Careless talk costs grants

The editors of Current Biology really should be more careful; some contributors are in danger of giving the game away. Years of careful fostering of the idea that everything can be explained in terms of molecular genetics and structural biology — thus keeping many of us gainfully employed — may have been undermined by their careless revelations. The current ascendancy of these disciplines could be at risk if information so casually made available should fall into the wrong hands. Usually, you play your role exceptionally well. Unqualified assertions that genetic studies of aggressiveness in mice could “. . . be directly applicable to our understanding of human nature” slipped into the literature without a ripple [1]. Sydney Brenner’s suggestion that, because some viral gene products combine in a fixed proportion, “it is possible to encode a mathematical rule in DNA” [2] — with the logical extrapolation that if he, a mere bundle of gene products, jumped out of the window, his DNA would implicitly encode the law of gravity — gave genome studies the opportunity to annex half the funds for chemical and physical research. Then there was the statement about the yeast genome, worthy of a Star Trek script, “. . . it encourages us to pursue the goal that has been implicit from the beginning: the complete understanding of how a eukaryotic cell functions. The attainment of this lofty goal now seems possible” [3]. Virtual biology and surfing the genomes was all set to abolish the need for messy, wet experiments, which don’t always work and, when they do, have a regrettable tendency to throw up untidy, unexpected results. Many of us were looking forward to seeing out our entire research careers with a few clicks on the mouse and a sheaf of publications liberally seeded with comments such as ‘intriguing conserved sequence motif’, ‘could suggest’, ‘might imply’ and (my favourite) ‘putative receptor’. But, just when half the world was convinced that every problem from constipation to criminality is rooted in the base sequence of DNA, you allow loose talk such as “. . . almost any protein domain can bind inositol phosphate if required” [4] to slip through. Furthermore, the authors openly admit to “. . . the variety of domains that can bind inositol phosphates”, and make things even worse by conceding that “. . . the functions of most of the binding sites are not yet clear”. Every research scientist using low molecular weight, biologically active compounds soon becomes aware that almost any protein domain can bind almost anything under the right circumstances, but most are instinctively discreet about it. If the promiscuous tendencies of proteins and the sheer variability of biological systems became widely appreciated, ignorant, unscrupulous journalists could call into question our ability to predict the behaviour of living systems from their DNA sequences and protein structures. The fig-leaf of a priori reasoning could be shamelessly stripped away to reveal vulgar post hoc rationalization. We can only hope that the relaxed style of Current Biology and the speculative license it allows to its contributors have not attracted critical readers from outside the profession.