What do universities, journals, and government need to do to stimulate breakthrough scientific discovery? Tirumalai Kamala

Short answer: Solutions start from accurately identifying the problem. Fact is biomedical research has plenty of innovation 'on paper'. The feeling it isn't enough arises from a bottleneck because most breakthroughs aren't reproducible and hence fail to translate to the clinic. Once we accept the problem is lack of reproducibility rather than breakthroughs per se, we can more accurately envision remedies.

With top weekly science journals like Nature and Science expanding their specialist journal base at breakneck pace, weekly issues filled with breakthrough scientific discoveries, clearly the problem isn't insufficiency. Rather there's too much done the wrong way. Who sifts gold from dross to determine which breakthrough's reliable? So far no one. That leaves data irreproducibility to unfold slowly years down the road, like a disaster movie in slow motion.

Publications the lifeblood for a successful academic career, how often do journals publish papers with negative data asserting breakthroughs weren't reproducible? Question's rhetorical because the answer is almost never. Why would they when scientists submitting the papers and those reviewing them pro bono, both are fully invested in the novelty model which rewards their careers? Is it reasonable journals all the way from Nature/Science to specialist journals uniformly impose the mandate of novelty? In fact, all three, universities, journals and government operate a novelty-mandating ecosystem that can only change if they give reproducibility some parity.

No doubt such a preposterous idea could invite howls of derision. After all, with generations of scientists trained to go for guts and glory at all costs, who in their right mind would devote their scientific career to re-doing others' work? Seems an intractable problem except it isn't really so. For far too many years at a stretch, universities have been graduating far more biomedical researchers than can be absorbed by academia and industry. Forced into one post-doc after another, a large mass of highly trained scientists is looking for meaningful work beyond the tedium and indignity of being merely trained hands. The worthwhile goal of helping clean-up biomedical research might be just their ticket. With a sprinkling of high-profile reproducibility studies, Nature, Science and their ilk could continue to focus on novelty, providing the fodder for reproducibility studies in specialist journals. This would create a mutually reinforcing virtuous cycle that fuels reproducible breakthroughs that successfully translate to the clinic. Frustrated perception of not enough breakthroughs would start to fade. Biomedical research would also gain back its reputation for probity.

Bonus idea: Perhaps uniquely so, in one stroke the US has the opportunity to make this happen another way as well. The NIH, the largest government funder of US biomedical research, splits its budget two ways, 90% for funding external research, so-called extramural and 10% for funding its own internal research. The so-called intramural is purely play-in-a-sandbox-for-life type of funding for thousands of full-time NIH intramural researchers. Set up to do the kind of esoteric, high-risk science it was thought tenured university researchers just wouldn't undertake, clearly decades later, the system doesn't work the way it was envisaged. Instead, it's more of the same. However, it represents  a net opportunity. Simply switch the NIH intramural mandate from breakthrough to reproducibility. The budget, workforce and infrastructure are all there. Secure lifetime funding attracted precisely those who value stable job security and generous benefits, exactly the workforce needed for diligent reproduction, for sifting gold from dross from among the breakneck-paced breakthroughs.

https://www.quora.com/What-do-universities-journals-and-government-need-to-do-to-stimulate-breakthrough-scientific-discovery/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

What should people in other cities do to protect themselves against water being poisoned like it is in Flint, Michigan?

The Safe Drinking Water Act (1), amended in 1996  (2) includes Section 114, i.e., specific consumer protection provisions that water suppliers are required to notify the public of contaminants and other dangers in their drinking water. Mary Tiemann, a specialist in Environmental Policy at the Congressional Research Service explains these provisions in simpler terms (see summary below from 3). 

Simply put, US drinking water customers have the right to know if their tap water's contaminated and it's the duty and responsibility of their water supplier to provide them this information as a matter of course. In particular, they have the right to demand and get these annual right-to-know/Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR). According to the EPA (4),

'A CCR is an annual water quality report delivered by community water systems to their customers. The CCR includes information on source water, the levels of detected contaminants, compliance with drinking water rules, and some educational language.

The reports are due to customers by July 1st of each year'.

Of course, all these safeguards were literally blown out of the water in Flint, Michigan. Looks like a city in receivership is literally beyond the pale of democracy, run by an unelected political appointee who’s wholly unaccountable to the public. So, first order of business would be to flee a city in receivership like a bat out of hell. Of course, this option's not available for the poor, who're screwed six ways till Sunday.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) Research Suggests Drinking Water Quality Varies Greatly From City To City

In 2003, the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) published a peer-reviewed study of the drinking water systems in 19 US cities (see figure and table below from 5)

This 13 year old study found source water protection ranges from excellent in cities like Seattle to high marks in cities like Boston, San Francisco, Denver to threatened by runoff and industrial or sewage contamination in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Washington, D.C (see below from 5). The NRDC recommends consumers help protect their drinking water by getting involved in community decision making about water resources, attending meetings of their local water supplier, check CCRs, and contact their supplier for details. Bottomline, according to the NRDC, residents need to know how their cities are getting their drinking water, specifically, that

• Sources are protected from pollution
• Pipes are sound and well-maintained
• Modern treatment facilities are a must

In 2013, the American Society for Civil Engineers' Report Card for America's Infrastructure gave the US a D meaning poor in the drinking water category (6). The NRDC's investigation also suggests CCR data cannot be accepted at face value. Flint shows local and state governments can't be trusted. Neither can the EPA. Thus, consumers should probably exercise caution as a way of life. For e.g., use filters on their water taps, specifically filters that reduce major contaminants such as microbial cysts, metals like lead and mercury, industrial chemicals like carbon tetrachloride, herbicides and pesticides, and chlorination by-products such as trihalomethanes (TTHM). A more conservative approach would be to use filtered and boiled water for cooking and drinking, habits second nature for a person like me who grew up in a developing country. Of course, as sociologist Andrew Szasz reports in his book, Shopping Our Way To safety. How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves, through the process of 'inverted quarantine', year on year Americans drink more bottled water anyway because they already believe tap water's 'contaminated with chemicals that can make us ill' (7). 

According to Szasz, from drinking one gallon of bottled water per person per year in 1975, Americans drank 26 gallon per person per year in 2005.

Things will only change for the better if some high-level politicians and bureaucrats resign or are jailed/fined or otherwise severely penalized for what they allowed to happen in Flint, Michigan. This would send a message to others in the water supply business from private business to local government to federal regulators including the EPA that they are going to be held accountable if they fail to provide safe, drinking water to their constituents. If something along these lines doesn't happen, no one in the US can count on their drinking water to be safe. If water suppliers in one place get away with supplying toxic muck, why wouldn’t others follow suit?

Bibliography

1. http://www.epw.senate.gov/sdwa.pdf

2. https://www.congress.gov/104/pla...

3. Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA): A Summary of the Act and Its Major Requirements. Mary Tiemann, Specialist in Environmental Policy, February 5, 2014. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL31...

4. Safe Drinking Water Act: Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR)

5. What's on Tap?: Grading Drinking Water in US Cities. 2003. http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinki...

6. American Society for Civil Engineers, 2013. http://www.infrastructurereportc...

7. Szasz, Andrew. Shopping our way to safety: How we changed from protecting the environment to protecting ourselves. U of Minnesota Press, 2007.

Further reading:

Study Finds Safety of Drinking Water in U.S. Cities at Risk

NRDC: What's On Tap? 

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinki...

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinki...

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinki...

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinki... 

NRDC: What's On Tap? 

https://www.quora.com/What-should-people-in-other-cities-do-to-protect-themselves-against-water-being-poisoned-like-it-is-in-Flint-Michigan/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

What are the differences and similarities between India and America when it comes to racism?

Assuming America means the US, in my experience, India and the US are depressingly similar when it comes to racism. Both have a long shameful history of deliberately disenfranchising specific groups of people, who are then socially shunned, economically decimated, and culturally sidelined, of course after the dominant groups appropriate whatever they like or want. As well, this history is much longer in India, the group in question the Dalit, formerly called Untouchables. In the US, it's blacks and Native Americans. Process is also depressingly similar, the marginalized are deliberately segregated geographically, economically, educationally. In both countries, widespread protest movements galvanized change with governments enacting laws attempting to empower and enfranchise, through a variety of Affirmative action programs. However, ensuing changes are often cosmetic and cultures stubbornly hold on to the disenfranchising status quo. After all, easier for the privileged to view their accomplishments as merit-based rather than feasting off the banquet of generational entitlement, easier to dismiss the deliberately, systematically downtrodden groups as deserving of their lowlier fates. Difference is India retains a more visible and persistent feudal structure that exacerbates caste and class divides.

My earliest memory of bigotry is from my own family. With India still stubbornly feudal, everyone worth their salt has servants, now euphemistically called domestic workers. Change in name, not dignity. We had a couple, wife for house work, husband the gardener. I was around 3 or 4 years old. Living with us, my widowed paternal grandmother, conservative, rigid and very casteist. She'd wash her own clothes and hang them out to dry in the back yard. That day, as she used her long bamboo stick to hang it out on the back yard clothes line, Katayan, the gardener, accidentally brushed against her washed saree while weeding a garden patch. I'll never forget the Tamil cry that burst out from her lips, 'Dushta, dushta', i.e. wicked, wicked. Striking him once on the shoulder with her stick, she then agitatedly set to pulling her saree off the clothesline and ran off with it to wash it again, his body's accidental brushing apparently enough to 'pollute' it.

Of course, this was decades back and India has come a long way from such decrepit and utterly repulsive ideas or so the elite would have us believe but nothing could be further from the truth. By many measurable metrics, access to education, literacy rates, per capita income, Dalits remain marginalized and disenfranchised, entirely by design and not by accident. Sure, the Indian media often touts tremendous individual Dalit success stories but the reality is similar to the US. After all, one Obama in the White House doesn't mean blacks are suddenly equal to whites in terms of access to opportunities, wealth and power, and protection under the law, does it? And, lacking even the fig leaf of an Obama, Native Americans are left out of the conversation altogether.

Years later, a conference room at the US NIH fills up as people stream in for a meeting or presentation. Walk in on the tail end of some desultory conversation about a topical news issue, obviously about blacks. Shockingly, a senior white researcher, a famous name in fact, says of course, it's well known that among blacks it's the stupid ones that got caught in the first place. I'd never heard of such a flagrantly odious and self-serving theory to explain black enslavement. To hear it at all was shocking, to hear it stated by someone so highly educated even more so. That it was said at all in that room only emphasizes how spaces deemed to represent power in US society continue to systematically exclude blacks. Of course, that room was filling up with white Americans and immigrants deemed deserving, no blacks.

My own experience of racism in the US was less overt, often expressed as persistent suspicion. For e.g., being asked for my ID when presenting a credit card at the check-out when those ahead of and behind me, all whites, weren't. Once is a quirk. Often? That's a pattern. Then there was that ominous entanglement with a white cop my very first year in the US. Having written about it elsewhere (1), the recent, steady drip-drip of news stories of blacks killed in police encounters underlines in no uncertain terms how lucky I was to not end up with the same ignominious fate, shot and killed during a police encounter.

Recently, India was roiled with the high-profile Suicide of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar at the University of Hyderabad. Didn't make as much of a buzz on Quora. Inevitably, what I read  included commenters unabashedly engaging in character assassination of a young man who's no longer around to defend himself. After all, at a time when internet penetration is <30% in India, no surprise haves would dominate in their access to it. Meantime, protestors in India are rightfully calling it institutional murder. After all, Dalits who demand to be seen as peers are actually perceived as dangerous interlopers and treated as such, creating conditions not so different from those that provoked the recent protests at 2015 University of Missouri protests. Why did Rohith's suicide touch such a nerve? The poignance and eloquence of his suicide note (2). Even birth in penury to a laborer and a seamstress couldn't prevent his rare and marvelous writing talent from blossoming. As James Baldwin famously seared the American public's conscience in his 1963 interview (3) with Dr. Kenneth Clark on the Negro and the American Promise, so Rohith's forlorn words reverberate in India today, in a culture that pays lip-service and doesn't sincerely engage in righting egregious historical wrongs, whose entrenched elite lack the generosity and humanism necessary to restore dignity to the ranks of the generationally oppressed by reaching out, mentoring and nurturing their talent. 

Racism is much more stark and overt for the thousands of African students now streaming into India for higher studies. As a black American PhD Student at the Delhi School of Economics wrote in 2009 (4),

'Discrimination in Delhi surpasses the denial of courtesy. I have been denied visas, apartments, entrance to discos, attentiveness, kindness and the benefit of doubt. Further, the lack of neighbourliness exceeds what locals describe as normal for a capital already known for its coldness.

My partner is white and I am black, facts of which the Indian public reminds us daily. Bank associates have denied me chai, while falling over to please my white friend. Mall shop attendants have denied me attentiveness, while mobbing my partner. Who knows what else is more quietly denied?

"An African has come," a guard announced over the intercom as I showed up. Whites are afforded the luxury of their own names, but this careful attention to my presence was not new. ATM guards stand and salute my white friend, while one guard actually asked me why I had come to the bank machine as if I might have said that I was taking over his shift'.

Be it Caste Hindus in India or whites in the US, bigotry goes underground following laws ostensibly banning it. Enacting laws isn't the same as implementing them. Entrenched power doesn't give its hegemony away. It has to be wrested out of cold dead, usually male, hands. Meantime, institutionalized bigotry cleverly engages in tokenism to gain the cover of plausible deniability, something B. R. Ambedkar, Dalit architect of India's constitution foresaw (5). Obvious symbols of tokenism, when blacks and mixed race sporadically rotated through my NIH lab, systematic lack of structural support and thoughtful mentoring ensured their inevitable failure. Self-fulfilling prophecy in place, such tokenism also gestates the far more dangerous seed of resentment within the easily self-satisfied and less self-aware among the privileged, yes, the same ones quick to myopically complain about oppressive levels of political correctness in society.

A quote often attributed to Gandhi advises, 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win'. Yet the process isn't so conveniently linear, tying itself in the pretty bow tie of victory at the end. All too often, initial victories are pyrrhic and the persistently disenfranchised need to cycle back through the process. So, be it India or the US, we're cycling back to the 3rd stage. In both cultures, pressures from such an abhorrent and unsustainable form of institutionalized apartheid are now again coming to the boiling point. Maybe a course correction, maybe some more laws, some more tokenism, ending with marginally more power to the Dalits and blacks. Dare we ever hope for better than this?

Foot-notes

1. Power without accountability creates a desert where disdain blooms at the expense of humanism and dignity by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk  

2. Rohith Vemula's suicide letter published by the Times of India, Jan 19, 2016. Full text: Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide note - Times of India 

3. James Baldwin interviewed by Dr Kenneth Clark, 1963. WGBH American Experience
 . Bonus Video  

4. Outlook India, Diepiriye Kuku, June 29, 2009. 'India Is Racist, And Happy About It' 

5. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Interview by BBC Radio, 1955. Round Table India - Dr Ambedkar Remembers the Poona Pact in an Interview on the BBC 

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-and-similarities-between-India-and-America-when-it-comes-to-racism/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

What is ecocide and what are well-known examples of it?

Obviously echoing the specter of genocide, the concept of Ecocide emerged from the US mass chemical attack on Vietnam's ecology through the use of defoliants such as Agent Orange. Ecocide thus refers to altering an ecosystem in such a manner that it can no longer support all manner of living organisms that previously depended on it. In the late 1960s, incontrovertible evidence (see photo below from 1, Chapter 7, page 134 ) of the unprecedented and entirely man-made ecological catastrophe from Agent Orange's use began piling up. Ironically enough 'ecocide' was coined by the man whose graduate research studies were crucial to the development of Agent Orange in the 1st place. At a 1970 conference titled, 'War Crimes and the American Conscience' (1, Chapter 7, Page 114), describing the fallout of Operation Ranch Hand, the US military's indiscriminate use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, Arthur Galston said (emphasis mine),

'It seems to me that the willful and permanent destruction of environment in which a people can live in a manner of their own choosing ought similarly to be considered as a crime against humanity, to be designated by the term ecocide . . . At the present time, the United States stands alone as possibly having committed ecocide against another country, Vietnam, through its massive use of chemical defoliants and herbicides.'

Apart from Agent Orange, some well-known examples of ecocide are

• Chernobyl disaster
• Draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes, a process that accelerated post-1990 during Saddam Hussein's regime
• The 'anthropogenic desertification' of the Aral Sea (2), called one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

This answer discusses a less well-known example of an incident that's also been classified as having contributed to the near-ecocide of the Rhine (3), the 1986 Sandoz chemical spill.

Sandoz Chemical Spill: Lessons Learned In Its Aftermath Brought Rhine Back From The Brink Of Biological Death

~1,320 kilometers in length, the Rhine river winds through 6 countries and its catchment area of ~185000 square kilometers is home to ~50^6 people. Cities, towns and industries are dispersed along Rhine's banks. A major source of drinking water, supplying directly to ~5.5^6 people, and indirectly through re-treatment, to ~20^6 others, ~50% of Europe's chemical industry is located along the Rhine. This amounts to ~20% of worldwide chemical production capacity being concentrated in the Rhine river basin (4). A place of leisure and recreation, plant and animal habitat, source of drinking and cooling water, hydropower, and discharge of wastewater, such intensive use led to its 'near biological death' (4) so the Sandoz accident and its aftermath offer a cautionary tale of lessons well worth learning.

On 1st November 1986, at 12:19AM, an employee at chemical company Sandoz reported a fire in the Sandoz Warehouse 956 (4). This warehouse was located at the northwest boundary of the Sandoz works area in Schweizerhalle near Basel, Switzerland. It took ~160 firefighters from 10 fire brigades to extinguish the fire by ~5AM on 1st November. By then, the warehouse burned down completely (see a picture of the blaze below left from 4). Its cause has still not been conclusively established though investigations suggested it started from ignition of packets of Prussian blue pigment used during shrink wrapping.

At the time of the fire, Warehouse 956 had 1351 tons of chemicals, including 987 tons of agricultural supplies and 364 tons of other chemicals. The agricultural supplies included insecticides and other toxic chemicals, especially 859 tons of organophosphate insecticides, 11 metric tons of organic mercury compounds such as ethoxyethyl mercury hydroxide and phenyl mercury acetate, 73 metric tons of DNOC, Dinitro-ortho-cresol, a herbicide toxic to humans and fish when undiluted, 26 metric tons of Oxyphenbutazone, a biodegradable fungicide, 12 metric tons of Metoxuran, a biodegradable herbicide, 1974 kilos of Endosulfan, 720 kilos of fungicide Zineb, 2325 kilos of the acaricide Tedion, 158 kilos of fungicide Captafol, 30 kilos of rodenticide Scillirosid and 450 kilos of vole bait containing 13 kilos of zinc phosphide (5).

Stopping the fire consumed ~10000 to 20000 cubic meters of water (4, 5). Contaminated with ~30 tons of pesticide and ~200kg of mercury, this water flowed into the Rhine river. The washed chemicals formed a red toxic trail 70 kilometers long that moved downstream at ~3.7 kilometers per hour. While a Sandoz spokesman initially dismissed the red slick as 'harmless dyestuff', mercury levels in the Rhine at the Dutch-West German border reached 3X normal levels by Nov 8, 1986 (5). The groundwater also became polluted with unknown amounts of persistent organic pollutants while the contamination at the fire site was estimated to be several tons of insecticides and ~100 kilos of mercury that got absorbed into ~40000 cubic meters of earth (5).

• Switzerland notified downstream countries like the Netherlands only >24 hours later while Sandoz only informed drinking water companies along the Rhine river about this toxic influx 3 days later (5).
• By 5 November, 1986, the toxic contamination had spread ~400 kilometers. Water utilities along the Middle and Lower Rhine closed their water intakes.
• On 8th November, 1986, ~10000 people demonstrated in Basel against the 'Arrogance of Power’.
• On 18th November, 1986, Sandoz reported for the 1st time that the burned stockroom had also contained 1.9 tons of the highly toxic insecticide, Endosulfan.
• Special vacuum sludge cleaners were used to remove the toxic sludge to a dumping site (4, 5). Taking ~16000 worker days, Sandoz employees sifted and sorted through the debris, and stored ~2695 metric tons of contaminants in 250 dump trucks, 17 railway cars, >6000 storage drums for later disposal (5).
• On Dec 2, 1986, Switzerland's President and Interior Minister, Alphons Egli declared that the Sandoz accident had 'destroyed in one night' Switzerland's environmental record and reputation (5).

Rhine's fauna was devastated by this spill. Thousands of dead fish and water fowl started washing up along its banks. For e.g., ~150000 eels, almost the entire Upper Rhine population of this specialized benthos feeder, were found dead (see an example in the picture above right from 4).

Walter Herrmann, Chief Inspector of the Rhine River Police in central Basel, reported finding a few live, but moribund, fish and eels among the dead ones, 'their eyes popped out, gills collapsed and skin covered with wounds and sores' (5). A spokesman for the German Ministry of the Environment later reported all species in the contaminated water had died. On Dec 12, 1986, the Swiss Federal Institute for Water Resources and Water Pollution Control (EAWAG) reported that the Rhine's fish population had been almost entirely wiped out. Mussels and insect larvae began to be seen along the polluted stretch only 8 months later. Sheep that drank Rhine water in Strasbourg, France, died (5). Slowly replenished by Rhine tributaries, it took years for Rhine's fauna to return to normal.

All water utilities in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and West Germany processing Rhine water for drinking shut down temporarily. West German towns along the Rhine began to depend on water trucked in from outside. The fire also released oxides of sulphur, phosphorus, nitrogen, carbon and foul-smelling mercaptans into the air (5).

Unrelated to the Sandoz accident, 1986 turned out be a period of cataclysmic man-made disasters for the Rhine as it became polluted by multiple industrial incidents (5), at least 18 incidents between June and Dec 1986 according to 6.

• Mid-October, 1986, the Bayer factory in Leverkusen, West Germany, leaked ~10 metric tons of a benzene compound into the Rhine.
• Oct 31 or Nov 1, 1986, Ciba-Geigy, Switzerland's largest chemical company, illegally discharged ~400 kilos of the herbicide Atrazine into the Rhine. This was only discovered when the Sandoz accident prompted Rhine water testing.
• Nov 7, 1986, a provisional seal in the burned warehouse's drainage system leaked, releasing an additional 30 to 60 metric tons of contaminated water into the Rhine. According to Sandoz, this amounted to ~ 0.025µg per liter of mercury and 3.1mg per liter of phosphoric acid ester.
• On Dec 2, 1986, the Lonza chemical factory in Waldshut, West Germany, accidentally discharged ~2.7 metric tons of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) into the Rhine when an employee mistakenly left a valve open.

The environmental catastrophe from the Sandoz fire left lasting results: improvement of international agreements among countries that shared Rhine water, River Rhine Action Programme, the symbolic 'Salmon 2000' programme to bring salmon back to the Rhine within 10 years, and the ICPR (International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine) which installed the WAP Rhine (International Warning and Alarm Plan 'Rhine', Rhine Alarm Model). ICPR's goals are to avert danger, detect causes, investigate, remove damage as and when it occurs, avoid further damage, and timely public announcements in the case of damages of public interest (see figures below from 4, 7). 

Thus, bringing Rhine to the brink of 'biological death' (4), in retrospect, the man-made catastrophe in the form of the Sandoz chemical spill instead catalyzed binding multi-national co-operation that led to the Rhine's resuscitation in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

After merging with Ciba-Geigy in 1996, today Sandoz-Ciba-Geigy is known as Novartis. Payout for liability to hundreds of municipalities proceeded for years.

Bibliography

1. Zierler, David. "The invention of ecocide." Agent Orange (2011).

2. Kotlyakov, Vladimir M. "The Aral Sea basin: a critical environmental zone." Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 33.1 (1991): 4-38.

3. Teclaff, Ludwik A. "Beyond Restoration-The Case of Ecocide." Nat. Resources J. 34 (1994): 933 - 956. http://lawschool.unm.edu/nrj/vol...

4. Reinhard, Walter. "The SANDOZ Catastrophe and the Consequences for the River Rhine." Risk Assessment as a Basis for the Forecast and Prevention of Catastrophies 35 (2008): 113 - 121.

5. Schwabach, Aaron. "The Sandoz Spill: The Failure of International Law to Protect the Rhine from Pollution' (1989)." Ecology Law Quarterly 16: 443 - 480.

6. Boos-Hersberger, Astrid. "Transboundary Water Pollution and State Responsibility: The Sandoz Spill." Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law 4.1 (2010): 7. http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.ed...

7. Reinhard, Walter. "The Latest Hesse Water and Soil Protection Guidelines.” Risk Assessment as a Basis for the Forecast and Prevention of Catastrophies 35 (2008): 122 - 128.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-ecocide-and-what-are-well-known-examples-of-it/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

What has happened in Bolivia since Bechtel was kicked out, in terms of water rights, costs, and quality of life?

Short answer: In Cochabamba, the city where the modern-day Water Wars started, the aftermath's distinctly a mixed bag in terms of incrementally greater autonomy in the form of grassroots water committees that co-exist with enormous disparity in water and sanitation access between the city's haves and have-nots. In light of increasing water crises the world over, the reprehensible, ongoing US Flint water crisis only the most recent high-profile case, lessons of this battle and its aftermath have relevance for all of us.

The UN General Assembly passed the 2010 Resolution on the Human Right and Sanitation, establishing a milestone of sorts, and since then Bolivia is one of the countries to have amended its constitution to include a Right to Water for Life (1).

Clarification: A Bechtel affiliate, not Bechtel itself, was kicked out of Cochabamba, Bolivia's 3rd or 4th largest city. OTOH, water privatization initially proceeded smoothly in the country's capital La Paz-El Alto region. Crucial difference?  Cochabamba has limited nearby water sources while gravity helps La Paz-El Alto get the bulk of their water from the nearby Tuni Condoriri glacier (2). Thus, unlike Cochabamba, for La Paz-El Alto, a private entity needn't incur expensive costs for transportation, and storage and pumping infrastructure (2). Yet, years later the La Paz-El Alto water privatization scheme also engendered enough social unrest to trigger a 2nd water war in Bolivia (3). Public sentiment from these two examples in Bolivia at least thus suggests that water privatization's unpopular, and rightfully so.

Backdrop to the Bechtel-Bolivia story

In water-insecure Cochabamba, conflicts over water access date back to colonial times (2). The year 2000 was a watershed moment in Bolivia's history when the poorest people in Cochabamba banded together in protest and successfully kicked out Aguas del Tunari, an international consortium whose major shareholder was the US Bechtel . In September 1999, under pressure from the World Bank, the Bolivian government had awarded it a concession for the city's water supply. The terms, mandated by World Bank, dictated a rate hike to ensure Bechtel had a guaranteed annual 15% ROI (Return on Investment) (4). In October 1999, the Hugo Banzer-led government passed Law No. 2029, the Potable Water and Sanitary Law (Ley de Servicios de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado Sanitario) legalizing this concession. The law entailed a system of concessions and licenses for potable water. It stipulated that, concessions granted, concessionaires had a 40-year exclusive right over the concession areas. This included outright expropriation, i.e., taking control of all autonomous water systems without compensating the communities who'd built them (5, 6, 7). Come January 2000, many of Cochabamba poorest citizens haplessly faced abrupt water rate hikes, in some places as high as 300% (8, 9, 10). Three major, increasingly more violent uprisings ensued. In the final, most violent one, hundreds were wounded and 4 including a 17-year old died when police used tear gas and live ammunition (10, 11, 12). On April 9, 2000, the city government capitulated and rescinded the concession. The world over Cochabamba's Guerra del Agua came to be known as the Water War, 2000 Cochabamba protests.

Legal consequences of Cochabamba's Water War

The Potable Water and Sanitation Law, Law No. 2066, was revised on 11 April, 2000 and in 2004, the irrigation law, Law No. 2878, was updated for the 1st time in 98 years. These laws (13, 14, 15)

• Uphold the rights of traditional water uses.
• Establish concessionaires can't have monopoly rights within their concession areas.
• Grant community water systems the right to apply for and receive concessions for indefinite periods of time.
• Provide for a system of licenses for larger water providers and municipal governments.
• Provide for registeries for indigenous communities and peasant associations and unions.
• Decentralize irrigation governance, necessary to placate medium-scale Cochabamba region farmers who depend on irrigation.

Post-Water War Cochabamba Water Supply: What's Changed?

Resurrected post-Water War, SEMAPA (Servicio Municipal de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado or Municipal Potable Water and Sanitation Service), Cochabamba's municipal water service, doesn't have enough water in its network to supply the city's poorest southern residents. Thus, their lot unimproved, their water needs are instead met by a combination of water tankers (aguateros), and formal and informal water committees (comites de agua) (16).

Though their authority and legitimacy expanded from modifications to the law post-Water War, such water committees actually arose organically in the area even prior to it. Usually, 'a group of neighbors get together, pool their resources to drill a well, install a pump and build a network of pipes to connects their' houses (15).

However, their post-Water War consolidation and expanded scope is fueled by desperation to improve water and sanitation access of their impoverished members which contrasts obscenely with that of Cochabamba's haves in the North-Center and amply justifies their existence (see figures and data below from 17, 18).

In 2004, many Cochabamba water committees joined to form ASICASUDD-EPSAS (Asociación de Sistemas Comunitarios de Agua del Sud, Departamental y Entidades Prestadoras de Servicio de Agua y Saneamiento, Association of Community Water Systems of the South, of the Department, and Provider Entities of Water and Sanitation Services) (15), a hybrid group connected to both the local government through SEMAPA as well as to international funds through NGOs. Much of its funds come from the Italian organization CeVI (Centro di Volontariato Internazionale) (15).

Committees not joining  ASICASUDD-EPSAS opted to become OTBs (Organizaciones Territoriales de Base, or Grassroots Territorial Organisations). Critical difference? OTBs can access public funding. Problem is relations between ASICASUDD-EPSAS and OTBs range all the way from 'complete co-operation to direct antagonism' (15). One reason is ASICASUDD-EPSAS' mistrust stemming from fear of state manipulation of OTBs. Thus, most water committees try to keep distance from all political parties, especially Evo Morales' party, MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) (19). As well, though the Bolivian constitution explicitly enshrines Right to Water for Life, these poorer collectives distance themselves from it, preferring to instead identify with Water as a Common Good since they feel a Right to Water advocates for individualistic rights (20), a crucial philosophical difference it behooves all of us, not just poor Cochabamba residents, to ponder seriously.

Be they ASICASUDD-EPSAS or OTBs, all partner with a variety of NGOs, part of what's called the 'NGO-isation of Latin America', (21, 22). NGOs came to occupy the vacuum left behind as the Bolivian state retreated when neoliberalism prevailed from the 1980s to the early 2000s. In fact, Marston reports that water-oriented NGOs working in Cochabamba increased exponentially post-Water War (15). Prominent NGOs include Agua Sustentable,  Aguatuya, Asociación Yaku founded in Italy in 2007 as part of the Italian Forum of Movements for Water as a Common Good united in solidarity against water privatization, Fundación Abril founded by Water War leader Oscar Olivera, and Water For People.

Management of water committees is influenced by members' backgrounds, i.e., experience in miner or peasant unions or church-based and non-profit organizations as well as input from NGOs, which is actually often perceived as undue pressure. They usually have at least a president and secretary to monitor water payments. Many don't have access to sufficient groundwater to meet members' needs. Instead they purchase water in bulk from aguateros to fill up shared water tanks or large cisterns (10, 12, 15, 16). Often such water is of questionable quality. Long-term goal of these committees is to connect their networks to a more reliable water source such as the Misicuni Dam.

Misicuni Dam: In Limbo, Cochabamba's Thirsty Poor Resignedly Await Its Long-Promised Agua

Harking back to the 1950s big dam era, this dam offers impoverished Cochabamba residents the shimmering, perhaps elusive, promise of autonomy and identity since it would rely on water from the Cochabamba valley catchment area, a region that potentially faces desertification due to too rapid and chaotic urbanization (23).

Partially constructed, then halted, and currently in the process of being re-bid (24, 25), Misicuni remains a mirage to Cochabamba's poorest residents, whose desperate water needs are instead addressed by stop-gap water committees who negotiate on their behalf or by rapacious aguateros, who prefer delivering their water to wealthier residents with larger storage tanks and better road accessibility (3, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 26).

Bibliography

1. Harris, Leila M., and María Cecilia Roa-García. "Recent waves of water governance: Constitutional reform and resistance to neoliberalization in Latin America (1990–2012)." Geoforum 50 (2013): 20-30. https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/...

2. Mirosa, Oriol. The Global Water Regime Water’s Transformation from Right to Commodity in South Africa and Bolivia. Diss. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON, 2012. http://www.mirosa.org/files/diss...

3. Spronk, Susan, and Carlos Crespo. "Water, national sovereignty and social resistance: bilateral investment treaties and the struggles against multinational water companies in Cochabamba and El Alto, Bolivia." Law, Social Justice and Global Development 1 (2008): 1-14. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/vie...

4. Webber, Jeffery R. "From Left-Indigenous Insurrection to Reconstituted Neoliberalism in Bolivia: Political Economy, Indigenous Liberation, and Class Struggle, 2000–2011." The New Latin American Left: Cracks in the Empire (2013): 149-190.

5. Woodhouse, Erik J. "Guerra del Agua and the Cochabamba Concession: Social Risk and Foreign Direct Investment in Public Infrastructure, The." Stan. J. Int'l L. 39 (2003): 295.

6. Olivera, Oscar, and Tom Lewis. Cochabamba!: water war in Bolivia. South End Press, 2004.

7. Shultz, Jim. "The Cochabamba water revolt and its aftermath." Dignity and defiance: stories from Bolivia’s challenge to globalization (2008): 9-44. http://69.167.155.165/content/ch...

8. Assies, Willem. "David versus Goliath in Cochabamba: water rights, neoliberalism, and the revival of social protest in Bolivia." Latin American Perspectives (2003): 14-36. http://www.iheal.univ-paris3.fr/...

9. Spronk, Susan, and Jeffery R. Webber. "Struggles against Accumulation by Dispossession in Bolivia The Political Economy of Natural Resource Contention." Latin American Perspectives 34.2 (2007): 31-47.

10. Bakker, Karen. "The ambiguity of community: Debating alternatives to private-sector provision of urban water supply." Water Alternatives 1.2 (2008): 236-252. http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/...

11. Bustamante, Rocio. "The water war: resistance against privatisation of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia." Revista de Gestión Del Agua en América Latina 1 (2004): 37-46.

12. Spronk, Susan. "Roots of resistance to urban water privatization in Bolivia: The “New Working Class,” the crisis of neoliberalism, and public services." International Labor and Working-Class History 71.01 (2007): 8-28. https://www.researchgate.net/pro...

13. Kohl, Benjamin, and Linda C. Farthing. Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal hegemony and popular resistance. Zed Books, 2006.

14. Perreault, Tom. "Custom and contradiction: Rural water governance and the politics of usos y costumbres in Bolivia's irrigators' movement." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98.4 (2008): 834-854).

15. Marston, Andrea J. "The scale of informality: community-run water systems in peri-urban Cochabamba, Bolivia." Water Alternatives 7.1 (2014): 72-88. https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc...

16. Wutich, Amber, Melissa Beresford, and Cinthia Carvajal. "Can Informal Water Vendors Deliver on the Promise of A Human Right to Water? Results From Cochabamba, Bolivia." World Development 79 (2016): 14-24. https://www.researchgate.net/pro...

17. Salimi, Kate. Gender Dimensions of Community-managed Water Systems: Gender-water Realities in Peri-urban Cochabamba, Bolivia. Diss. University of Ottawa, 2015. http://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/bitst... 

18. West, Madeline. Community Water and Sanitation Alternatives in Peri-Urban Cochabamba: Progressive Politics or Neoliberal Utopia?. Diss. University of Ottawa, 2014. https://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/bits... 

19. Terhorst, Philipp, Marcela Olivera, and Alexander Dwinell. "Social movements, left governments, and the limits of water sector reform in Latin America’s left turn." Latin American Perspectives 40.4 (2013): 55-69.

20. Mehta, Lyla, et al. "Global environmental justice and the right to water: the case of peri-urban Cochabamba and Delhi." Geoforum 54 (2014): 158-166

21. Bebbington, Anthony. "NGOs and uneven development: geographies of development intervention." Progress in human geography 28.6 (2004): 725-745. http://www.colorado.edu/geograph...

22. Alvarez, Sonia E. "Beyond NGO&hyphen; ization&quest;: Reflections from Latin America." Development 52.2 (2009): 175-184.

23. Laurie, Nina, and Simon Marvin. "Globalisation, neoliberalism, and negotiated development in the Andes: water projects and regional identity in Cochabamba, Bolivia." Environment and Planning A 31.8 (1999): 1401-1416.

24. Latin bank seeks review, recommendations to complete Bolivia's 120-MW Misicuni hydro project 

25. Bolivia utility seeks design, bidding documents for 5-MW Huacata hydro project 

26. Wutich, Amber, and Kathleen Ragsdale. "Water insecurity and emotional distress: coping with supply, access, and seasonal variability of water in a Bolivian squatter settlement." Social science & medicine 67.12 (2008): 2116-2125. http://ostromworkshop.indiana.ed...

https://www.quora.com/What-has-happened-in-Bolivia-since-Bechtel-was-kicked-out-in-terms-of-water-rights-costs-and-quality-of-life/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

What consequences can bring a recent 2 billion dollars raise of NIH budget?

Pumping more money into the NIH without structural reform of the US biomedical research enterprise is throwing good money after bad, i.e., sheer wastefulness. Why?

• First, decades back, US biomedical research coalesced around a sweatshop structure for staffing labs.
• Second, abolition of mandatory retirement on Jan 1, 1994, means that established PIs (Principal Investigators) who joined in the 1960s and 70s aren't leaving and continue milking the system for what it's worth, at the expense of younger generations.
• Finally, 'the doubling' cemented this already unsustainable structure. 'The doubling' refers to the NIH annual budget increase of 15% for 5 consecutive years from 1998 to 2003, abruptly doubling it from $13 billion to >$27 billion over a short 5 year period. Countrywide, university labs expanded and even increased in number, and more PhDs began entering an already saturated job market. With the Great Recession kicking off in 2007, the economy just couldn't absorb the glut. Some managed to cling on as post-docs, or did multiple post-docs while others left the field altogether.

Sweatshop structure of US biomedical research labs

Biomedical research labs across the US are increasingly staffed by temporary workers, namely, poorly paid graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. In return for hands-on training in the tools of their future trade, such workers perform the nuts and bolts of US biomedical research. Training done, they move on into an already saturated job market hoping the coin toss works in their favor for a faculty position in an ever-shrinking pool, shrinking largely because increasing number of older faculty aren't retiring while US universities can't realistically expand faculty positions to absorb all the newly minted PhDs. Costs aren't in favor of doing that. Upshot is US biomedical research labs operate under conditions of constant labor turnover.

Meantime, sampling a teeming supply of ready labor that applies for biomedical PhDs from all over the world (see figure below in the middle from 1), not just the US, US universities have evolved an assembly-line approach to plug this temporary worker shortage by filling research labs with increasing numbers of PhD students and post-docs. Thus, the US has been graduating a glut of biomedical research PhDs, more than the US job market could possibly absorb.

Faculty positions are mainstays for biomedical PhDs but existing US life sciences faculty positions can't absorb them all so more and more freshly minted PhDs spend many more years in post-doctoral positions. A rarity in the 1950s and 60s, today a post-doc after a PhD is thus the norm in biomedical research (see figure below in the right from 1).

The glut of money that poured into the NIH during 'the doubling' only exacerbated this pre-existing problem, making its way into the university system who graduated ever more life science PhDs (see figure below on the left from 1) even as their ever-aging faculties hung on to their positions. Faculty expansions from this period only contributed to this problem since they were immediately followed by precipitous NIH funding declines from 2004 till date. As research funds evaporated, predictable hyper-competitiveness set in and PIs, especially less secure junior faculty, spend more of their time chasing fewer research dollars, writing and revising more grant proposals. Inevitable gap in training and mentoring slides off onto the hapless shoulders of post-docs while graduate students cover more of the undergraduate tutoring responsibilities. Underpaid, overworked labor thus undergirds the present day US biomedical research enterprise.

Government policy encourages aging of US biomedical research faculty

In 1986, the US congress passed the 1986 Age Discrimination Act. A special exemption in this Act allowed colleges and universities to enforce mandatory faculty retirement at age 70 until 1994. The US Congress allowed this exemption to expire and mandatory retirement for university faculty was abolished on January 1, 1994, just as a big chunk of faculty hired in the early 1960s approached traditional retirement. Thus, tenured US faculty have lifetime employment. Already back in 2001, Orley Ashenfelter and David Card's analysis (2) of 16000 older faculty at 104 colleges and universities across the US found

• Average retirement rates for 70 and 71 year old faculty fell from ~75 and 60%, respectively, to ~30%.
• At age 72, 70 year old faculty who continued working increased from <10% to ~50% once mandatory retirement was abolished.

More proof of aging leadership in US biomedical research enterprise? Most lucrative and consequential for biomedical research faculty, the NIH R01 grants are unmistakably aging (see figure below from 3 with numbers from 4).

• Where in 1983, 18% were awarded to < or =36 years of age, they accounted for only ~3% in 2010.
• OTOH, > or =66 years of age accounted for almost nothing in 1980 but accounted for ~7% in 2010.

Since these trends stayed unchanged during 'the doubling', giving NIH more money isn't going to change this status quo.

The US economy cannot absorb the glut in biomedical research PhDs its universities generate

If not university faculty, then at least jobs in industry should be able to absorb newly minted biomedical PhDs and post-docs, right? No, US pharma employment has stayed flat for at least 20 years (see figure below from 5).

The $2 billion increase is thus meaningless for two reasons,

• If it remains a one-off. Since 2016 is presidential election season, all bets are off on what the future portends.
• Inflationary losses since 2003, when NIH budgets flattened or reduced, means that this increase merely takes funding back to 2003 levels. This is because a dollar's worth of research in 2003 would have cost $1.44 in 2015 (see figure below from 6), according to Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB).

In sheer money terms, 2016 NIH budget needs to be ~$48 billion in 2015 dollars to recoup 2003 research strength (see figure below from 7).

Absent structural reforms, i.e., finding solutions to the politically incendiary issues of the aging of US faculty and the sweatshop construct of US basic biomedical research labs, increase in NIH funding is thus social harm, not social good.

Bibliography

1. 2014 National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/se...

2. Ashenfelter, Orley, and David Card. Did the elimination of mandatory retirement affect faculty retirement flows?. No. w8378. National bureau of economic research, 2001. http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream...

3. Sally Rockey. Feb 13, 2012. Age Distribution of NIH Principal Investigators and Medical School Faculty. http://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2012...

4. Alberts, Bruce, et al. "Opinion: Addressing systemic problems in the biomedical research enterprise." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.7 (2015): 1912-1913. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/...

5. Leadership In Decline. Assessing US International Competitiveness In Biomedical Research. The Information Technology And Innovation Foundation And United For Medical Research. Robert D. Atkinson, Stephen J. Ezell, L. Val Giddings, Luke A.SStewart, Scott M. Andes. May 2012.  http://www.unitedformedicalresea... 

6. From http://www.faseb.org/Portals/2/P...

7. On the Cusp of the 2016 Election: Why Is Politics Avoiding Science? April 2, 2015. On the Cusp of the 2016 Election: Why Is Politics Avoiding Science?

Further Reading

1. Teitelbaum, Michael S. "Structural disequilibria in biomedical research." Science 321.5889 (2008): 644-645.

2. Stephan, Paula E. "The biomedical workforce in the US: An example of positive feedbacks." International Centre for Economic Research Working Paper 11 (2010). http://sites.gsu.edu/pstephan/fi...

3. How We're Unintentionally Defunding the National Institutes of Health. Pacific Standard Magazine, Michael White, Nov 27, 2013. http://www.psmag.com/health-and-...

4. Chakma, Justin, et al. "Asia's ascent—global trends in biomedical R&D expenditures." New England Journal of Medicine 370.1 (2014): 3-6.

5. Updated: Fountain of youth: A congressman's plan to make NIH grantees younger. Science, Jocelyn Kaiser, Oct 6, 2014. Updated: Fountain of youth: A congressman's plan to make NIH grantees younger

6. Alberts, Bruce, et al. "Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.16 (2014): 5773-5777. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/... 

7. Daniels, Ronald J. "A generation at risk: Young investigators and the future of the biomedical workforce." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.2 (2015): 313-318. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/...

8. Pickett, Christopher L., et al. "Toward a sustainable biomedical research enterprise: Finding consensus and implementing recommendations." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.35 (2015): 10832-10836. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/...

https://www.quora.com/What-consequences-can-bring-a-recent-2-billion-dollars-raise-of-NIH-budget/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

What is the difference between doing a PhD in a research lab outside a University campus and doing PhD in a lab inside a University campus?

The practicalities of doing a Ph.D. in a research lab outside a University versus doing one in it are quite similar. In either case, the student has to register with a University since they are the ones who grant the Ph.D. degree. For example, though I did my Ph.D. in a research lab run by the Indian Council of Medical Research, I was registered for the degree with the local medical university. However, the university played no role in the day-to-day management of my degree. They only figured towards the end by managing the process of my thesis examination, sending my thesis to outside examiners and helping conduct my viva-voce ('by live voice') exam.

The Ph.D. experience in a research lab is certainly quite different from one in an university. In the former, the Ph.D. student is in the midst of research lab employees and is typically among the junior-most members in the lab. In the latter, surrounded by other students many of whom are pursuing Bachelor's and Master's, the Ph.D. student isn't typically the junior-most. A research lab Ph.D. also typically works on their research project from day one all the way through. No course work.

So more of a work-like experience for a research lab Ph.D. student compared to a university student-like experience for a university Ph.D. student.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-doing-a-PhD-in-a-research-lab-outside-a-University-campus-and-doing-PhD-in-a-lab-inside-a-University-campus/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala