A few years ago, I began a presentation to a luncheon at my university by pointing out that, in my research, I did nothing useful and was proud of it. This made sure everyone was paying attention. I did not thereafter speak defiantly about academic freedom or patronizingly about the importance of fundamental science. What I did talk about was how conducting my research gave me expertise that I could use to address ecological problems important to society.
I had occasion to make this point again at this year’s Evolution meetings in Providence, Rhode Island. I participated in a public policy panel and responded to a question about how one could bring one’s research to the attention of policy makers. My answer was that one should focus on bringing one’s expertise to the attention of policy makers and be willing to use it to help solve problems that need that expertise.
I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to do this often in my career. Most recently, I served as the chair of a committee assembled by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), at the request of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, charged with writing a report on the taxonomic status of the Mexican Gray Wolf and the Red Wolf. The issues were a) Was the Mexican Gray Wolf a valid subspecies? and b) Was the Red Wolf a valid species? The committee was an array of wonderful scientists, aided by a terrific trio of NASEM staff members. We had expertise in mammalian behavior and evolution, computational and theoretical genomics, behavioral ecology (especially wolf behavior and ecology), population ecology, and conservation genomics, which were the areas in which existing data could be brought to bear on the questions. The policy implications of the answers are quite large, but these were not part of either our charge or our analyses. The report, which you can read at the NASEM Press web site (http://www.nap.edu, or at https://doi.org/10.17226/25351) was well received by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. While we hope that the report will inspire new research on these wolves, we also hope that it will as a model for how to grapple with these questions for other organisms.
And I hope that more young scientists will focus on bringing their expertise to bear on important problems, no matter if their research is focused on fundamental or applied science. Expertise is always in demand.