TWO LOGICAL FACTORS IN AN
EXPLANATION. PRIOR EVENT A CAN BE EITHER
NECESSARY OR SUFFICIENT TO THE LATER OCCURANCE OF
SUBSEQUENT EVENT B
EXISTENCE OF PRIOR EVENT A
TO RELATION OCCURANCE OF SUBSEQUENT EVENT
B CAUSAL RELATION NECESSARY AND
SUFFICIENT PRODUCTIVE RELATION NECESSARY AND NOT
SUFFICIENT ACCIDENTAL RELATION NOT NECESSARY AND
SUFFICIENT THEMATIC RELATION NOT NECESSARY AND
NOT SUFFCIENT
DISCIPLINARY FIELDS TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS PHYS
ICAL SCIENCES CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS SOCIAL
SCIENCES AND MANAGEMENT PRODUCTIVE
RELATIONSHIPS HISTORY ACCIDENTAL
RELATIONSHIPS HUMANITIES THEMATIC RELATIONSHIPS
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EXAMPLE -- BIOLOGICALSCIENCE -- UNDERSTANDING
THE PERFORMANCE OF BASIC RESEARCH AT UNIVERSITIES
-- DEVELOPING THE THEORY OF THE THE TRANSMISSION
OF HEREDITY --DNA
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Case Study -- Origin of Biotechnology This case
illustrates how the university part of an RD
infrastructure establishes the science base for
the radical innovations that create new
industries. The historical setting was the
century of biological research from the 1870s to
the 1970s that established the science base for
the new biotechnology industry, which began in
the late twentieth century. Although new
industries begin upon the innovation of a
radically new basic technology. The rate of
occurrence of these has depended upon the rate of
scientific progress -- which often has taken a
long time. For example, the final scientific
event in creating the science base for the new
biotechnology was a critical biology experiment
performed by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer in
1972 that invented the technique for manipulating
DNA -- recombinant DNA. The scientific ideas
that preceded this experiment began about one
hundred years earlier.
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How is life reproduced? This answer required
many stages of research to be performed,
including 1. Investigating the structure of the
cell. 2. Isolation and chemical analysis of the
cells nucleus, DNA. 3. Establishing the
principles of heredity. 4. Discovering the
function of DNA in reproduction. 5. Discovering
the molecular structure of DNA. 6. Deciphering
the genetic code of DNA. 7. Inventing recombinant
DNA techniques.
This question about life is the basic inquiry
about nature scientific inquiry. The stages of
research are the scientific issues in the
inquiry.
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BIOLOGY The Structure of the Cell By the early
part of the nineteenth century in the then new
scientific discipline of biology scientists were
using an eighteenth century invention of the
microscope to look at bacteria and cells. Cells
are the constituent modules of living beings.
They saw that cells have a structure consisting
of a cell wall, a nucleus, and protoplasma
contained within the wall and surrounding the
nucleus. In 1838, Christina Ehrenberg was the
first to observed the division of the nucleus
when a cell reproduced. In 1842, Karl Nageli
observed the rod-like chromosomes within the
nucleus of plant cells.
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Discovery and Chemical Analysis of DNA Science
is a system containing disciplines and the
techniques and knowledge in one discipline may be
used in another discipline. In 1869, a chemist,
Friedrich Miescher, reported the discovery of
DNA, by precipitating material from the nuclear
fraction of cells and called the material
nuclein. Subsequent studies showed that it was
composed of two components, nucleic acid and
protein. While these studies were occurring,
there also were continuing improvements in
microscopic techniques. For the microscope,
specific chemicals were found that could be used
to selectively stain the cell. Paul Ehrlich
discovered that staining cells with the new
chemically-derived, coal-tar colors correlated
with the chemical composition of the cell
components. This is an example of how
technology contributes to science, for the new
colors were products of the then new chemical
industry.
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In 1873, A. Schneider described the relationships
between the chromosomes and various stages of
cell division -- the process of mitosis -- which
is the phenomenon of chromosome division
resulting in the separation of the cell nucleus
into two daughter nuclei). From 1879 and over
the next decades, Kossel and Miescher and Levine
) laid the clear basis for the determination of
the chemistry of nucleic acids. As early as
1914, Emil Fisher had attempted the chemical
synthesis of a nucleotide (component of nucleic
acid, DNA) but real progress was not made in
synthesis until 1938. Chemical synthesis of DNA
was an important scientific technique necessary
to understand the chemical composition of
DNA. By 1950 the detailed chemical composition
of DNA was finally determined -- but not yet its
molecular geometry. Almost 100 years had
passed between the discovery of DNA and
determination of its chemical composition.
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The Principles of Heredity Simultaneously from
1900 to 1930 (while the chemistry of DNA was
being sought) the foundation of modern genetics
was being established. Understanding the
nature of heredity began in the nineteenth
century with Darwins epic work on evolution and
with Mendels pioneering work on genetics.
Modern advances in genetic research began in
1910 with Thomas Morgans group researching the
heredity in the fruit fly. Morgan demonstrated
the validity of Mendels analysis and showed hat
mutations could be induced by x-rays, providing
one means for Darwins evolutionary mechanisms.
(Later in the 1980s, an international ?human
genome project would begin mapping the entire
human gene set.)
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The Function of DNA in Reproduction While the
geneticists were showing the principles of
heredity, the mechanism of heredity had still not
been demonstrated. Was DNA the transmitter of
heredity, and if so, how? In 1928, Frederick
Griffith found that a mixture of killed
infectious bacterial strains with live
non-inectious bacteria could create a live
infectious stain. In 1935, Lional Avey showed
that this transformation was due to the exchange
of DNA between dead and living bacteria. This
was the first clear demonstration that DNA did,
in fact, carry the genetic information.
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Structure of DNA We have seen the long time and
the many lines of research and different
disciplinary specialties which all together was
necessary to discover the elements of heredity
(genes and DNA) and their function (transmission
of heredity functions). Yet before technology
could use this kind of information, one more
scientific step was necessary -- understanding
the structural mechanisms of the DNA mitotic
process. This step was achieved by a group of
scientists that were to be later called the
?phage group and would directly give rise to the
modern scientific specialty of ?molecular
biology and hence to biotechnology.
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Critical to the operation of the phage group was
the funding support of the Ford Foundation. A
program officer in the Foundation decided to
support the exploratory research involving both
biologists and physicists. Watson, a graduate
from the Phage Group, went to Europe upon a
post-doctorate fellowship from the Ford
Foundation. The Rutherford Lab was a research
center in Cambridge.
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LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION
SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE The
innovations of new basic technologies (that
create new industrial structures and devices)
arise from progress in science and technology.
This progress is organizationally created in the
institutional infrastructure of a nation (which
performs scientific and technological advances).
This can be called the science and technology
(ST) infrastructure of a nation, (or as it is
sometimes called, a national research
development (RD) system).
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The first problem on technological innovation
about the ST infrastructure arises from the
issues of when and how industry needs scientific
progress. Since industry uses technology
directly, and not science, industry needs new
science only indirectly and (1 ) when
technological progress in an existing technology
can not be made without a deeper understanding of
the science underlying the technology, (2) when
new basic technologies need to be created from
new science. The second problem about an ST
infrastructure arises from the fact that the
university and not industry is the primary
performer of science progress. Thus industry
must look to the university for progress in
science, but then universities traditionally have
advanced science not in forms directly usable by
industry nor in a timely manner.
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• Accordingly, the practical issues of a nation's
  science technology policy are
• How can firms use universities to stay
  technically competitive in a world of
  rapidly-changing science technology?
• (2) How can universities obtain funds from both
  industry and government to support the
  advancement of science and respond to industrial
  needs for science in appropriate forms and timely
  manners?
• (3) How can a government best direct its RD
  support to facilitate partnerships between
  universities and industries?