Knowing human moral knowledge to be true: an essay on intellectual conviction

The question addressed in this article is how people come to know the foundational axioms of their moral systems as true and correct. Drawing on my fieldwork among the Himba of northwestern Namibia, I argue that the most potent form of intellectual conviction is not generated through the external manipulations of ritual, but through a deeply internal experience in which moral knowledge coalesces with a subjectively perceived experience of timeless universality.     

A Tale of Mother and Daughter

Loving science and nature and being a scientist can be very different, yet the two are so intertwined in a scientist''s life that you will certainly experience both aspects. This essay presents my perspective on how, as one who loves science and nature, I came to fall in love with centrosome behavior in stem cells and how I came to run a lab as a scientist. When I started, there was a big gap between my love for science and my experience as a scientist. I filled this gap by learning a “laid-back confidence.”Before the beauty of cell biology (or whatever you love), who you are (i.e., your age, gender, or race) is immaterial. Yet history shows that the ease with which you can pursue science is influenced by who you are. This has certainly been my experience. The key is to find a way to fill in the gap between who you are and what you are (i.e., a scientist), a goal in which we must all support each other. It is my hope that this essay will convey something helpful to those who are at early stages of their career and might be encountering obstacles because of who they are.     

Addiction,Voluntary Choice,and Informed Consent: A Reply to Uusitalo and Broers

In an earlier article in this journal I argued that the question of whether heroin addicts can give voluntary consent to take part in research which involves giving them a choice of free heroin does not – in contrast with a common assumption in the bioethics literature – depend exclusively on whether or not they possess the capacity to resist their desire for heroin. In some cases, circumstances and beliefs might undermine the voluntariness of the choices a person makes even if they do possess a capacity for self‐control. Based on what I took to be a plausible definition of voluntariness, I argued that the circumstances and beliefs typical of many vulnerable heroin addicts are such that we have good reasons to suspect they cannot give voluntary consent to take part in such research, even assuming their desire for heroin is not irresistible. In a recent article in this journal, Uusitalo and Broers object to this on the grounds that I misdescribe heroin addicts' options set, that the definition of voluntariness on which I rely is unrealistic and too demanding, and, more generally, that my view of heroin addiction is flawed. I think their arguments derive from a misunderstanding of the view I expressed in my article. In what follows I hope therefore to clarify my position.     

Sociobiology and the Comparative Approach: One Way to Study Ourselves

This paper is based on my lecture in a macroevolution course I team-teach with Profs. Daniel Brooks and David Evans at the University of Toronto. The lecture has undergone many revisions over the years as I grappled with problems discussing certain areas (e.g., rape as an adaptive strategy, gender “roles”). Eventually, I realized that the problem areas said more about my personal conflicts than they did about the science. This was one of those epiphany moments, a time when I recognized that I was less likely to accept hypotheses that contradicted the way I wanted the world to be and more likely to uncritically accept hypotheses that confirmed my world view. That epiphany, in turn, led me to realize that science is never separate from the personal biases/demons of its practitioners, especially when we are asking questions about the evolution of human behavior. That realization was not novel within the vast literature of sociology and philosophy. But it was novel for me. I was aware of discussions about personal biases clouding scientific interpretation; I just didn’t think it applied to me (I absorbed the philosophical discussions without making the connection to “my world”). So, on the heels of that epiphany, the following is a very personal take on the question of teaching sociobiology, based on where my journey, aided by my experience as an ethologist and phylogeneticist and colored by my own history, has taken me.     

'We don't know our descent': how the Gitanos of Jarana manage the past

Although Gypsies have often been described as people 'oriented towards the present', the question of how their approach to the past might illuminate their particular mode of being in the world has been left largely untheorized. In fact, understanding how Gypsies manage the past is essential to understanding the processes through which they survive as a group in the midst of non-Gypsy society. In this article I analyse how the Gitanos of Jarana (Madrid) work upon the past so as to remove certain past events and periods from the communal gaze and to ensure that others receive only limited elaboration. I also explore the links between these Gitanos' downplaying of the past in their accounts of themselves and their particular ways of organizing social relations. Therefore, my focus lies on the relationships between the past and the imagined community, and between the latter and its structural supports.     

Reflexivity,tradition and racism in a former mining town

In this article I examine the formation of white working-class racialized discourses in a former coal-mining town in Leicestershire. I draw upon my ethnographic research in the area to explore the conditions in which young white adults confront, challenge and question what they perceive to be others’ conventional racist attitudes and beliefs, for example, the racist attitudes of members of their nuclear and extended families, friends and acquaintances. I argue that it is vital to examine these “moments of questioning” if white hegemony in predominantly working-class areas is to be understood.     

Quantifying your body: A how-to guide from a systems biology perspective

During the coming decade we will see an accelerated digital transformation of healthcare. Leading this change within the institutional medical community are both the move to digital medical records and the use of digital biomedical measurement devices. In addition to this institutional evolution, there is a non-institutional, bottom-up, unorganized, highly idiosyncratic movement by early adopters to "quantify" their own bodies. In this article, I share my decade-long personal experience of tracking many blood and stool biomarkers, which provide insight into the health or disease of major subsystems of my body. These results are interpreted in the context of the genetics of my human DNA and that of the microbes in my gut. Even though I am a computer scientist and not a medical professional, by using commercially available tests and a systems biology integrative approach, I have become an early example of Leroy Hood's vision of the emergence of predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory (P4) medicine. It is an individual's story illustrating how each of us can contribute to realizing this paradigm shift.     

What systems biology can tell us about disease

A recent debate has touched upon the question of whether diseases can be understood as dysfunctional mechanisms or whether there are "pathological" mechanisms that deserve to be investigated and explained independently (Nervi 2010; Moghaddam-Taaheri 2011). Here I suggest that both views tell us something important about disease but that in many instances only a systemic view can shed light on the relationship between physiology and pathology. I provide examples from the literature in systems biology in support of my position. As a result of my analysis, I conclude that a perspective narrowly focusing on mechanisms is insufficient if the goal is to get a comprehensive picture of disease.     

ARE MORAL PHILOSOPHERS MORAL EXPERTS?

In this paper I examine the question of whether ethicists are moral experts. I call people moral experts if their moral judgments are correct with high probability and for the right reasons. I defend three theses, while developing a version of the coherence theory of moral justification based on the differences between moral and nonmoral experience: The answer to the question of whether there are moral experts depends on the answer to the question of how to justify moral judgments. Deductivism and the coherence theory both provide some support for the opinion that moral experts exist in some way. I maintain – within the framework of a certain kind of coherence theory – that moral philosophers are ‘semi‐experts’.     

The iliac passion.

"The Iliac Passion" traces a return from the new but busy and rapidly growing discipline of "bioethics" to its source in "fundamental philosophical inquiry." The dilemma between bioethics and medicine is examined in two ways. First, the philosophical concept of the "big question" is presented. If we ask of life or of human experience "What does it all mean?", the "it" needs to be defined, and what I propose to do is to "take on" the "it." In Part Two, the task of combining the medical-technical objectifying mode of thinking about patients, necessary to treat them effectively, with the ability to understand and sympathize with their pain and distress, is illustrated by means of a personal story or parable.     

My Father’s Daughter: Becoming a ‘Real’ Anthropologist among the Ubang of Southeast Nigeria

This article explores some of the complexities of fieldwork for ethnographers conducting research in the ethnographic settings of significant ‘others’. The fieldwork in question took place in the rural, geographically isolated community of Ubang, in Obudu, Nigeria, where I was following in the footsteps of my anthropologist father. Drawing on personal experience, I attempt to candidly examine the challenges inevitably faced in this situation, including acceptance by the community as a bona fide researcher, pressure to fulfill the expectations of others familiar with my father’s work, and the struggle to carve out a professional identity distinct from my father’s. An earlier version of this paper, bearing the same title, first appeared in the Anthropology Matters Journal, 2007, vol 9(1). The paper is dedicated to the memory of my father, HRH Eze (Prof.) V.C. Uchendu, whose untimely death occurred after the final editing of the article, on December 7, 2006.     

Borrowed robes

Should scientists indulge their fantasies by writing fiction? Subject Categories: Careers, Economics, Law & Politics, History & Philosophy of Science

Like a substantial fraction of the literate population, I have a collection of unpublished novels in the drawer. Six of them in fact. Some of them were composed in barely more than a week, and others I have been struggling to complete for over 10 years: so maybe it is more accurate to say five and a half. Anyhow, most of them are good to go, give or take a bit of editorial redlining. Or, as my helpful EMBO editor would say, the removal of thousands of unnecessary adverbs and dubiously positioned commas.What do I write about and why? My style is not unique but rather particular. I write fiction in the style of non‐fiction. My subject matter is somewhere in the general realms of science fiction, alternate history and political drama. Putting these ingredients together, and taking account of my purported day job as a serious scientist, it is easy to see why my fictional work is potentially subversive—which is one reason why I have been rather reluctant thus far to let it out of the drawer. At the very least, I should take pains to conceal my identity, lest it corrupts perceptions of my scientific work. Even if I regularly tell my students not to believe everything they read, it would impose far too great a burden on them if they came to question my peer‐reviewed articles purely on the basis of untrue statements published in my name, spoken by jaded politicians, washed‐up academics or over‐credulous journalists. Even if they are imaginary. Real journalists are theoretically bound by strict rules of conduct. But imaginary ones can do whatever they like.Today, I noticed a passage in one of these unpublished works that is clearly written in the style of a young William Shakespeare, dealing with a subject matter that fits neatly into one of his most famous plays. In fact, the illusion was such that I was sure I must have lifted the passage from the play in question and set about searching for the quote, which I then could and should cite. Yet, all Internet searches failed to find any match. The character in whose mouth I placed the words was depicted as being in a delirious state where the boundaries of fact and fiction in his life were already blurred; borrowed identities being one of the themes of the entire novel and arguably of my entire oeuvre. But am I guilty here of plagiarism or poetry, in adopting the borrowed identity of my national playwright?In another work, I lay great emphasis on the damaging role of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) as the cause of biological ageing. I have even grafted this explanation onto a thinly disguised version of one of my most valued colleagues. Although there is some support for such a hypothesis from real science, including some papers that I have myself co‐authored, it is also a dangerously broad generalization that leads easily into wrong turnings and misconstructions—let alone questionable policies and diet advice. But, by advancing this misleading and overly simplistic idea in print, have I potentially damaged not only my own reputation, but that of other scientists whom I respect? Even if the author’s identity remains hidden.In one novel, I fantasize that nuclear weapons, whilst they do undoubtedly exist, have in fact been engineered by their inventors so as never actually to work, thus preventing their possible misuse by vainglorious or lunatic politicians unconcerned with the loss of millions of lives and planetary ruin. But if any insane national leader—of which there are unfortunately far too many—would actually come to believe that my fiction in the style of non‐fiction were true, they might indeed risk the outbreak of nuclear war by starting a conventional one in order to secure their strategic goals.Elsewhere, I vindicate one author of published claims that were manifestly based on falsified data, asserting him to have instead been the victim of a conspiracy launched to protect the family of an otherwise much respected American President. None of which is remotely true. Or at least there is no actual evidence supporting my ridiculous account.I have great fun writing fiction of this kind. It is both liberating and relaxing to be able to ignore facts and the results of real experiments and just invent or distort them to suit an imaginary scenario. In an age when the media and real politicians have no qualms about propagating equally outrageous “alternative facts”, I can at least plead innocent by pointing out that my lies are deliberate and labelled as such, even if people might choose to believe them.In a further twist, the blurb I have written to describe my latest work characterizes it as the “semi‐fictionalized” biography of a real person, who was, in fact, a distant relative of mine. But if it is semi‐fictionalized, which bits are true and which are made up? Maybe almost the whole thing is invented? Or maybe 99% of it is based on demonstrable facts? Maybe the subject himself concocted his own life story and somehow planted it in falsified documents and newspaper articles to give it an air of truth. Or maybe the assertion that the story is semi‐fictionalized is itself a fictional device, that is, a lie. Perhaps the central character never existed at all.It is true (sic) that the most powerful fiction is grounded in fact—if something is plausible, it is all the more demanding of our attention. And, it can point the way to truths that are not revealed by a simple catalogue of factual information, such as in a scientific report.But I have already said too much: if any of my novels ever do find their way into print, and should you chance to read them, I will be instantly unmasked. So maybe I’ll have to slot in something else in place of my pseudo‐Shakespearean verse, mitochondrial ROS hypothesis, defunct weapons of mass destruction and manipulated data manipulation.     

Solutions to the New Threats to Academic Freedom?

In my commentary on Francesca Minerva's article ‘New Threats to Academic Freedom’, I agree with her contention that the existence of the Internet has given rise to new and very serious threats to academic freedom. I think that it is crucial that we confront those threats, and find ways to eliminate them, which I believe can be done. The threats in question involve both authors and editors. In the case of authors, I argue that the best solution is not anonymous publication, but publication using pseudonyms, and I describe how that would work. In the case of editors, my proposal is a website that a number of journals would have access to, where papers that editors judge to be clearly worthy of publication, but whose publication seems likely to set off a firestorm of public and media protest, could be published without any indication of the journal that had accepted the paper for publication.     

Alterations in hypertensive arteries

Mentoring in academia is often carried out in an informal way depending on individuals and circumstances. I was quite fortunate to make the acquaintance of Professor E.E. Daniel when I was making a transition from my research in entomology to biomedical sciences. Here I recount some of that experience, and describe some of the lessons I have learned from this experience, as my tribute to Dr. Daniel on the occasion of his 80th birthday.     

Focus: Allergic Diseases and Type II Immunity: Allergies and Adaptations: A Perspective on the Need for Culturally Responsive Care to Medically Indicated Dietary Restrictions

In medicine, we tend to think of food as being equivalent to nutrition, and food allergies are understood primarily as a biomedical process. In this piece, I explore how my experience with food allergies intersects with my cultural identity as a second-generation Indian-American. I also offer insights from my experiences in medical training and practice and reflect on the responsibility of health providers to understand the social and cultural context of food allergies.     

Pain as a counterpoint to culture: toward an analysis of pain associated with infibulation among Somali immigrants in Norway

This article focuses on how some Somali women experience and reflect on the pain of infibulation as a lived bodily experience within shifting social and cultural frameworks. Women interviewed for this study describe such pain as intolerable, as an experience that has made them question the cultural values in which the operation is embedded. Whereas this view has gone largely unvoiced in their natal communities, the Norwegian exile situation in which the present study's informants live has brought about dramatic changes. In Norway, where female circumcision is both condemned and illegal, most of the women have come to reconsider the practice--not merely as a theoretical topic or as a "cultural tradition" to be maintained or abolished but, rather, as part of their embodied and lived experience.     

Culture and Pathology: Flathead Loneliness Revisited

My earlier considerations of Flathead loneliness and depressive disorder yielded an interpretation that emphasized the lack of necessary pathology in the Flathead experience of loneliness. In this paper I detail a shift in my thinking about the pathological character of loneliness, a shift traceable to a set of interactions that have led me away from illness experience and diagnosis to questions of treatment, intervention, and healing. I explore how this new set of questions refocused my attention-away from an exclusive preoccupation with the lonesome individual. I conclude with a reimagination of the pathological dimensions of Flathead loneliness as aspects of both group and individual health.     

An unconventional route to becoming a cell biologist

I am honored to be the E. B. Wilson Award recipient for 2015. As we know, it was E. B. Wilson who popularized the concept of a “stem cell” in his book The Cell in Development and Inheritance (1896, London: Macmillan & Co.). Given that stem cell research is my field and that E. B. Wilson is so revered within the cell biology community, I am a bit humbled by how long it took me to truly grasp his vision and imaginative thinking. I appreciate it deeply now, and on this meaningful occasion, I will sketch my rather circuitous road to cell biology.I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. My father was a geochemist, and for everyone whose parents worked at Argonne National Laboratories, Downers Grove was the place to live. My father’s sister was a radiobiologist and my uncle was a nuclear chemist, both at Argonne; they lived in the house next door. Across the street from their house was the Schmidtke’s Popcorn Farm—a great door to knock on at Halloween. The cornfields were also super for playing hide-and-seek, particularly when you happened to be shorter than those Illinois cornstalks.Open in a separate windowElaine FuchsI remember when the first road in the area was paved. It made biking and roller-skating an absolute delight. Fields of butterflies were everywhere, and with development came swamps and ponds filled with pollywogs and local creeks with crayfish. It was natural to become a biologist. When coupled with a family of scientists and a mother active in the Girl Scouts, all the resources were there to make it a perfect path to becoming a scientist.I could hardly wait until I was in junior high school, when I could enter science fairs. You would think that my science-minded family might help me choose and develop a research project. True to their mentoring ethos, they left these decisions to me. My first project was on crayfish behavior. I recorded the response of the crayfish I had caught to “various external stimuli.” At the end of this assault, I dissected the crayfish and, using “comparative anatomy,” attempted to identify all the parts. The second project was no gentler. I focused on tadpole metamorphosis and the effects of thyroid hormone in accelerating development at low concentrations and death at elevated concentrations. Somehow, I ended up going all the way to the state fair, where it became clear that I had serious competition. That experience, however, whetted my appetite to gain more lab experience and to learn to read the literature more carefully.My experience with high school biology prompted me to gravitate toward chemistry, physics, and math. When it came to college, my father told me that if there was a $2000/year (translated in 2015 to be $30,000/year) reason why I should go anywhere besides the University of Chicago (where Argonne scientists received a 50% tuition cut for their children) or the University of Illinois (then $200/year tuition), we could “discuss” it further. Having a sister, father, aunt, and uncle who went to the University of Chicago, I chose the University of Illinois and saved my Dad a bundle of money. At Illinois, I thought I might revisit biology, but my choices for a major were “biology for teachers” or “honors biology.” The first did not interest me; the second seemed intimidating.I enrolled as a chemistry major. Four years went by, during which time I never took a biology class. I enjoyed quantum mechanics, physics, and differential equations, and problem solving became one of my strengths. In the midst of the Vietnam War era, however, Illinois was a hotbed of activity. I was inspired to apply to the Peace Corps, with a backup plan to pursue science that would be more biomedically relevant than quantum mechanics. I was accepted to go to Uganda with the Peace Corps, but with Idi Amin in office, my path to science was clear. Fortunately, the schools I applied to accepted me, even though, in lieu of GRE scores, I had submitted a three-page essay on why I did not think another exam was going to prove anything. I chose Princeton’s biochemistry program. This turned out to be a great, if naïve choice, as only after accepting their offer did I take a biochemistry class to find out what I was getting into. I chose to carry out my PhD with a terrific teacher of intermediary metabolism, Charles Gilvarg, who worked on bacterial cell walls. My thesis project was to tackle how spores break down one cell wall and build another as they transition from quiescence to vegetative growth.By my fourth year of graduate school, I was trained as a chemist and biochemist and was becoming increasingly hooked on biomedical science. I listened to a seminar given by Howard Green, who had developed a method to culture cells from healthy human skin under conditions in which they could be maintained and propagated for hundreds of generations without losing their ability to make tissue. At the time, Howard referred to them as epidermal keratinocytes, but in retrospect, these were the first stem cells ever to be successfully cultured. I was profoundly taken by the system, and Howard’s strength in cell biology inspired me. It was the perfect match for pursuing my postdoctoral research. The time happened to be at the cusp of DNA recombinant technology.At MIT, I learned how to culture these cells. I wanted to determine their program of gene expression and how this changed when epidermal progenitors embark on their terminal differentiation program. While the problem in essence was not so different from that of my graduate work at Princeton, I had miraculously managed to receive my PhD without ever having isolated protein, RNA, or DNA. Working in a quintessential cell biology lab and tackling a molecular biology question necessitated venturing outside the confines of the Green lab and beyond the boundaries of my expertise. Fortunately, this was easy at MIT. Richard Hynes, Bob Horvitz, Bob Weinberg, and Graham Walker were all assistant professors, and their labs were very helpful, as were those of David Baltimore and Phil Sharp, a mere walk across the street. On the floor of my building, Steve Farmer, Avri Ben Ze’ev, Gideon Dreyfuss, and Ihor Lemischka were in Sheldon Penman’s lab just down the hall, and they were equally interested in mRNA biology, providing daily fuel for discussions. Uttam Rhajbandary’s and Gobind Khorana’s labs were also on the same floor, making it easy to learn how to make oligo(dT)-Sepharose to purify my mRNAs. Vernon Ingram’s lab was also on the same floor, so learning to make rabbit reticulocyte lysates to translate my mRNAs was also possible. Howard bought a cryostat, so I could section human skin and separate the layers. And as he was already working with clinicians at Harvard to apply his ability to create sheets of epidermal cells for the treatment of burn patients, I had access to the leftover scraps of human tissue that were also being used in these operations.The three years of my postdoc were accompanied by three Fuchs and Green papers. The first showed that epidermal keratinocytes spend most of their time expressing a group of keratin proteins with distinct sequences. The second showed that these keratins were each encoded by distinct mRNAs. The third showed that, as epidermal keratinocytes commit to terminally differentiate, they switch off expression of basal keratins (K5 and K14) and switch on the expression of suprabasal keratins (K1 and K10). That paper also revealed that different stratified tissues express the same basal keratins but distinct sets of suprabasal keratins. I am still very proud of these accomplishments, and my MIT experience made me thirst to discover more about the epidermis and its stem cells.My first and only real job interview came during my second year of postdoc, at a time when I was not looking for a job. I viewed the opportunity, initiated by my graduate advisor, as a free trip home to visit my parents and my trial run to prepare me for future searching. I was thrilled when this interview materialized into an offer to join the faculty, for which the University of Chicago extended my start time to allow me to complete my three years with Howard.Times have clearly changed, and it is painful to see talented young scientists struggle so much more today. That said, I have never looked ahead very far, and having a lack of expectations or worry is likely to be as helpful today as it was then. I am sure it is easier said than done, but this has also been the same for my science. I have always enjoyed the experiments and the joy of discovery. There was no means to an end other than to contemplate what the data meant in a broader scope.I arrived at the University of Chicago with a well-charted route. My aim was to make a cDNA library and clone and characterize the sequences and genes for the differentially expressed keratins I had identified when I was at MIT. It was three months into my being at Chicago when my chair lined up some interviews for me to hire a technician. I was so immersed in my science that I did not want to take time to hire anyone. I hired the first technician I interviewed. Fortunately, it worked out. However, I turned graduate students away the first year, preferring to carry out the experiments with my technician and get results. After publishing two more papers—one on the existence of two types of keratins that were differentially expressed as pairs and the other on signals that impacted the differential expression of these keratin pairs, I decided to accept a student, who analyzed the human keratin genes. My first postdoc was a fellow grad student with me at Princeton; she studied signaling and keratin gene expression. My second postdoc was initiated by my father, who chatted with him at the elevator when I was moving into my apartment. He set up DNA sequencing and secondary-structure prediction methods, and the lab stayed small, focused, and productive.I was fascinated by keratins, how they assembled into a network of intermediate filaments (Ifs). When thalassemias and sickle cell anemia turned out to be due to defects in globin genes, I began to wonder whether there might be human skin disorders with defective keratin genes. I had no formal training in genetics, and there were no hints of what diseases to focus on. Thus, rather than using positional cloning to identify a gene mutation associated with a particular disease, we took a reverse approach: we first identified the key residues for keratin filament assembly. After discovering that mutations at these sites acted dominant negatively, we engineered transgenic mice harboring our mutant keratin genes and then diagnosed the mouse pathology. Our diagnoses, first for our K14 mutations and then for our K10 mutations, turned out to be correct: on sequencing the keratins from humans with epidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS), we found K14 or K5 mutations; similarly, we found K1 or K10 mutations in affected, but not in unaffected, members of families with epidermolytic hyperkeratosis (EH). Both are autosomal-dominant disorders in which patients have skin blistering or degeneration upon mechanical stress. Without a proper keratin network, the basal (EBS) or suprabasal (EH) cells could not withstand pressure. Ironically, family sizes of all but the mildest forms of these disorders were small, meaning that the disorders were not amenable to positional cloning. But the beauty of this approach is that once we had made the connection to the diseases, we understood their underlying biology. In addition, the IF genes are a superfamily of more than 100 genes differentially expressed in nearly all tissues of the body. Once we had established EBS as the first IF gene disorder, the pathology and biology set a paradigm for a number of diseases of other tissues that turned out to be due to defects in other IF genes.Fortunately, I had students, Bob Vassar (professor, Northwestern University) and Tony Letai (associate professor, Harvard Medical School), and a postdoc, Pierre Coulombe (chair, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Johns Hopkins University), who jumped into this fearless venture with me. We had to go off campus to learn transgenic technology. I had never worked with mice before. When Bob returned to campus with transgenic expertise, we hired and trained Linda Degenstein, whose love for animal science was unparalleled. Pierre’s prior training in electron microscopy was instrumental in multiple ways. Additionally, I was not a dermatologist and had no access to human patients. Fortunately Amy Paller, MD, at Northwestern volunteered to work with us.The success of this project attests to an important recipe: 1) Pursue a question you are passionate about. 2) In carrying out rigorous, well-controlled experiments, each new finding should build upon the previous ones. 3) If you have learned to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, then you will not be afraid to chart new territory when the questions you are excited to answer take an unanticipated turn. 4) Science does not operate in a vacuum. Interact well with your lab mates and take an interest in their science as well as your own. And wherever you embark upon a pathway in which the lab’s expertise is limited, do not hesitate to reach out broadly to other labs and universities.I have followed this recipe now for more than three decades, and it seems to work pretty well. A lab works only when its students and postdocs are interactive, naturally inquisitive, and freely share their ideas and findings. I have been blessed to have a number of such individuals in my lab over the years. When push comes to shove, I am always inclined first to shave from the “brilliant” category and settle for smart, nice people who are passionate and interactive about science and original and unconventional in their thinking.So what questions have I been most passionate about? I have always been fascinated with how tissues form during development, how they are maintained in the adult, and how tissue biology goes awry in human disorders, particularly cancers. I first began to think about this problem during my days at Princeton. I also developed a dogma back then that I still hold: to understand malignancies, one must understand what is normal before one can appreciate what is abnormal. I think this is why I have spent so much of my life focusing on normal tissue morphogenesis, despite my passion for being at the interface with medicine. And because skin has so many amazingly interesting complexities, and because it is a great system to transition seamlessly between a culture dish and an animal, I have never found a reason to choose any other tissue over the one I chose many years back.I will not dwell on the various facets of skin biology we have tackled over the years. Our initial work on keratins was to obtain markers for progenitors and their differentiating lineages. This interest broadened to understanding how proliferative progenitors form cytoskeletal networks and how the cytoskeleton makes dynamic rearrangements during tissue morphogenesis.From the beginning, the lab has also been fascinated by how tissue remodeling occurs in response to environmental signals. Indeed, signals from the microenvironment trigger changes in chromatin dynamics and gene expression within tissue stem cells. Ultimately, this leads to changes in proteins and factors that impact on cell polarity, spindle orientation, asymmetric versus symmetric fate specifications, and ultimately, the balance between proliferation and differentiation.The overarching theme of my lab over these decades is clear, namely, to understand the signals that unspecified progenitors receive that instruct them to generate a stratified epidermis, make hair follicles, or make sweat and sebaceous glands. And if we can understand how this happens, then how are stem cells born, and how do they replace dying cells or regenerate tissue after injury? And, finally, how does this process change during malignant progression or in other aberrant skin conditions?In tackling tissue morphogenesis, I have had to forgo knowing the details of each tree and instead focus on the forest. There are many times when I stand back and can only admire those who are able to dissect beautiful cellular mechanisms with remarkable precision. But I crossed that bridge some years ago in tackling a problem that mandates an appreciation of nearly all the topics covered in Bruce Alberts’ textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell. I am now settled comfortably with the uncomfortable, and the problem of tissue morphogenesis in normal biology and disease continues to keep me more excited about each year’s research than I was the previous year. Perhaps the difference between my days as a student, postdoc, and assistant professor and now is that my joy and excitement is as strong for those I mentor and have mentored as it is for myself.     

Being at the right place at the right time

I am tremendously honored to receive the 2012 Women in Cell Biology Junior Award. In this essay, I recount my career path over the past 15 years. Although many details are specific to my own experiences, I hope that some generalizations can be made to encourage more women to pursue independent scientific careers. Mine is a story of choosing a captivating question, making the most of your opportunities, and finding a balance with life outside the lab.It is a great honor to have been awarded the 2012 Women in Cell Biology Junior Award from the ASCB. Looking back at the 15 years I have spent doing research in cell biology, my overwhelming feeling is that it has been and still is a lot of fun. I am extremely fortunate to have a job that I truly enjoy and that gives me complete intellectual freedom. My lab choices over the years were motivated by scientific curiosity and enthusiasm for new environments and topics, rather than by career building. It is thus truly amazing to be rewarded for (rather a lot of) work enjoyed.     

Home-town Anthropology

As I undertake fieldwork in my home-town area, I experience the familiar and the unfamiliar colliding, overlapping and interrelating in a critically productive, yet tense, dialectic. Questions arise for me such as: What is the field? What is home? When am I an anthropologist? When am I a local? By looking at the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in my home-town area, I am able to briefly explore these questions and come to a position where 1 sense the need for anthropology to look to comparative strategies (whereby difference and similarity are seen in relation to each other). This I see as a corrective to an overly contrastive approach which prioritises the representation of difference between cultural groups.