My change of career from working in university research, writing for publication in scientific journals, and teaching biochemistry students about lipids to becoming a scientist-administrator on a national level was not as difficult as I had expected it might be. I enjoyed becoming an administrator while avoiding the usual result of becoming a bureaucrat. The difference between the two is that a bureaucrat learns the ways to say “no,” whereas an administrator, with the same information, knows how to say: “yes, it will work if you do it this way.” The other rule I tried to follow was: can I justify why I’ve chosen this administrative action if I had to explain it to Karen’s Ohio-Republican father?
The procedure I followed for learning how to become a scientist-administrator was through an internship program, the Grants Associate Program (GAP) of the NIH. The GAP had been initiated only two years previously (1963) with ten recruits. Although we did not comprise a formal class, most of the current dozen “GA’s” entered the program at the start of the federal fiscal year, which began, back then, on July 1. Over the years, the members of my class became close friends and colleagues. The NIH had hoped that this would be one of the results of this experience, since it was anticipated we would spread throughout the NIH and related agencies of the federal government. A successful program, ultimately, would be responsible for increased cooperation among all of the science-related components of the federal government.
My first intern-assignment was with the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR). Its extramural grant program was located in a separate office building in downtown Bethesda. I remember riding up in the elevator, on my first morning of federal employment, with a black gentleman dapperly dressed in a dark suit and vest and carrying what looked like a neatly furled English bowler umbrella. We left the elevator at the same time and chatted as we walked down the corridor to the NIDR offices. When I asked where I might find Dr. Tom Malone, the Director of the extramural programs, he introduced himself as the person to whom I had been assigned. Tom was not quite the Irishman I had been expecting to meet. He would be my mentor for the next month. Over the following years, we became close friends and colleagues. He remained as one of my mentors as he, himself, advanced within the NIH.
I should mention, for the sake of clarity, that the NIH consists of multiple, independent Institutes, each of which may have intramural as well as extramural programs. The intramural programs, housed on the main campus of the NIH, employ their own scientists engaged directly in basic or clinical research focused on specific diseases or body organs, e.g., the National Cancer Institute or the National Heart Institute. Their extramural programs support biomedical research on a nationwide basis for studies conducted at universities, medical schools, hospitals and other off-campus sites through grants funded by each Institute. The GAPS was, organizationally, part of the extramural program of the Division of Research Grants (DRG) which served the entire NIH in the review of grants funded by the individual Institutes.
During my internship with the NIDR, I was assigned a project in which I was to identify the research topics the Institute supported in basic biochemistry. In 1965, computers and the data they held were in their infancy; in fact, they were neonates rather than toddlers. The National Library of Medicine, another part of the NIH, had large (room-sized!) computers which could be accessed only by their own experts. I made a request to the NLM to obtain the titles of all scientific articles having specific search-terms associated with dentistry or the mouth that had been funded by the NIH, according to the article’s self-reported source of support. (Each article published in a scientific journal was required to identify the federal agency which had supported the research.) One of the search terms I thought would be logical was “saliva.” Certainly, the NIH must have supported research involving this biological fluid bathing the mouth and the dentistry associated with it.
A week after I had made the inquiry, the NLM sent me a lengthy computer listing of the published articles containing any of the search terms I had included. Unfortunately, I had not specified that the articles should be limited to human beings. I quickly learned that the NIH and the NIDR had supported a significant amount of research associated with mosquito saliva! After all, malaria and yellow fever were the results of bites by these infected critters!
So it was, at an early stage in the retrieval of computerized data, that I learned the significance of inclusionary and exclusionary terms. A computer coughs out only what you ask for; so, the user must be very cautious in raising the right questions and using appropriate boundaries. Nevertheless, Tom Malone did like the final report I wrote for him and the National Institute of Dental Research.