Abigail Salyers' Presentation on Science & Society (10/24/03)

As part of our ongoing speaker series supported by the Ford Foundation's Division of Knowledge, Creativity & Freedom, the subject of our October 24 presentation was the Anthrax Crisis (and policy issues it raised). The distinguished speaker was Professor Abigail Salyers, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and in the School of Medicine at UIUC. The title of her talk was "Scientists in Society." Professor Salyers was President of the American Society for Microbiology in 2001-2002. In 2002 she was the College of Medicine's Faculty Member of the Year and is currently a Center for Advanced Study Professor.

ABSTRACT: The "two cultures" view of science and the humanities has been thoroughly discredited on the academic level, yet this view persists in the public view of science and scientists. A recent editorial in the Washington Post, in which biologists are portrayed by implication as independent souls who are not used to being accountable to societal (read governmental) controls, is yet another example of an underlying public uneasiness about the true motives of scientists. During the aftermath of the anthrax bioattack of 2001, when Professor Salyers was in the unpleasant position of talking to numerous reporters as the President of the American Society for Microbiology, the same undercurrent of suspicion on the part of the reporters was also evident. In her presentation, Salyers examines the strange dichotomy that has developed over the past century, in which a public that has benefited tremendously from the discoveries of scientists nonetheless distrusts them. She focuses on contemporary rather than historical examples of public ambivalence about science, and gives a scientist's view of what has happened and what can be done to solve the problem.

BACKGROUND READING: (1) Salyers, A. A. (2002). Microbes and the law: From censorship to forensics. Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, 2002(2), pp. 413-419.

Abigail Salyers is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she has conducted research and taught for more than 25 years. Professor Salyers earned her Ph.D. in Physics at the George Washington University (Washington, D.C.). After working as a physicist for nearly 10 years, she made the transition to microbiology by doing post-doctoral work at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Blacksburg, VA). Prof. Salyers' research has focused on the bacteria that are normally found in the human intestinal tract, in particular the mechanisms by which these bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. She has published over 150 scientific papers and two textbooks for undergraduate courses. Professor Salyers serves as a reviewer of grants for the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy. She was co-director of the Microbial Diversity Summer Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA) from 1995-1999. She has provided expert testimony on genetically modified plants and antibiotic use in agriculture for a variety of regulatory agencies in Europe and the U.S., and she has testified before a congressional subcommittee on genetically modified plants. Professor Salyers is the past President of the American Society for Microbiology, a scientific society that has over 40,000 members.

For more information, visit Abigail Salyer's webpage