6 July 2016
Why important innovations stall; Understanding obstacles to change key to timely adoption of technologies needed to address global problems
Cambridge, MA – Disruptive, transformative technologies are being introduced at an accelerating pace, fuelling opposition that impedes forms of innovation needed to meet profound challenges such as climate change, poverty and world hunger, says a new study from Harvard University.
Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technology, by Prof. Calestous Juma of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, chronicles the history of opposition to change — from tractors and certain uses of the printing press to coffee and margarine — and its underlying reasons.
Such understanding is critical, he argues, to the successful introduction and adoption of technological innovations needed to cope with humanity’s most serious economic and environmental challenges.
Published as a book by Oxford University Press, the 16-year study says fear and perceptions of lost employment, identity, and power drive impediment to innovation, and describes the widening gap between the pace of technological advancement and slow rate at which society adjusts.
Says Dr. Juma:”To meet the needs of a growing world population on a warming planet, humanity’s hopes are pinned on the introduction of transformative technologies but progress can be impeded by unreasonable obstruction to change.”
The study acknowledges the need to address legitimate health and environmental concerns related to new products and technologies and underlines that transparency, inclusiveness and caution in the handling of scientific uncertainty as critical elements of public trust.
The study chronicles the extraordinary measures taken by opponents to change, and the tenacity of entrepreneurs and technologists who overcame it.
Drawing on nearly 600 years of controversies, the study presents in-depth case studies of opposition to innovation, including printing of the Koran by the Ottomans, alternating current, refrigeration, recorded music, and, more recently, robotics, artificial intelligence and agricultural biotechnology.
Both coffee and tractors, for instance, were the targets of smear campaigns. Other tactics included demonization, rumours, slander, efforts to restrict use through legislation, and outright bans.
Parallels through history are striking. Transgenic crops have been dubbed “Frankenfoods.” In 17th century Italy, coffee was called “Satan’s Drink” and “Junior Alcohol” in 20th century southern India. In England, France, and Germany, coffee was said to cause sterility.
Calling refrigerated products “Embalmed Foods” had a chilling effect on consumers. Swedes dubbed the early telephone the “Devil’s Instrument.” Margarine was derided as “Bull Butter” in America and accused of causing sterility, male baldness, and stunting.
“Common to all these cases is fear and opponents excluded from the benefits of new technology,” says Dr. Juma.
Launch of the study takes place Wednesday July 6 at the 16th International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society Conference in Montreal. Dr. Schumpeter, an early 20th Century Austrian economist introduced the idea of “creative destruction” and was equally concerned about resistance to change.
The study says that in many cases objections and social responses to innovation fall into in one or more of four categories: intuition, vested interests, intellectual arguments, and psychological factors.
- Intuitive responses, often expressed as disgust, reflect patterns of behaviour that rely on deeper evolutionary roots of our fears and phobias. New foods, for example, may be seen as a threat to human health.
- Vested interests are illustrated with a well-known example of Luddites, early 19th century British textile workers, popularly portrayed as machine breakers who were simply opposed to change. But the reality was a clash of competing economic world views and moral values.
- Intellectual challenges to new technologies include philosophical objections to the manipulation of nature or the use of robotics in manufacturing, considered by some as “dehumanizing” and changing how we see ourselves as humans.
- Finally, business models that aim to alter the psychology of health and nutrition choices face strong opposition.
Innovation and Its Enemies advocates more timely scientific assessments of the benefits and risks of new technologies, swift adjustment of social institutions to keep pace with technological advancement, and greater public awareness and citizen engagement.
Inclusive innovation is critical for acceptance of new controversial technologies, Dr. Juma says.
This entails greater involvement of public institutions to provide training in the emerging fields, creation of joint ventures, equitable management of intellectual property rights, segmentation of markets to enable a technology to be used for noncompetitive products, and improvement of the policy environment to support long-term technology partnerships.
Building local capabilities and fostering public engagement in technology development are critical. The absence of inclusive strategies leads to intense debates over questions of justice, equity, corporate control and challenges to intellectual property system.
Also needed: strong, entrepreneurial decision-makers and leaders who can use available knowledge to assess a situation, take informed executive action in a timely manner, and monitor technological advances and their impacts. Leaders must be able to rely on advice from both scientific academies as well as complementary advisory institutions in executive offices.
Finally, says Dr. Juma, public education is critical in determining the pace and patterns of technological adoption. Many programs alienate the public by assuming that the root cause of social concern over new technology is ignorance. To the contrary, concerns commonly come from well-informed sections of the population. Public education should aim to enhance the legitimacy and quality of risk assessment processes. Ultimately, the goal is to manage risk perception and foster trust.
“People are more likely to accept the risks of new technologies if they have been part of the process of deciding on their use,” says Dr. Juma.
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Calestous Juma is Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He directs the School’s Science, Technology, and Globalization Project. He is author of The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011, 2015). His next book is tentatively entitled How Economies Succeed: Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. Twitter @Calestous
Comments on the study
“It takes one of the leading lights on innovation — Calestous Juma — to truly understand the forces that oppose it. Just as technologic change is reaching peak velocity, this extraordinary work provides a systematic, scholarly, and surgical dissection of what can hold us back.”
Professor Eric Topol, MD, Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, La Jolla, California, and author of The Patient Will See You Now
“Innovation and its Enemies is a wonderful read. The style is lucid. The tone is lively. Professor Juma examines why people resist innovation, and argues that controversies result from the tension between the need to innovate and the pressure to maintain order. Although he discusses a profound socio-historical issue, his titles are very creative and eye-catching, and his use of case studies from history brings the information closer to the general reader. This is truly a great book and a fascinating read!”
Professor. Ismail Serageldin, Librarian of Alexandria, Director of the New Library of Alexandria, Egypt
“A must read to anyone holding public office. Having overcome obstacles as president of the Dominican Republic in building the metro system of Santo Domingo, I found in Professor Calestous Juma’s book useful theoretical insights into the understanding of why resistance occurs when introducing innovation in the public sphere.”
Dr. Leonel Fernández, Former President of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo
“An insightful book that addresses one of the paradoxes of our time, namely why generations that have benefited so much from innovation are so resistant to it. Drawing on a fascinating diversity of historical examples–coffee, electricity, refrigeration, farm mechanization, genetic modification–Professor Juma discusses how innovation occurs, the role of experts and why skepticism and confusion are often inevitable. A must-read for everyone involved in technology development and policy.”
Professor Louise O. Fresco, President of Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands
“An outstanding treatise on how new technologies are created and why they are so often not initially accepted by society. Innovation and Its Enemies is filled with wonderful stories that go through innovations ranging from cell phones to coffee to the light bulb. I loved reading it.”
Professor Robert Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
“Calestous Juma’s book provides a very enjoyable insight into the attitudes of society and individuals to innovation over the centuries. It’s highly accessible style provides the reader with great historical nuggets arising from the introduction of coffee and printing through to reactions invoked when margarine and transgenic crops were launched. The conclusions are supported by amazing facts and details.”
Sir Christopher Snowden, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Southampton, UK
“We all know how difficult it can be to accept truly revolutionary innovations. Professor Juma illustrates the difficulties faced by the innovators with a few case histories and provides some guidelines for avoiding many of the difficulties. One strong lesson is that engaging with the consumers, usually the general public, at an early stage is a very good idea. Another clear lesson is that different stakeholders react very differently to innovation, especially when it seems it might seriously disrupt existing businesses or traditional social structures. A must read for anyone who wishes to engage in such disruption themselves.”
Dr. Richard J. Roberts, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and Chief Scientific Officer, New England Biolabs, Massachusetts, USA
“This is a good read and an invaluable reference work for those working on new technologies, especially those needed to meet the grand challenges of the 21st century. Calestous Juma’s detailed analysis of how innovations have been accepted or resisted is complete and fascinating. Many view resistance to advances such as GM foods and mobile phones as a modern phenomenon related to recent advances in science. Calestous explains that innovations have in fact been resisted for centuries but goes on to explain how this resistance can, and has been, overcome.”
Lord Alec Broers, British House of Lords, Former Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, and Former President of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering
“Calestous Juma’s Innovations and Its Enemies is a great read that uniquely outlines the history of society resisting new technologies and innovative ideas that caused social and economic distribution. We have dwindling resources on our planet and continue to do irrevocable harm to our climate. Add the ever growing population demanding the benefits of wealth including health and food excess and it is clear we are heading for disaster. Rapidly evolving scientific advances are labeled as disruptive because they might radically alter the production of food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, fuel, into much more sustainable processes which will clearly require social change. Appling new genomic science can shift medicine to a preventative life and cost saving enterprise and computer-based knowledge can lead to democratization but not without social disruptions. Juma discusses how laws, business and social institutions and scientific communication need to adapt as ‘the risk of doing nothing may outweigh the risks of innovating.'”
Dr. J. Craig Venter, President, J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla, California
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Media coverage highlights
Coverage summary, click here
News release in full, click here
]]>11 Jan 2015
Additional Malaysian nanoscience research includes converting greenhouse gases into energy source;
‘Smart farming’ nanosensors; New program aims for macro impact in health, energy, environment, agriculture, electronics
Malaysian scientists are joining forces with Harvard University experts to help revolutionize the treatment of lung diseases — the delivery of nanomedicine deep into places otherwise impossible to reach.
Under a five-year memorandum of understanding between Harvard and the University of Malaya, Malaysian scientists will join a distinguished team seeking a safe, more effective way of tackling lung problems including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the progressive, irreversible obstruction of airways causing almost 1 in 10 deaths today.
Treatment of COPD and lung cancer commonly involves chemotherapeutics and corticosteroids misted into a fine spray and inhaled, enabling direct delivery to the lungs and quick medicinal effect. However, because the particles produced by today’s inhalers are large, most of the medicine is deposited in the upper respiratory tract.
The Harvard team, within the university’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is working on “smart” nanoparticles that deliver appropriate levels of diagnostic and therapeutic agents to the deepest, tiniest sacs of the lung, a process potentially assisted by the use of magnetic fields.
Malaysia’s role within the international collaboration: help ensure the safety and improve the effectiveness of nanomedicine, assessing how nanomedicine particles behave in the body, what attaches to them to form a coating, where the drug accumulates and how it interacts with target and non-target cells.
Led by Joseph Brain, the Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology, the research draws on extensive expertise at Harvard in biokinetics — determining how to administer medicine to achieve the proper dosage to impact target cells and assessing the extent to which drug-loaded nanoparticles pass through biological barriers to different organs.
The studies also build on decades of experience studying the biology of macrophages — large, specialized cells that recognize, engulf and destroy target cells as part of the human immune system.
Manipulating immune cells represents an important strategy for treating lung diseases like COPD and lung cancer, as well as infectious diseases including tuberculosis and listeriosis.
Dr. Brain notes that every day humans breathe 20,000 litres of air loaded with bacteria and viruses, and that the world’s deadliest epidemic — an outbreak of airborne influenza in the 1920s — killed tens of millions.
Inhaled nanomedicine holds the promise of helping doctors prevent and treat such problems in future, reaching the target area more swiftly than if administered orally or even intravenously.
This is particularly true for lung cancer, says Dr. Brain. “Experiments have demonstrated that a drug dose administered directly to the respiratory tract achieves much higher local drug concentrations at the target site.”
COPD meanwhile affects over 235 million people worldwide and is on the rise, with 80% of cases caused by cigarette smoking. Exacerbated by poor air quality, COPD is expected to rise from 5th to 3rd place among humanity’s most lethal health problems by 2030.
“Nanotechnology is making a significant impact on healthcare by delivering improvements in disease diagnosis and monitoring, as well as enabling new approaches to regenerative medicine and drug delivery,” says Prof. Zakri Abdul Hamid, Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
“Malaysia, through NanoMITe, is proud and excited to join the Harvard team and contribute to the creation of these life-giving innovations.”
Malaysia’s NanoMITe
The research effort with Harvard is one of several underway at the Malaysia Institute for Innovative Nanotechnology, initiated in 2013 through Malaysia’s Global Science & Innovation Advisory Council, led by YAB Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Razak.
Nanotechnology involves manipulation of matter at a molecular scale (up to 100 nanometers, a nanometer being one billionth of a meter), and creating special properties of matter that occur below a given size threshold. Based at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, NanoMITe’s mission to engage in global scientific research collaborations to generate ideas, knowledge and products to benefit society while contributing to the national economy.
Over 100 leading scientific collaborators at world-class academies in Asia, Europe and North America are pooling extensive expertise to make nanotech-enabled advances in health, the environment, energy, food production, and electronics.
Says Idris Jusoh, Malaysia’s Minister of Higher Education, NanoMITe’s foremost financial supporter: “Together, science, technology and innovation constitute the engine that will drive Malaysia’s sustainable economic development and nanotechnology research is on the cutting-edge of our pursuits. It is key to the solution of persistent problems throughout our societies but such breakthroughs can only be achieved through collaborative, international research across a spectrum of scientific fields and converging results. Our ministry is proud to support these efforts.”
Other NanoMITe research efforts include:
Nanotech-enabled generation of renewable energy
The energy-related research all involves nano scale molecular manipulation using novel local materials, catalysts, processes and technologies to create, for example:
- Low temperature solid-oxide fuel cells for the power industry;
- Flexible solar cells for economically viable, clean renewable energy; and
- Converting waste biomass from palm oil trees into jet fuel, which could add an estimated RM 30 billion to the Malaysian economy by 2020, help meet renewable energy targets and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Says Prof. Datuk Dr. Halimaton Hamdan of the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, head of NanoMITe: “A lot of materials in use today are characterized by low effectiveness and high energy consumption. Nanotechnologies are being used to create nanocomposites and catalysts that enable the production of lighter, more durable and stronger materials, more efficient use of resources and reducing energy consumption. Specific nanotechnologies will also create more efficient means of energy generation, storage and transportation.”
“We believe that within 20 years, nanotechnology could help reduce the intensity of energy needed to produce a unit of product by 45 percent.”
Converting greenhouse gases into valuable chemicals
Malaysian scientists are also investigating the possibility that, via nanotech, captured greenhouse gases can serve as carbon feedstock for use in chemical production.
Specifically, they’re looking to design catalytic-nanomaterials to convert GHGs — carbon dioxide and methane — into renewable fuels, offering a potential contribution to energy supplies, mitigating climate change and advancing economic development.
“Smart farming” with agricultural nanosensors
Fungus-related problems are estimated to cost the South East Asian economy US$500 million every year. Once infected with a common fungus (G. boninense), young oil palm trees usually die within 1 to 2 years; mature trees may survive slightly longer.
Now scientists at the Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Perlis are developing nano-sensors and nano-based systems to create smart, precision farming to help address this expensive problem.
With the aid of wireless communication networks, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Satellite Remote Sensing nanosensors embedded in trees, roots and soil can monitor and detect G. boninense disease. Automatic adjustments of pesticide applications, nutrients or irrigation levels would occur once disease, pests or drought are detected.
Such a smart farming system could also help make more efficient use of water, nutrients, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and plant growth regulators, improving stability against crop degradation and reducing pollution.
By understanding at nano scale the structure of the agricultural inputs and the soil, carriers can be designed to anchor plant roots to surrounding soil and organic matter.
Prof. Zakri, a leader of the GSIAC, underlined the crucially important role of the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education to the NanoMITe program:
“Without the Ministry’s financial support and trust, NanoMITe could have never have been realized.”
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Malaysia’s Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council is a unique forum of international and Malaysian experts and leaders created to help guide the nation’s sustainable development.
The Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology is a not-for-profit public-private partnership with more than 100 members, both local and international, from industry, government and academia. MIGHT provides a platform for industry-government consensus building to advance high technology competency in Malaysia.
Example coverage:
Bernama (Malaysia), “UM-Harvard Collaboration To Tackle Lung Diseases,” click here; Malay, “UM-Harvard University Jalin Kerjasama Tangani Penyakit Paru-Paru,” click here
Agencia EFE (Spain), “Universities of Harvard and Malaya team up to develop nano medicines,” click here; Spanish, “Malasia y Harvard se unen para curar los males pulmonares con nanotecnología,” click here
Benessere, Milan, Italy, “Da USA e Malesia una speranza contro le malattie polmonari,” click here
ABC, Madrid, Spain, “El cáncer de pulmón y la EPOC se tratarán en un futuro próximo con nanofármacos,” click here
Medical News Today, UK, “Future of lung treatment: Malaysian scientists join Harvard team creating safe, effective nano drugs,” click here
Medical News, Australia, “Malaysian scientists join forces with Harvard experts to help revolutionize lung disease treatment,” click here
Coverage summary, click here
]]>Harvard professor calls on developing world, development institutions to revisit, apply proven economic formula stressing innovation, entrepreneurialism
Influential economic ideas first advanced in 1911 — stressing innovation and entrepreneurialism as the fundamental generators of growth and wealth — were deemed inappropriate for developing countries, stunting progress in many parts of the world throughout the 20th century, says a distinguished Harvard academic.
In a newly-published paper, Calestous Juma of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs calls on emerging economy countries and development agencies to revisit and adopt ideas rejected in the 1950s by “pessimistic” architects of early international development policies and institutions.
Prof. Juma’s paper examines the impact of Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian-born Harvard scholar ranked among the world’s most influential economists, whose 1911 book, The Theory of Economic Development, advanced the notion that innovation and individual entrepreneurship are the dynamic foundations of a nation’s economic evolution, that “creative destruction” and the renewal of tools and processes within an economy continuously refreshes the system and results in rising prosperity.
His then ground-breaking ideas inspired innovation-led economic policies in industrialized countries but were dismissed as irrelevant to developing countries as policies and programs took shape within fledgling institutions in the 1950s such as the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
According to Prof. Juma, “pessimism” prevailed in early development economics, resulting in an emphasis on “the use of basic or ‘appropriate technologies,’ central planning, role of bureaucracies as sources of economic stability, and food aid” for developing nations, rather than innovation, entrepreneurship and industrial development.
Appearing in a new journal, Policy and Complex Systems, Prof. Juma notes that after a decade of debate the architects of development economics rejected innovation-oriented policies and adopted “static, linear, and incremental view of economic change” for the newly independent countries.
News release in full, click here
Example coverage:
Voice of America, “Poor Countries Denied Chance to Succeed?” click here
Xinhua News Agency (China), “Kenyan scholar roots for innovation to reactivate progress,” click here
News from Africa, “Embrace Innovations, African countries urged” click here
SciDev.net, click here
Agencia EFE (Spain), Spanish, “Estudio analiza los obstáculos que Latinoamérica sufrió para su desarrollo,” click here; Portuguese, “Estudo analisa obstáculos que América Latina sofreu para desenvolvimento” click here
Coverage summary, click here
]]>3-Jun-2013
The world can only meet its future food needs through innovation, including biotechnology: Kenya-born Harvard prof. Calestous Juma
The world can only meet its future food needs through innovation, including the use of agricultural biotechnology, a Harvard development specialist said today.
Since their commercial debut in the mid-1990s, genetically-designed crops have added about $100 billion to world crop output, avoided massive pesticide use and greenhouse gas emissions, spared vast tracts of land and fed millions of additional people worldwide, said Professor Calestous Juma of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Speaking to graduates of McGill University, Montreal, Juma asked youth to embrace innovative sciences that alone will make it possible to feed the billions who will swell world population in decades ahead, especially in developing countries.
News release in full, click here
Coverage by:
The Independent (UK), news story, click here; related commentary, click here
The Globe and Mail (Canada), op-ed, click here; twitter discussion, click here
Toronto Star (full page), click here
The Standard (Kenya), click here
Reuters (UK), click here
Agencia EFE (Spain), news story, click here
McGill University convocation address in full: click here
Coverage summary, click here
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Harvard Kennedy SchoolCambridge,MA,USA
2-Dec-2010
Africa can feed itself. And it can make the transition from hungry importer to self-sufficiency in a single generation.
The startling assertions, in stark contrast with entrenched, gloomy perceptions of the continent, highlight a collection of studies published today that present a clear prescription for transforming Sub-Saharan Africa’s agriculture and, by doing so, its economy.
The strategy calls on governments to make African agricultural expansion central to decision making about everything from transportation and communication infrastructure to post-secondary education and innovation investment.
The approach is outlined in an independent study, “The New Harvest, Agricultural Innovation in Africa,” led by Harvard University professor Calestous Juma.
Full news release text: click here
Coverage summary, click here
Coverage by the Associated Press: click here
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The first 30,000 pages of a massive online Encyclopedia of Life were unveiled today (Feb. 27) at the prestigious Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference in Monterey, California.
Intended as a tool for scientists and policymakers and a fascinating resource for anyone interested in the living world, the EOL is being developed by a unique collaboration between scientists and the general public.
By making it easy to compare and contrast information about life on Earth, the resulting compendium has the potential to provide new insights into many of life’s secrets.
In essence, EOL will be a microscope in reverse, or “macroscope,” helping users to discern large-scale patterns. By aggregating for analysis information on Earth’s estimated 1.8 million known species, scientists say the EOL could, for example, help map vectors of human disease, reveal mysteries behind longevity, suggest substitute plant pollinators for a swelling list of places where honeybees no longer provide that service, and foster strategies to slow the spread of invasive species.
Most importantly, the EOL will be a foundational resource for helping to conserve the species already known and to identify millions of additional species that haven’t yet been described or named. At its core is the knowledge about the world’s species that has been discovered by scientists over the last 250 years. By putting this information all together in one place, EOL hopes to accelerate our understanding of the world’s remaining biodiversity.
EOL will illuminate patterns in biodiversity, promising knowledge comparable in impact to that gained after the microscope’s invention in the 1600s. The EOL “macroscope” will have a catalytic effect on comparative biology, ecology and related fields. It will also be the ultimate online field guide, complete with links to DNA barcoding and other information of interest and use to everyone from professional scientists to birdwatchers and gardeners.
Among many potential applications of the EOL:
- Tracing the relation between changes in animal and plant populations and climate;
- Mapping the distribution of human disease vectors, such as crows, mosquitoes and the West Nile virus;
- Comparison of the life spans of related species – a prelude to lab research into reasons for human aging;
- Port inspections of ballast water for invasive species, assisted by links to molecular DNA barcode reference information;
- Assist in field research and dramatically shorten the time required to authenticate or describe new mammals, birds, bugs, plants, bacteria and other species discovered by scientists anywhere in the world;
- Revolutionize teaching and learning of the life sciences for all ages;
- Contribute to timely and informed environmental management decisions by professionals and citizen environmental managers alike.
Drawing upon its collaboration with the Catalogue of Life and Tree of Life projects, EOL’s infrastructure now includes placeholder pages for 1 million species, of which 30,000 have been populated with detailed information derived from comprehensive, authoritative compilations available for some taxonomic groups (e.g., FishBase, AmphibiaWeb, Solanaceae Source). In addition, about two dozen highly developed multimedia pages are presented as examples of what to expect in time throughout the EOL.
Feedback on the first 30,000 pages will shape the ultimate design and functionality of all 1.8 million pages, scheduled for completion by 2017. It will also help inform priorities for content development.
The rapid progress to date was congratulated by Harvard’s E.O. Wilson, University Professor Emeritus, who articulated the need for a dynamic modern portrait of biodiversity in a widely read essay in 2003. His letter in 2005 to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation resulted in a $10 million seed grant to start the EOL, soon complemented by a further $2.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
“The launch of the Encyclopedia of Life will have a profound and creative effect in science,” says Prof. Wilson. “It aims not only to summarize all that we know of Earth’s life forms, but also to accelerate the discovery of the vast array that remain unknown. This great effort promises to lay out new directions for research in every branch of biology.”
The basic design of the EOL species pages that were launched today also owes its genesis to the TED Conference and to Professor Wilson. In March 2007 Wilson was one of the recipients of a coveted TED prize for his work in documenting and understanding the world’s biodiversity. In his acceptance speech, Wilson asked TED attendees to help him develop an encyclopedia of life. Avenue A | Razorfish, an innovative web design firm, took up the challenge and helped to create an award winning video and the basic template for EOL species pages.
The pages launched today are based on the list of accepted species assembled by the Catalogue of Life and include:
- Two dozen exemplar pages, illustrating the kinds of rich multi-media information to be provided for all well-known species. Content on these pages has been verified by relevant experts;
- 30,000 species pages, covering a small number of taxonomic groups. These pages contain authenticated content but are not as fully developed as the exemplars;
- 1 million minimal pages, in most cases providing the species’ scientific and common names, limited information about its taxonomic position and geographic distribution (with maps provided by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility), and links to other sources of information. These pages are, in effect, placeholders to be populated with information validated by specialist content editors. Content will also be generated via the Biodiversity Heritage Library, other web-based resources, and by professional and ‘citizen scientists’;
- Several thousand linking pages to help users traverse the taxonomic hierarchy.
Simply listing in one place all 1.8 million species known to science will be unprecedented. Today, knowledge about biodiversity gleaned over 250 years is scattered across databases, books, and journals worldwide. Researchers are often overwhelmed by lists of sites found by search engines or by lack of easy access to libraries, museums, and other storehouses of knowledge.
EOL will create ‘one-stop shopping’ for authoritative information, offering the world at large a better understanding of the planet and all its inhabitants. It is being assembled by a growing partnership of individual scientists, international organizations, technology leaders, and prestigious research institutions. But soon anyone will be able to provide information for consideration, too.
“It is exciting to anticipate the scientific chords we might hear once 1.8 million notes are brought together through this instrument,” says Jim Edwards, Executive Director of the EOL.
“Potential EOL users are professional and citizen scientists, teachers, students, media, environmental managers, families and artists. The site will link the public and scientific community in a collaborative way that’s without precedent in scale.”
“There are very many species for which we do not have high quality images or text. Think of these pages as invitations to contribute to EOL,” says Dr. Edwards.
Starting later this year, the public will be able to contribute text, videos, images, and other information about a species. The best of this information will be incorporated into the authenticated pages.
The authenticated pages also include a wealth of other materials, including peer-reviewed articles and access to DNA barcodes, all freely available. While most pages are now in English, eventually, they will be available in several other languages for teaching and learning.
“EOL is a good example of the way the World Wide Web can be used innovatively to assemble diverse kinds of information in an easy-to-use, ever-growing compendium. It can accommodate almost any kind of information about species and, unlike a published book, can be updated instantly,” says Dr. Edwards.
“The Encyclopedia of Life can raise our sights and expand our view of life on Earth,” said Jonathan F. Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. “Just as a microscope reveals and helps us better understand the small and particular, the EOL will allow us to discern patterns previously unseen, illuminating relationships, identifying gaps in our knowledge, and suggesting opportunities for new avenues of inquiry. What was once viewed by many as ‘wishful thinking’ is now entirely possible and underway.”
“While it will take 10 years to assemble at least basal information on all 1.8 million known species, the EOL will be a functional, organized, highly valuable resource in three to five years,” says Prof. James Hanken, director of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, who also chairs the EOL Steering Committee. “The cooperation between the many world-leading biodiversity and technology institutions partnered in this project is both unprecedented and exciting.”
“At its launch last May, we said the EOL can be done,” says Jesse Ausubel, of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “The remarkable progress made in the few months since has fostered confidence it will be done. The EOL canvas now has a million sketch lines and we have painted a small corner in full color. We look forward to public reviews that will shape the final product.”
Background
The EOL Steering Committee is comprised of senior authorities from Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum of Chicago, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, the Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, Missouri Botanical Garden, and the MacArthur and Sloan Foundations.
The EOL Institutional Council contains more than 25 institutions from around the world and provides EOL with global perspectives and outreach capabilities. The Distinguished Advisory Board consists of 13 global leaders from the scientific and policy communities.
Driving the EOL forward as well are several working groups:
The Species Sites Group works with scientists and other contributors to assemble and authenticate the species pages content. It recruits diverse data providers and engages expert page “curators” of information on the species pages. The group is also implementing a robust intellectual property regime that ensures open access to EOL materials. Finally, the team is developing portals for specialized audiences.
The Biodiversity Informatics Group is responsible for the software establishing a single portal to reach volumes of species information scattered worldwide, seamlessly aggregating data from thousands of sites using novel tools to capture, organize, and reshape biodiversity knowledge. In collaboration with data providers, the group is obtaining, indexing, and recombining information for expert and non-expert users alike. The next step involves deploying a suite of tools and services to index, organize, and associate data elements or create new elements.
Technology giants, including Adobe, Microsoft and the Wikimedia Foundation, are providing active support.
The Scanning and Digitization Group is led by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a consortium of 10 natural history and botanical libraries, which have already digitized more than 2.5 million pages of biodiversity literature and made them available as part of a public commons. Citizens of all nations have access to this wealth of information free of charge and of most copyright and licensing restrictions. This combination of access to primary texts and literature and the ability to use it freely enables individuals everywhere to participate locally in the global effort to catalogue new species and protect existing biodiversity.
The Education and Outreach Group works to insure widespread awareness of the EOL, and to explore and promote new and exciting uses of this extraordinary resource in diverse global settings. The group strives to make EOL relevant, usable and interesting to a broad range of potential users and to encourage their participation by providing tools to organize and contribute observations, media and data about the species they study.
The Biodiversity Synthesis Group supports EOL’s growth and use by facilitating cross-disciplinary involvement of the scientific and academic community and by contributing to its educational and conservation uses. Its ultimate goal is to ask, and attempt to answer, new questions about biodiversity by supporting working groups to explore integrative topics, including taxonomy, evolution, biogeography, phylogenetics and biodiversity informatics.
About the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (www.macfound.org) is a private, independent grant-making institution helping to build a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Through the support it provides, the Foundation fosters the development of knowledge, nurtures individual creativity, strengthens institutions, helps improve public policy, and provides information to the public, primarily through support for public interest media. With assets of $6.8 billion, the Foundation makes approximately $260 million in grants annually
About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (www.sloan.org), established in 1934, makes grants in science, technology, and the quality of American life. Major science initiatives of the Foundation in recent years include the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (the most ambitious astronomical survey ever undertaken, to provide detailed optical images covering more than a quarter of the sky and a 3-dimensional map of about a million galaxies and quasars); the Census of Marine Life (a decade-long program to culminate in 2010 to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of ocean life from microbes to mammals); and the Barcode of Life Initiative (to develop short DNA identifiers for all plants, animals, and fungi).
Some of EOL’s data partners include:
FishBase (www.fishbase.org), a global information system with all you ever wanted to know about fishes. FishBase is a relational database with information to cater to different professionals such as research scientists, fisheries managers, zoologists and many more. The FishBase Website contains data on practically every fish species known to science. The project was developed at the WorldFish Center in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and many other partners, and with support from the European Commission. FishBase is serving information on more than 30,000 fish species through the EOL.
The Catalogue of Life Partnership (CoLp) (www.catalogueoflife.org), an informal partnership dedicated to creating an index of the world’s organisms. The Catalogue of Life provides different forms of access to an integrated, quality, maintained, comprehensive consensus species checklist and taxonomic hierarchy, presently covering more than one million species, and intended to cover all know species in the near future. They contain substantial contributions of taxonomic expertise from more than fifty organizations around the world, integrated into a single work by the ongoing work of the CoLp partners. The EOL currently uses CoLp as its taxonomic backbone.
Tree of Life web project (ToL) (www.tolweb.org), a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. On more than 9,000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics. ToL pages are linked to one another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things. In the future, ToL Web will concentrate on supra-specific species pages and EOL on species-level pages.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (www.gbif.org), the world’s premiere source for information on biological specimen and observational data, providing on-line access to more than 135 million data records from around the world. GBIF is providing range maps for the EOL species pages.
AmphibiaWeb (http://amphibiaweb.
The Solanaceae Source Web site (www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/solanaceaesource), the product of an ongoing five year project: Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (PBI) Solanum: A worldwide treatment. The aim of the project is to produce a worldwide taxonomic monograph of the species occurring within the plant genus Solanum (the potato and tomato family), organized by a robust phylogenetic framework. The project began in January 2004 and is just one of four inventories funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation at that time. The project is made possible through collaborations between Solanaceae specialists worldwide, with principal investigators from four research institutions in England and the United States.
All of these resources rely on the world’s taxonomists, the scientists who study and name species. It is only through their heroic efforts that a resource like the EOL could even be contemplated.
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“the father of biodiversity“
6 January, 2005
Report urges end to monopoly of economists as development policy advisors
Science and technology is so critically important to improving conditions in poor countries that scientific advisors should join economists at the center of government policy-making on development issues, an eminent group of 27 international experts says in a landmark report to the United Nations.
“Economic advice will always be important in guiding policy makers on development matters. But in a knowledge-based economy, leaders and governments increasingly need science advisors to make effective use of emerging technologies,” says the report co-author, Calestous Juma of Harvard University. “In a world marked by rapid technological change and the enormous, emerging opportunities presented by biotechnologies and nanotechnologies, science advisors will soon be a necessary part of every presidential and executive office, including the Office of the UN Secretary-General.”
The report, “Innovation: Applying Knowledge in Development,” was prepared by the Task Force on Science, Technology and Innovation of the UN Millennium Project, commissioned by the UN Secretary General to advise on implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Agreed by world leaders in 2000, the MDGs are clear, quantifiable targets to be achieved by 2015. The full Millennium Project will report later in January on strategies to reach all MDGs, including reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women.
Three years in preparation, the report of the Task Force (a 19-member group, with an additional eight-member working group on genomics and nanotechnology based at the University of Toronto), says science, technology and innovation have helped to largely eliminate poverty and hunger and driven remarkable economic growth in much of Southeast Asia and the Asian Pacific.
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