Mixed Emotions

It has been said, not by me but in reference to me, that “there is no off position on the genius switch.” However, I am a man with a knowledge of and appreciation for many things in life. You have seen me as a leader and mentor; today, a glimpse into one of my “other sides.” I have not been blogging lately because I have been away from the lab at the Graybeard family beach house. Here, I step away and “unplug” from the lab, the plenary talks, the back-room funding panels, the media interviews. I let the pressures and expectations of leading neuroscience into the 21^st century melt away with family, friends, and the occasional cherished mentee up for the weekend with a booze resupply.

This is a time for me to read literature—Clancy, King, Grisham, Gladwell—all in hard back, of course, while away the hours in my Nantucket reds until 4 o’clock cocktails, and criticize the Scotch selections of the trainees. As the sun sets, my wife tactfully vanishes, then announces dinner some time later. Unless we are grilling. I do the grilling.

After dinner, I spend a few minutes at the computer, deleting my mandatory daily updates from everyone in the lab unread, check the webcam I installed in a lab ceiling vent to be sure no one is going home early, and search my name for a while on AltaVista. Then we sit, listen to the waves and Eagles bootlegs, and talk about the future. Recently, we have begun to talk about my retirement. The seed of influence I’ve planted will undoubtedly bear fruit for decades if not centuries. What more could a generation-defining scientist want? Why not stay here, on the shore, like a wise hermit, granting audiences to neuroscientists who travel from around the world to seek my counsel?

It was just such a reverie that turned suddenly into a waking nightmare. Like Jimmy Stewart, I had a vision of the disastrous course neuroscience could take in the next 5-10 years without me. The barbarians are, indeed, at the gate. Need we feel threatened by the Eisens, the PLOSses, the vindictive postdocs, the third-tier single-grant plebes who don’t understand that cutting them off now is a mercy? Instinct says these are gnats to be ignored, but isn’t that what Rome thought about the Visigoths? I think I read that in a Clancy novel.

Where are the standard bearers for quality? For valuing what is important over what is trivial? They are still here! Those I’ve known since SfN was at a Holiday Inn in Gloucester. (Can you imagine a brawl between neuroscientists and fishermen being a fair fight today? But that’s how it was.) This new generation… I don’t see it. PIs who were trained in good labs…trained by my friends…are publishing in open access journals. Skipping “blue movie” night at the Harvard Faculty Club is no longer frowned upon. This generation eschews the excellent Socials and Boat Parties at meetings, where I was once Jupiter and Bob was Saturn, densely orbited by admiring trainee moonlets, and instead goes to “raves” and dive bars for the company of other trainees and events organized by the untenured.

Very well, if you won’t learn from us, we will have to remain. We will not turn this ship over to mutineers and ingrates. I cannot watch Dame Science, once squired by the Greats, reduced to “hanging out” with headphoned slovens who have never heard of Cream.

Why should we give up, like the Beatles, when we can continue in greatness, like the Rolling Stones?

Selfless? Yes. But I am going nowhere. You’re welcome.