SPRING BOOKS NATURE|Vol 441|11 May 2006

however, according to several Jasons, who claimed the barrier as the prototype for the electronic battlefield. Involvement in the , even if aimed at lessening its destructiveness, brought self-doubt and opprobrium to the Jasons. Stu- dent activists denounced and harassed them after stolen records were depicted as implicat- ing Jason deeply in the conduct of the war. A 1967 Jason study, “Tactical Weapons in South- east Asia”, demonstrated the futility of nuclear weaponry in the Vietnam War but remained classified for about 20 years. “Jason became the devil,” a Pentagon official remarked. “No matter that some of them had excellent doveish credentials, they were Jason.” The Jasons is particularly valuable in its illu- mination of the realpolitik of scientific advice. Claire Max, one of the few women Jasons, remarks: “I get morally indignant about some- thing that the government is doing that doesn’t make technical sense, and I suggest to the rest of my colleagues at Jason that we do a summer study. And they tactfully point out that there’s no point in doing it if nobody’s going to listen.” warns not to expect too much when providing scientific advice to govern- ment. “The ratio of output to input in doing Science’s secret service government work is never high,” he observes. “I take great comfort in the fact that for fifty- The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s scientists and others have been included since. seven years we’ve managed severe crises and Postwar Elite At the latest tally, 11 have been Nobel laureates not used nuclear weapons. I just want to see by Ann Finkbeiner and 43 were members of the US National that we keep our wits about us. And I haven’t Viking: 2006. 304 pp. $27.95 Academy of Sciences. Among them are some lost my optimism.” of the great names of science: , Among these stars of the scientific estab- Daniel S. Greenberg Richard Garwin, Charles Townes, Marvin lishment, attitudes vary about going public Advice from science to politics runs along Goldberger and John Wheeler. Most of Jason’s with the weighty issues of their government diverse paths. Einstein wrote to US President studies concern military matters, and about work. Richard Garwin, the quintessential Franklin D. Roosevelt to warn of the possibility half to three-quarters of its reports are classi- insider, is legendary for speaking out publicly of nuclear explosives. C. P. Snow asserted that fied; the exact proportion is unknown, because on topics ranging from the environmental the physicist Frederick Lindemann’s close Jason, although not itself a secret, generally impact of supersonic flight to the control of friendship with Churchill gave him “more shuns publicity. nuclear arms. Some half-a-dozen current or direct power than any scientist in history”. In The public record contains little mention of past Jasons are prominent in the leadership of response to Sputnik, President Eisenhower Jason, with just a few published accounts, the Federation of American Scientists, which established a committee of scientists to advise largely suspicious of the secretive proceedings pioneered scientific activism over arms control the White House. And nuclear physicist of superstar professors temporarily employed and international collaboration. In contrast, exalted the Star Wars defence by the Pentagon on unknown projects. But Jason member Rich Muller argues: “Once programme to a receptive President Reagan. the veil is partly lifted by Ann Finkbeiner, you come out publicly for something, you’re Renown, personal relationships and commit- who teaches science writing at Johns Hopkins basically taking sides, and your value as an tees have all linked science to government in the University; her book The Jasons is based on adviser is decreased.” modern era. interviews with 36 of the group’s members. Throughout its nearly 50-year history, And then there is the group known as Jason, Finkbeiner describes her book as “less a Jason’s free-wheeling style has often grated on which is unlike any of them. Working exclu- respectable history than a series of stories in the defence officials who pay its bills. Clashes sively for the US government, to which it is more or less chronological order”. She tells have ensued, and Jason has had its ties to financially tethered, Jason consists mainly of of Jason’s proposal to dampen the fury of the the Pentagon rearranged and its client base science professors — mostly self-selected and Vietnam War by building a high-tech barrier expanded to other government agencies. With working in secret — who devote a large of part of sensors and mines, backed by artillery its intolerance of dissent, the George W. Bush of each summer to intense, collaborative stud- and aircraft, to throttle the passage of North administration has been especially trying for ies of worrisome scientific and technological Vietnamese troops and supplies along the Ho Jason, particularly on the sensitive issue of issues confronting the government. The title Chi Minh trail. Embraced by the beleaguered who is appointed. However, Jason goes on, Jason apparently has a playful origin, being defence secretary, Robert McNamara, the although its traditional cohesiveness is chal- derived from the myth of the Argonauts. barrier lacked an important ingredient: support lenged by the growing interdisciplinarity of Since Jason was founded in 1960, about 100 from the military, which was distressed by its science, and family and work patterns that scientists have been taken into its ranks, of costs and echoes of Maginot Line immobility. make it difficult for members to get away for whom 30 to 60 are active at any one time. Physi- Although a stretch of the barrier was built, six weeks in the summer. cists predominated in the early days, as befitted a Pentagon official retrospectively labelled it Elite academic scientists working on secret the reigning scientists of the Cold War, but life “horribly naive”. The episode was not fruitless, government projects would seem to be the

156 © 2006 Nature Publishing Group NATURE|Vol 441|11 May 2006 SPRING BOOKS basis for a great story. But The Jasons rings syndrome is not confined to hostages who difference in complexity and the likelihood of few dramatic bells. And the author observes: become enamoured of their captors: it can emergent properties, it is unlikely that probing “Jasons think they’ve done the country good, also afflict observers who fall for their sub- the ganglia of Aplysia can tell us how our brain but they haven’t got much clear evidence.” jects. As Finkbeiner wrote of an anonymous recalls our first love or our father’s face. Perhaps a more sceptical attitude towards Jason identified only as “Dr. Y”: “She might Nevertheless, the reductionist approach to the Jasons in particular and the advisory pro- look plain if she didn’t move so gracefully, behavioural plasticity, of which Kandel’s work cess in general would have paid off. My own and if she didn’t sit so quietly, self-possessed is the prime example, is a success story that has observation is that politicians seek scientific and intense and honest to the bone.” ■ given us models of molecular and cellular plas- advice to support their preconceptions, not Daniel S. Greenberg is a journalist in ticity that propose how experience affects to steer them to wisdom. But where secrecy Washington. His new book, Science for Sale, will nerve cells. It is now for those who follow previously obscured public view of the Jasons, be published next year by the University of Kandel to link the molecular and cellular level reverence is the problem here. Stockholm Chicago Press. with the systems level of analysis. This integra- tion is the major challenge facing the science of memory, and might require, in addition to new methodologies, a change of zeitgeist or an amalgamation of approaches. A journey to remember Kandel’s book is enthusiastically recom- mended as a captivating account of the career In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a events in their investigators. Even if such an of a prominent leader in contemporary neuro- New Science of Mind inclusive definition is accepted, the distinction science. The author is not only an authorita- by Eric R. Kandel should still be made between memory as a tive scholar but also a marvellous popularizer W. W. Norton: 2006. 510 pp. $29.95 process and as an item with mental content. and narrator, who brings to the story an The process is assumed to be subserved by attractive mix of facts, personal touches and Yadin Dudai the plasticity of synapses, the functional con- wisdom, seasoned with reflective humour. Few can interlace their autobiography with the tacts between nerve cells. One could further But In Search of Memory is not just about evolution of a scientific paradigm. Even fewer assume that the basic building blocks of the science: it is also about history and identity. can weave such a story seamlessly. Eric Kandel plasticity machinery were conserved in evolu- Kandel is a devoted scientist, humanist, is one of these. His career, from his training in tion. If this is the case, why not approach family man and proud Jew. He follows, by his Harry Grundfest’s laboratory at Columbia memory by studying its simplest forms in the own definition, the “Talmudic tradition writ University in New York more than fifty years simplest of organisms? This philosophy has large. But rather than annotate a religious ago to a remarkably productive present, also guided Kandel and given the timid sea-slug text, we annotate texts written by evolutionary at Columbia, epitomizes his ardent reduction- Aplysia a prominent position in textbooks of processes working over hundreds of millions ist approach to the neural sciences. Its formal neuroscience. The approach, anchored in the of years.” pinnacle was the Nobel Prize in Physiology or achievements of molecular biology, has proved Kandel was just a child when he emigrated Medicine, which Kandel shared in 2000 with highly productive in identifying plasticity from Austria to the United States, but the Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard for their mechanisms that subserve memory. What it Holocaust and the trauma of European Jewry discoveries concerning signal transduction in doesn’t address satisfactorily is the content and are deeply embedded in his memory. His the nervous system. meaning of memory items. This requires an contempt for racism is clear. In the back- Kandel’s intellectual journey in neuro- understanding of how brains encode specific ground hovers the terrible awareness that science can be traced back to his first pieces of mental information. Many would many of his generation perished, unknown, encounter with Grundfest. The enthusiastic argue that this calls for the spatiotemporal in concentration camps before they had a medical student, with a strong background in codes of neuronal populations to chance to explore and contribute to the world. history and literature, proposes unveiling the be deciphered. Further- When the Austrian president contacts Kandel brain substrates of Freud’s three psychic struc- more, given the and expresses his desire to honour the new tures, the ego, superego and id, in six months. immense Nobel laureate of Viennese origin, Kandel’s Grundfest, the seasoned professor of neurol- reaction is to organize a symposium in ogy, suggests a different agenda, no less Vienna to acknowledge Austria’s central grandiose: to understand the mind, he role in the Nazi atrocities and evaluate replies, we need to look at the the significance for scholarship of the brain one cell at a time. The disappearance of the Jewish commu- narrative of the brain sci- nity in Vienna. Kandel’s accounts of ences in the past century incidents during this visit to Vienna is made up of attempts to should be read carefully by those who negotiate between these two ignore lingering undercurrents of extremes. In his admirable per- anti-Semitism. sonal version of this narrative, The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, Kandel is still a grundfestian, but in his poem Ithaka, which recounts the appreciates that the bottom-up return of Odysseus to his homeland, approach still has a long way to go. advises his hero not to hasten: Nowhere, perhaps, is this conflict As you set out for Ithaka, between reductionism and global Hope the voyage is long, approaches to the brain more evident Full of adventure, full of discovery… than in memory research. Memory is a Better if it lasts for years… term applied nowadays to a wide gamut Ithaka gave you the marvellous of functions, ranging from experience- journey dependent modification of reflexes in brain- Without her you would not have less organisms to the recollection of personal sailed away.

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