I fully appreciated reading the comments expressed by Paul Morrison,
Ken Williams and Kathy Stone and Joe Fernandez. And Rebecca, you were
just wondering if you'd somehow missed the announcement! But I
would like to hear more from the Executive Board as to what
their reasoning was for nixing the proposed study. Was it strictly on the
basis that it was not considered a publishable study? And then maybe the
EB should ask the ABRF protein sequencing membership what sort of
study they would like to participate in. Many of us just want a gauge of
where we are in the field in terms of how ourselves or our staff are
cranking the old protein sequencer. This sort of thing comes out more
like grading a test than having publishable new data--and is well worth
posting on our ABRF PARG web page.
In nixing this study the EB may have had some other goal in sight
that they felt would serve the interests of the protein sequencing
community in the ABRF better than the proposed study. But then I would
have liked to have heard that the EB had made a counter proposal to the
committee as to how they could have improved
their study, rather than just nixing it. Without knowing the dynamics,
though, I thought Linda sounded frustrated--I know that I would have
been--and I hope that the EB hasn't lost some of her and her committee's
energy because of this decision.
One concern that was brought up last year at the ABRF 2000 meeting was the
amount of time that the ABRF membership spends on studies just immediately
prior to the ABRF meetings--and that it might be in all of our best
interests to pace the studies differently. This would include having
studies initiated at different times of the year, not just clustered
around Thanksgiving and Christmas. And it might mean skipping one study
one year in one technology in order to study a different one that
year. Was this part of the EBs decision? Or is there an effort here to
make the theme of the studies more in line with the overall theme of the
meetings?
And finally, I recognize that we elect our Executive Board to make
decisions for us--we have given them a certain mandate so that all
decisions don't have to be decided by the whole of the group, which would
be very unwieldy. But in recognition of constant power struggles and
politics, how do we balance the judgment and enormous energy that the
different committee's members bring to the ABRF with the role of the EB
and the general memberships needs/expectations?
Deb McMillen
Institute of Molecular Biology
University of Oregon
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