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Some statistical comments on Ecdysone Workshops
J. Insect Physiol. Vol. 34, No. 7, pp. 139-742, 1988
0022-1910/88 $3.00 + 0.00
Copyright0 1988PergamonPressplc
Printed in Great Britain.All rightsreserved
SOME
STATISTICAL COMMENTS ECDYSONE WORKSHOPS
ON
G. KAUSBB Institut fiir Physiologische Chemie, UniversitLt Marburg, Deutschhausstr. 1-2, D-3550 Marburg. F.R.G.
HISTORYAND
DEVELOPMENT
Edcysone Workshops originate from an idea by David Whitehead, who, in 1976, organized an Ecdysone Shop Talk: Progress Reports at the Royal Entomological Society in London. The one-day programme comprised 11 talks dealing with ecdysone metabolism, binding of ecdysone in different tissues and organisms, and first steps into genetics and molecular biology. It was followed one day later by the 6th Informal Meeting on Insect Hormones in which only scientists from the U.K. discussed their results on ecdysteroids and also on juvenile and peptide hormones. Later on a meeting entitled 1st International Colloquium of the CNRS on the Biosynthesis, Metabolism, and Mode of Action of Invertebrate Hormones, organized by M. Durchon and P. Joly in Lille (1975) was added to the list of Ecdysone Workshops and the (first) London workshop further on was counted as the “Second Ecdysone Workshop”. However, the character of the Lille meeting was totally different from that of the Ecdysone Workshops: it was a rather large meeting, at which ihvited lectures dealt with all aspects of invertebrate endocrinology. The “familiar” character of the Ecdysone Workshops was not reached, short notices were not accepted. Therefore, the conference in Lille is not further considered in this evaluation. In the following years, Ecdysone Workshops developed similarly to many other scientific conferences that took place in the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. The scientific outcome of these conferences has been summarized by Hoffmann (1986). Due to the increased number of students, of scientists, and of travel grants, the number of participants and of presentations grew steadily (Fig. 1). Only in Szeged, in 1983, was there a small decline, which might have been due to the fact that two conferences were held nearly simultaneously (The 3rd International Symposium of the Znternational Society of Invertebrate Reproduction in Tiibingen (F.R.G) and the 2nd International Colloquium of the CNRS on Biosynthesis, Mtabolism and Mode of Action of Invertebrate Hormones in Strasbourg, France). However, the reduced number of participants did not influence number (and quality) of the presentations (Fig. lc). In spite of the increasing number of participants and presentations, the organizers of the Ecdysone Workshops allowed for sufficient discussion time (by transferring some of the lectures to posters) and kept the meeting as informal and personal as possible.
Another characteristic of Ecdysone Workshops is that they are not connected to a scientific society. The organizer is a scientist (or a group of scientists), who is obliged to collect enough money to realize the meeting and to give grants to young participants. However, it is obvious that the increasing number of participants will soon preclude this type of organization. The seven Ecdysone Workshops dealt with in this study have been visited altogether by 546 scientists from 24 different countries. They seldom visited successive workshops, only 26 visited two, and 5 visited three workshops without missing more than one workshop. Fluctuation among participants was rather high; from the 168 participants in Marburg Participants 100 80 1
a
60
40 20
I -
LVL 78 77
79
01
83
a5
87
b
Fig. 1. Number of participants (a) and of presentations (c) of the seven Ecdysone Workshops discussed. Since 1981 part of the presentations is conducted in the form of posters. (b) gives the relative proportions of participants from the five most relevant countries. 739
76
77
79
81
83
,B5
40
-
87
F 0-
&.
t f-
-80
functions
Chemistry Methods
Metabolism
Biosynthesis
Titer curves
Biological
Other hormones
Ecd. in Non-Arthropods
Receptors
Fig. 2. Grouping of the presentations of the Ecdysone Workshops into different fields. (a) The relative amount of all presentations (lectures and posters) to a subdivision of ecdysteroid research is given. (b) Development of single research groups. Four groups from different countries have been chosen that were present at most Ecdysone Workshops. Each field of research that was presented at a given workshop by a member of this group has been marked.
b
a
% of presentations
Some statistical comments on Ecdysone Workshops
401 II a
741
Tutzing 1977
-
number c$ coauthors
.i
% of presentations Marburg 1987
C
.j
Lectures
.
:
number of coauthors
32l-
CH
c
D
b
: 9 , .
F GB
4-
b
. I
numberof coauthors
1234567
-
_i/----
.
us 1
_
/----’ /-+---
_
Posters
.
CH D
:
F GB
Papers
n
:I :.
us i 1
2
‘-i--7---r
3-
4
number of
5
coauthors
Fig. 3. Communication at Ecdysone Workshops. (a) Comparison of the number of coauthors per presentation (lectures and posters) at the Ecdysone Workshops in Tutzing (1977) and in Marburg (1987). (b) Increase of number of coauthors during Ecdysone Workshops. All presentations (lectures and posters) were counted, mean and standard deviation are given. (c) Number of coauthors per presentation at the Marburg Ecdysone Workshop (1987). All presentations of the five countries with the highest participant number were counted and separated for lectures, posters, and papers to appear in the J. Insect Physiol. Special Workshop Issue. The dashed lines give the mean of all contributions of the respective type during the Marburg conference.
(1987), 102 attended their first Ecdysone Workshop. This is an indication of the high proportion of graduate and doctoral students among the participants, who are regularly encouraged to take part and are given help by travel grants. Although organized from the beginning as a European conference, the workshop has attracted the interest of American scientists since 1979 who in the meantime participate regularly, and now form the third largest group of participants. In addition participants from other continents took part; contributors from Australia, fiew Zealand, India, the Soviet Union, Algeria and Malawi were registered.
sone Workshops
into various groups to obtain an overview of the development of these subdivisions. Of course, one must keep in mind.that there is no proof that the Ecdysone Workshops ‘are representative for all groups worldwide dealing with ecdysteroid research. (In addition, the grouping procedure cannot follow absolute rulings.) The presentations given at Workshovs 2 to 8 were grouped in one of thYefollowing classes each: ::
FIELDS OF INTEREST OF THE PARTICIPANTS
Scientific study of the moulting hormones-as in other scientific disciplines-has been separated into different highly specialized subdivisions. Most research groups deal only with a limited number of special questions, some of which are thought to be more “popular” while others are seen as “not very popular” (of course molecular biology and genetechnology are very “in” at the moment). It seems worthwhile to arrange the presentations of the Ecdy-
(I) 6)
Methodological improvements; Chemistry of ecdysteroids and ecdysteroid conjugates; Metabolism, enzymes; Biosynthesis of ecdysteroids; Titre-curves in animals; Biological effects of ecdysteroids; Reports on other hormones; Ecdysteroids in non-arthropods, Application of ecdysteroids; Receptors; Genetics.
Figure 2 demonstrates that investigation of some questions follows a very specific time schedule, while (obviously) others are interesting and important all of the time: methodological questions were discussed to
G.
Kjiusr.a
Table 1. Ecdysone workshops and organizers NO. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Duration
Location Lille London Tutzing Strasbourg Bern Szeged Edinburgh Marburg
F GB D F CH H GB D
Organizer(s)
9-12 Sep 1975 11 NW 1976 8 Now10 NW 1977 30 Apr-2 May 1979 3 May-6 May 1981 23 Aug-25 Aug 1983 31 Mar-3 May 1985 30 Mar-2 Apr 1987
a great extent at the early workshops; while today they only represent about 6% of the presentations. The question of the chemical nature of ecdysteroid conjugates was obviously rather interesting in the mid-80s being of only minor importance today. In contrast, studies on ecdysone biosynthesis already started at the 1979 Workshop but are continously discussed. Besides new developments (e.g. geneticsincluding the modern techniques of molec@ar biology), there are some basic questions, which obviously still are important enough to be investigated by many groups today: metabolism and biological functions belong to those. It seemed interesting to trace the personal fate of some ecdysteroid research groups through the different facets of this endocrinological field of research. The presentations of four groups from different countries, which were present at most Workshops, were grouped and displayed (Fig. 2b). The groups started with different problems as indicated by their first presentations. All groups show work on other subjects in subsequent years and the number of coauthors (and of presentations from each group) usually increases. There is a certain tendency to work on “ecdysteroid-related” fields (like ecdysteroids in non-arthropods or other insect hormones).
AT ECDYSONE WORKSHOPS
COMMUNICATION
Scientific communication at Ecdysone Workshops takes place by introductory lectures from invited elder scientists, lectures from participants giving new (sometimes not yet fully established) results, posters (which are equivalent to lectures), and by informal discussions. In addition, the two last Workshops (Edinburgh 1985; Marburg 1987) came up with a special issue of an ecdysone-related scientific journal (Edinburgh: Insect Biochemistry; Marburg: Journal of Insect Physiology). Usually, more than one scientist is responsible for this “communication”. Analysis of the number of authors indicates that the number has increased since the first Workshop in 1975 (Fig. 3). The reasons for this are complex: scientific work today in most cases is teamwork; a large part of the
M. Durchon, P. Joly D. Whitehead P. Karlson, J. Koolman J. Hoffmann B. Lanzrein P. Maroy M. Bownes J. Koolman
methods used is so complex that a specialist is needed for single techniques, especially in such an interdisciplinary field as invertebrate endocrinology. In the past years most scientific groups have increased in number. Social and granting reasons today play an important role, too: no longer does only the name of the professor in charge appear on the title; young scientists need a large number of publications to even get the chance to apply successfully for grants. It is beyond the scope of this study to discriminate these reasons, however, some actual data on publication behaviour can be given. It should be included here that the same problem has already been investigated in a medical paper (Hecht, 1977). The author there came to the conclusion that “Biomedical research papers nowadays tend to be short, written by a bevy of authors, supported by a galaxy of grants, and lack the cachet of a personal touch.” In contrast to the reported number of coauthors from a medical journal (Hecht, 1977), where 5.75 authors per paper were counted in 1976, in the first Ecdysone Workshop of 1976 there was a mean of 2 authors per paper. However, this number has steadily increased (Fig. 3b). A comparison of the presentations from two Edcysone Workshops differing by 10 years, proves that the number of presentations in which only one scientist claims to be responsible has declined drastically. The mean number of coauthors is now around 3. A detailed description (Fig. 3c) shows, that French scientists differ markedly from their colleagues in other countries with respect to the number of coauthors mentioned. Of course this study cannot clarify whether this is due in general to larger groups or to a differing publication behaviour of French team-leaders. Remarkable, but not yet understood, is the fact that in most countries the number of postercoauthors is greater than the number of lecturecoauthors. REFERENCES
Hecht F. (1977) Et al. gets Nobel Prize. New Engl. J. Med. 2%, 1.
Hoffman J. A. (1986) Ten years of ecdysone workshops. Retrospect and perspectives. Insect Biochem. 16, 1-9.
0022-1910/88 $3.00 + 0.00
Copyright0 1988PergamonPressplc
Printed in Great Britain.All rightsreserved
SOME
STATISTICAL COMMENTS ECDYSONE WORKSHOPS
ON
G. KAUSBB Institut fiir Physiologische Chemie, UniversitLt Marburg, Deutschhausstr. 1-2, D-3550 Marburg. F.R.G.
HISTORYAND
DEVELOPMENT
Edcysone Workshops originate from an idea by David Whitehead, who, in 1976, organized an Ecdysone Shop Talk: Progress Reports at the Royal Entomological Society in London. The one-day programme comprised 11 talks dealing with ecdysone metabolism, binding of ecdysone in different tissues and organisms, and first steps into genetics and molecular biology. It was followed one day later by the 6th Informal Meeting on Insect Hormones in which only scientists from the U.K. discussed their results on ecdysteroids and also on juvenile and peptide hormones. Later on a meeting entitled 1st International Colloquium of the CNRS on the Biosynthesis, Metabolism, and Mode of Action of Invertebrate Hormones, organized by M. Durchon and P. Joly in Lille (1975) was added to the list of Ecdysone Workshops and the (first) London workshop further on was counted as the “Second Ecdysone Workshop”. However, the character of the Lille meeting was totally different from that of the Ecdysone Workshops: it was a rather large meeting, at which ihvited lectures dealt with all aspects of invertebrate endocrinology. The “familiar” character of the Ecdysone Workshops was not reached, short notices were not accepted. Therefore, the conference in Lille is not further considered in this evaluation. In the following years, Ecdysone Workshops developed similarly to many other scientific conferences that took place in the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. The scientific outcome of these conferences has been summarized by Hoffmann (1986). Due to the increased number of students, of scientists, and of travel grants, the number of participants and of presentations grew steadily (Fig. 1). Only in Szeged, in 1983, was there a small decline, which might have been due to the fact that two conferences were held nearly simultaneously (The 3rd International Symposium of the Znternational Society of Invertebrate Reproduction in Tiibingen (F.R.G) and the 2nd International Colloquium of the CNRS on Biosynthesis, Mtabolism and Mode of Action of Invertebrate Hormones in Strasbourg, France). However, the reduced number of participants did not influence number (and quality) of the presentations (Fig. lc). In spite of the increasing number of participants and presentations, the organizers of the Ecdysone Workshops allowed for sufficient discussion time (by transferring some of the lectures to posters) and kept the meeting as informal and personal as possible.
Another characteristic of Ecdysone Workshops is that they are not connected to a scientific society. The organizer is a scientist (or a group of scientists), who is obliged to collect enough money to realize the meeting and to give grants to young participants. However, it is obvious that the increasing number of participants will soon preclude this type of organization. The seven Ecdysone Workshops dealt with in this study have been visited altogether by 546 scientists from 24 different countries. They seldom visited successive workshops, only 26 visited two, and 5 visited three workshops without missing more than one workshop. Fluctuation among participants was rather high; from the 168 participants in Marburg Participants 100 80 1
a
60
40 20
I -
LVL 78 77
79
01
83
a5
87
b
Fig. 1. Number of participants (a) and of presentations (c) of the seven Ecdysone Workshops discussed. Since 1981 part of the presentations is conducted in the form of posters. (b) gives the relative proportions of participants from the five most relevant countries. 739
76
77
79
81
83
,B5
40
-
87
F 0-
&.
t f-
-80
functions
Chemistry Methods
Metabolism
Biosynthesis
Titer curves
Biological
Other hormones
Ecd. in Non-Arthropods
Receptors
Fig. 2. Grouping of the presentations of the Ecdysone Workshops into different fields. (a) The relative amount of all presentations (lectures and posters) to a subdivision of ecdysteroid research is given. (b) Development of single research groups. Four groups from different countries have been chosen that were present at most Ecdysone Workshops. Each field of research that was presented at a given workshop by a member of this group has been marked.
b
a
% of presentations
Some statistical comments on Ecdysone Workshops
401 II a
741
Tutzing 1977
-
number c$ coauthors
.i
% of presentations Marburg 1987
C
.j
Lectures
.
:
number of coauthors
32l-
CH
c
D
b
: 9 , .
F GB
4-
b
. I
numberof coauthors
1234567
-
_i/----
.
us 1
_
/----’ /-+---
_
Posters
.
CH D
:
F GB
Papers
n
:I :.
us i 1
2
‘-i--7---r
3-
4
number of
5
coauthors
Fig. 3. Communication at Ecdysone Workshops. (a) Comparison of the number of coauthors per presentation (lectures and posters) at the Ecdysone Workshops in Tutzing (1977) and in Marburg (1987). (b) Increase of number of coauthors during Ecdysone Workshops. All presentations (lectures and posters) were counted, mean and standard deviation are given. (c) Number of coauthors per presentation at the Marburg Ecdysone Workshop (1987). All presentations of the five countries with the highest participant number were counted and separated for lectures, posters, and papers to appear in the J. Insect Physiol. Special Workshop Issue. The dashed lines give the mean of all contributions of the respective type during the Marburg conference.
(1987), 102 attended their first Ecdysone Workshop. This is an indication of the high proportion of graduate and doctoral students among the participants, who are regularly encouraged to take part and are given help by travel grants. Although organized from the beginning as a European conference, the workshop has attracted the interest of American scientists since 1979 who in the meantime participate regularly, and now form the third largest group of participants. In addition participants from other continents took part; contributors from Australia, fiew Zealand, India, the Soviet Union, Algeria and Malawi were registered.
sone Workshops
into various groups to obtain an overview of the development of these subdivisions. Of course, one must keep in mind.that there is no proof that the Ecdysone Workshops ‘are representative for all groups worldwide dealing with ecdysteroid research. (In addition, the grouping procedure cannot follow absolute rulings.) The presentations given at Workshovs 2 to 8 were grouped in one of thYefollowing classes each: ::
FIELDS OF INTEREST OF THE PARTICIPANTS
Scientific study of the moulting hormones-as in other scientific disciplines-has been separated into different highly specialized subdivisions. Most research groups deal only with a limited number of special questions, some of which are thought to be more “popular” while others are seen as “not very popular” (of course molecular biology and genetechnology are very “in” at the moment). It seems worthwhile to arrange the presentations of the Ecdy-
(I) 6)
Methodological improvements; Chemistry of ecdysteroids and ecdysteroid conjugates; Metabolism, enzymes; Biosynthesis of ecdysteroids; Titre-curves in animals; Biological effects of ecdysteroids; Reports on other hormones; Ecdysteroids in non-arthropods, Application of ecdysteroids; Receptors; Genetics.
Figure 2 demonstrates that investigation of some questions follows a very specific time schedule, while (obviously) others are interesting and important all of the time: methodological questions were discussed to
G.
Kjiusr.a
Table 1. Ecdysone workshops and organizers NO. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Duration
Location Lille London Tutzing Strasbourg Bern Szeged Edinburgh Marburg
F GB D F CH H GB D
Organizer(s)
9-12 Sep 1975 11 NW 1976 8 Now10 NW 1977 30 Apr-2 May 1979 3 May-6 May 1981 23 Aug-25 Aug 1983 31 Mar-3 May 1985 30 Mar-2 Apr 1987
a great extent at the early workshops; while today they only represent about 6% of the presentations. The question of the chemical nature of ecdysteroid conjugates was obviously rather interesting in the mid-80s being of only minor importance today. In contrast, studies on ecdysone biosynthesis already started at the 1979 Workshop but are continously discussed. Besides new developments (e.g. geneticsincluding the modern techniques of molec@ar biology), there are some basic questions, which obviously still are important enough to be investigated by many groups today: metabolism and biological functions belong to those. It seemed interesting to trace the personal fate of some ecdysteroid research groups through the different facets of this endocrinological field of research. The presentations of four groups from different countries, which were present at most Workshops, were grouped and displayed (Fig. 2b). The groups started with different problems as indicated by their first presentations. All groups show work on other subjects in subsequent years and the number of coauthors (and of presentations from each group) usually increases. There is a certain tendency to work on “ecdysteroid-related” fields (like ecdysteroids in non-arthropods or other insect hormones).
AT ECDYSONE WORKSHOPS
COMMUNICATION
Scientific communication at Ecdysone Workshops takes place by introductory lectures from invited elder scientists, lectures from participants giving new (sometimes not yet fully established) results, posters (which are equivalent to lectures), and by informal discussions. In addition, the two last Workshops (Edinburgh 1985; Marburg 1987) came up with a special issue of an ecdysone-related scientific journal (Edinburgh: Insect Biochemistry; Marburg: Journal of Insect Physiology). Usually, more than one scientist is responsible for this “communication”. Analysis of the number of authors indicates that the number has increased since the first Workshop in 1975 (Fig. 3). The reasons for this are complex: scientific work today in most cases is teamwork; a large part of the
M. Durchon, P. Joly D. Whitehead P. Karlson, J. Koolman J. Hoffmann B. Lanzrein P. Maroy M. Bownes J. Koolman
methods used is so complex that a specialist is needed for single techniques, especially in such an interdisciplinary field as invertebrate endocrinology. In the past years most scientific groups have increased in number. Social and granting reasons today play an important role, too: no longer does only the name of the professor in charge appear on the title; young scientists need a large number of publications to even get the chance to apply successfully for grants. It is beyond the scope of this study to discriminate these reasons, however, some actual data on publication behaviour can be given. It should be included here that the same problem has already been investigated in a medical paper (Hecht, 1977). The author there came to the conclusion that “Biomedical research papers nowadays tend to be short, written by a bevy of authors, supported by a galaxy of grants, and lack the cachet of a personal touch.” In contrast to the reported number of coauthors from a medical journal (Hecht, 1977), where 5.75 authors per paper were counted in 1976, in the first Ecdysone Workshop of 1976 there was a mean of 2 authors per paper. However, this number has steadily increased (Fig. 3b). A comparison of the presentations from two Edcysone Workshops differing by 10 years, proves that the number of presentations in which only one scientist claims to be responsible has declined drastically. The mean number of coauthors is now around 3. A detailed description (Fig. 3c) shows, that French scientists differ markedly from their colleagues in other countries with respect to the number of coauthors mentioned. Of course this study cannot clarify whether this is due in general to larger groups or to a differing publication behaviour of French team-leaders. Remarkable, but not yet understood, is the fact that in most countries the number of postercoauthors is greater than the number of lecturecoauthors. REFERENCES
Hecht F. (1977) Et al. gets Nobel Prize. New Engl. J. Med. 2%, 1.
Hoffman J. A. (1986) Ten years of ecdysone workshops. Retrospect and perspectives. Insect Biochem. 16, 1-9.