What it means to be educated

I have recently become a fan of Steven Pinker. His Wikipedia page tells you who he is and if you like, youtube him to find some remarkable lectures, specially the one on why we use swear words. But this post is about his eloquent and precise definition about what it means to be an educated person.

There is a big time controversy that was generated by a provocative article in the magazine New Republic "Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League". In response to this Steven Pinker wrote a great piece "The Trouble With Harvard". In this article, he gives a wonderful definition of an educated person.

"I think we can be more specific. It seems to me that educated people should know something about the 13-billion-year prehistory of our species and the basic laws governing the physical and living world, including our bodies and brains. They should grasp the timeline of human history from the dawn of agriculture to the present. They should be exposed to the diversity of human cultures, and the major systems of belief and value with which they have made sense of their lives. They should know about the formative events in human history, including the blunders we can hope not to repeat. They should understand the principles behind democratic governance and the rule of law. They should know how to appreciate works of fiction and art as sources of aesthetic pleasure and as impetuses to reflect on the human condition.
On top of this knowledge, a liberal education should make certain habits of rationality second nature. Educated people should be able to express complex ideas in clear writing and speech. They should appreciate that objective knowledge is a precious commodity, and know how to distinguish vetted fact from superstition, rumor, and unexamined conventional wisdom. They should know how to reason logically and statistically, avoiding the fallacies and biases to which the untutored human mind is vulnerable. They should think causally rather than magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from correlation and coincidence. They should be acutely aware of human fallibility, most notably their own, and appreciate that people who disagree with them are not stupid or evil. Accordingly, they should appreciate the value of trying to change minds by persuasion rather than intimidation or demagoguery."

I'll try to keep updating this post to provide some web resources that I've found, which one can use to actually educate themselves..

"13-billion-year prehistory of our species": Big History Project. and the talk.
"basic laws governing the physical and living world": This is the all the things taught in the high school science class.. Can be learned online from Khan Academy.
"diversity of human cultures": .......Quite tough.

"major systems of belief ": Religion, not a big fan!!

 "principles behind democratic governance and the rule of law": Random reading on Wikipedia!!

"clear writing and speech": A very helpful and short video on writing is here. 

"think causally rather than magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from correlation and coincidence": Difficult concept to convey...

Going beyond your biological capability to understand Biology

The multicomponent system that's our body (or other multicellular organism), requires a much more sophisticated brain than the one we are endowed with to comprehend and understand. The natural selection, through which our brain has evolved required only simple two or three component analysis and intuitive understanding our world. To make sense of our surrounding and survive within the environment, it only had to evolve, compute and analyze a small number of variables that are sensed by our limited sensory systems. And as pointed out by the physicists and cosmologists, our sensory system is quite limited in sensing only a very small spectrum of signals. Except for the chemical senses (smell and taste), which is responsible for detecting complex chemicals of different varieties, our auditory and visual capacities are very limited in sensing the electromagnetic wave and sound wave spectrum. Furthermore, we only use maximum three sensory inputs at one time to compute and interpret any object that we encounter. So, our brain has not developed abilities to handle multi-component analysis and interpretation. This leads to a very common natural behavior of profiling and trying to find patterns and use previous understanding of the detected pattern to predict its behavior. A great example is our common understanding of quantum mechanics. Since its discovery followed by successful application in everyday technology, it has been one among many difficult concepts of physics to comprehend and understand by common people, because it deals with a microscopic world that none of our sensory system allow us to delve into. We have developed sensors and detectors, which enormously extends our senses, but our brain is not equipped to handle them resulting in the lack of general understanding and appreciation of these profound concepts.

I'd argue that the understanding of biology is now facing the same challenges. Due to historical reasons and partly because of its complexities, there was a large push to study simple life forms so that we can understand the basic common principles of life. We studied viruses, bacteria, worms, flies etc. However, due to the evolutionary origins of each species that we have studied and the natural selection that have shaped them, only a handful of principles can be applied to humans that we want to study most. In fact the most used model organism to understand human physiology and diseases has been mouse, and these days, in the field arguments are raging why a laboratory mouse, even a humanized mouse is not a very good model. On top of which add the various genetic and physiological differences we all have as individuals - the path forward looks quite abysmal. And it is the humans and the improvement of humanity is one of the most coveted goals of biology.

This brings me to my final point: why we need to go beyond our brain's capacity. Modern biology is now endowing us to decipher and sense extraordinarily large volume of information about various integral parameters of life in the form of genetic, behavioral and clinical information. It is like the revolution in ground and space telescope technology to revolutionize the modern astronomy and provide us with a better understanding of the origin and the fate of the universe. But processing and interpreting this information is beyond our poor brain's capacity. Therefore, the only way out is to change the approach. We may need a new visionary in the likes of Charles Darwin, with superior metal ability, or use computational model approach. What I'd envision that there could be an empirical computational model that can be built, where all the known parameters can be included and the rate constants for their interactions can be constantly improved upon to reflect the reality. Some such models have been created and have been shown their utility in explaining single signaling pathway outcomes and at the single cell level. However, these ultimate models have to be built based on inputs from all biologists using wiki principles. They have to be peer reviewed and curated for including information on interaction rate constants. I think the most difficult part of this effort/initiative would be the funding mechanism. There is no chance for a for profit organization that would fund such initiative. Therefore, it has to be funded by the government/s and in the scope of something similar to a Manhattan Project in biology. In my mind, it is probably the only way to make sense of biology and generate verifiable outcomes, which can ultimately benefit humanity and handle complex diseases such as cancer.                     

Raka's 16th Birthday..

Why I use Facebook

Today it suddenly occurred to me why I use and would continue to use Facebook. A common question that comes up in discussion about the new wave of social networking, "who cares about what you are doing right now". Isn't it presumptuous to think that your FB friends have time to learn and think about your latest headache, or if you sneezed 5 times this morning!! In other words, it may kind of seem like bragging sometime when we post some sily good news, rather lack of modesty. The question of limits of privacy has also been raised. .

I've also wondered about the question FB poses "What's on your mind?" Absolutely Nothing!! Why should I tell you, Isn't thoughts are supposed to be the ultimate private property in modern civilization?

But now I realize what it does - maintain a passive connection and communication with people. Before FB it always took either a letter, phone call or e-mail to exchange news and our status in life. people wrote long letters developing this as a literary art form. But, eventually the time between replies for letters, e-mails increases. Finally dropping down to no communication. FB does not let that happen. It took efforts to keep in touch with old friends and acquaintances. FB has reduced that effort. Although last time I had seen/spoke to some of my friends (Moumita/Sudipto) was several years ago, I know the name of their children and I've seen their picture. So Before FB I'd have probably not called or thought of dropping by to their places in case I was in town. But now because of FB I don't feel so distant. I wouldn't feel awkward of calling them if I'm in town and probably think of drooping by if given a chance!!

Favorite Quote

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

- Albert Einstein

Doing Science.. (Contd..)

Just read an extraordinary piece by Dug Green (Editorial Board Member Cell) and could not help but share some really great comments he made in the article (link attached at the end of this).

Most of the time our experiments do not work. "There is an important reason for this failure of perfectly logical ideas to translate into results, .... Life is not logical, because living things are not designed. Any biological system is a cobbled-together, makeshift affair that once upon a time happened to work better than some other contraption, so that it was reproduced and subsequently built upon. All biology in this view of life is an historical accident. And it is for this reason (among others, as we will see) that our experiments so often fail. Life does not yield to logic. I couldn't agree more.

Where do the great ideas come form? "You are going to hate the answer: Read. A lot. Read everything you find interesting, inside and outside your field, and then read everything else. By read I do not mean look at the abstract (although that is a start) or download the PDF (ditto). ...Creativity, as near as we can tell (I've read about this), emerges from a combinatorial process in which bits of information are rearranged and extrapolated at a subconscious level think of it as a conceptual smoothie sloshing around in your brain. Then, when you happen to think about something you have noticed in the lab, wondered about in the literature, or worried about late at night (you do this, right?), there emerges an aha that might explain something that has never been explained before. (How do you know it hasn't been explained before? Because you did the reading!) This only works if there is a lot of information oozing around in the blended brain smoothie. And by the way, reading is pretty relaxing, so think of it as stress relief (if reading stresses you out, it might be a good time to reconsider your career choice)."

Fitness of people to continue science as career. "Many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and even some faculty got into this business without fully realizing how hard it is, and at some point, you may decide that continuing in this mad pursuit just isn't for you. You need to know that this is fine. Hopefully, you began this path because you like science, and if you dislike being a scientist, it need not follow that you no longer like science. There are a great many ways to use the skills you have acquired, both practical and intellectual, in pursuing other careers. I encourage you to explore those other options at the earliest opportunity. But if you are going to be a scientist anyway, then decide to do it. In the words of a small, green philosopher, Do or do not. There is no try." I discussed this before here.

Excerpts from an article by Douglas R. Green, in Molecular Cell, Volume 40, Issue 2, 176-178, 22 October 2010.

My Dad

Today is the first Father's day I'm spending without wishing my father, Mr. Rabindra Narayan Sarkar, a "Happy Father's Day". I lost him last November. We all knew this was coming; a chronic COPD had been decaying his lungs slowly. But when the call came it felt surreal. In spite of living continents apart, I was lucky enough to be able to be at his bedside, and let him know that I was there. It had always been difficult for him to accept the idea that he might not see me when the time came. At the end of my last several trips to India he reminded me that he might not see us again. But despite his worries, I was able to meet him several times in last few years, talked to him from time to time and wished him happy father’s day once a year. So this morning when Raka, my daughter wished me “happy father’s day”, it dawned on me that I won’t be calling home this morning. Instead this will be my tribute.

My father, Rabindra Narayan Sarkar or Rabi (should be pronounced as Robi – the sun) was quite an ordinary man. Born 1938, in a village in West Bengal, India grew up and spent his whole life in Salkia – a suburb of Calcutta. Having lost his mother at seven, he and my uncle, who was five at that time, were primarily raised by their father in a joint family with their uncle and aunt of very modest means. He was a good student, finished college with a bachelor degree in biological sciences and went to become a homeopath doctor. Although he was not able to finish his degree due to financial hardships, he informally practiced homeopathy among family and neighbors, and was quite popular at that. Following his marriage to my mom at his early thirties, he essentially spent the rest of his life running our family business, attending to the needs of our extended joint family and raising me. Never travelled anywhere outside WB, not really had a lot of hobbies except occasional singing, till we got a TV. He really enjoyed watching TV sitcoms and could not finish the day till he solved the Bengali crossword puzzle in the newspaper. For last several years our family subscribed to two daily newspapers to keep his passion for crossword puzzle going. He was quite sharp and intelligent; I remember my amazement at his remarkable ability to quickly perform arithmetic calculations. He was always a very nice man, never had any misgivings with anybody, always respected for his good manners, and never even had a single fight with my mom. I was reminded of this remarkable nature of him during his funeral where so many people came and told me how he had touched their life at some point.

My greatest debt to my father has been that he had never forced me to do anything. Except for forcing me to study every evening during my primary and middle school days, he never prompted me to go on a particular career path. His words had always been ‘do whatever you think is right’. It was him with support from my uncle and my cousin brother I was able to escape responsibilities of our family business and pursued my interest in science and went away to do PhD. He missed me terribly, but it made him very proud – asked me about my new publications every time I talked to him. It seemed silly at times, but now I know why he kept asking for it. He fought the emptiness of my glairing absence with some news of my accomplishments. So that he did not feel abandoned, I’m doing something big which is worthwhile of his sacrifices. Otherwise he had to conclude that his only son is being selfish, which he could not tolerate from his beloved son.

“Happy Father’s day Bapi, I’ll be eternally grateful to you for the rest of my life.”

-Bapi.

Puerto Rico Trip

Evolution and Our Behavioral Bias

This morning did not start perfect, had been suffering from some throat issues, did not get good parking spot at work, but turned out to be very thought provoking since I read the Following article: Can Animals Be Gay? in NYT. This article discusses and challenges some of our biases on thinking about animal as well as our own behaviors and underlying assumptions. For my impatient and sound-bite consuming FB friends (who do not have time to read the original article) I’ll summarize some thoughts here.
1. Striking observation: In a Laysan albatross (Big Birds) colony in Hawaii, which are famously monogamous for life, one third of the couples have been found to be two-female pair. Why didn’t we found this before? Because male and female birds look same and nobody actually used genetic experiments to sex the pairs!!
2. This brings the second point about our behavior: We assumed that the bird-couples are male and female couples. Because, there is moral bias among common people, and in the scientific community, there is no discernable evolutionary advantage of spending efforts in a non-off-spring producing behavior; therefore, genes for these traits will be removed from the population. Any same-sex mating behavior that has been reported has been always considered as an aberration. In fact, the scientist who reported these results was asked many times if she was gay!!
3. Therefore, a fundamental concept of biology that evolutionary process removes any genes are not helpful for survival in the particular environment is being questioned.
4. The other question is why we, humans, are so biased? We cannot tolerate imperfections; we always cringe for order; everything has to fit to our grand-all-explaining theory; why do we have such moral superiority?

Doing Science..

“Don’t do science because you think it’s the right thing to do. Do it because you find it exciting.” - Harold Varmus..

This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. Ideal is what Varmus - one of my most favorite scientist/thinker of our time, said. But all of us who have come to do Science, do we all believe in that? For example, some of us, life and career has taken certain turns and we have ended up in the profession. Among this large group of people, some have found it to be exciting and fulfilling. More like an arranged marriage, where you have gotten married first, loved your spouse later. Those have at least found love. But for a number of unfortunate ones, it becomes a job to maintain livelihood. This actually is not bad considering the parks, like very flexible working hours, occasional free travel to conferences etc. Of course you have to put up with poor pay scale. But as long as the grant money is flowing, it is not a bad life. But to what end? It is believed that the recession does not affect education or health care industries. But, eventually the revenue shortfall is likely to catch up with the research funding and we may end up in an unsustainable situation.

For the unfortunate ones among us caught in this, it would become very painful. Because, this profession does not let you develop a lot of other marketable skills. The only option left is teaching. I personally think it is a very rewarding profession. But, the trick is to land a reasonably stable job. Let's start with the Universities. Big universities generally do not hire people for teaching only positions. For a tenure-track position in any top to mid-level universities, the candidate has to have some research, which means grant. Even for four year collages, they look for teaching experience, and some research experience, which generally is not very compatible with high powered health-sciences research, because the typical health-science research is not compatible with undergraduate research that they are looking for. More appropriate for them is general basic biology research. So, what does that leave us with? My thoughts are following:

For the ones, who really find doing science is the most exciting thing that you can do with your life, go for it. If you are a post-doc or a Ph.D. student, find your area of research and develop your expertise in that small area. Your initial training should be in a lab where you will have plenty of access of your PI. Find a mentor with whom you can find a connection, your mentor should be able to get you excited. Then move to a big name lab in your field, where your PI's name can take you further. Don't change your field during your post-doc, unless you are willing to spend longer in your training. Have a very focused goal to develop your own grant. Because during the job application/interview, you have to have a very well developed fundable research proposal.

If you are like me, who got into science because that’s where life events took you to and later on grew into it and found exciting, you should follow the above advices as soon as possible or it will take you longer than it is needed, like me!! Two things you need to learn, how to be curious and how to pay attention to the detail.

Certain very useful numbers:

• Starting Salary: $ 80,000 to 90,000/yr for medical schools, for all other departments/divisions/schools, at least $ 10,000 less.
• Startup package: Excluding your salary, $400,000 to $600,000 for 3 yr. again for med schools, for others less.
• Complete Salary Support for 3 yr. afterwards, 30-70% depending on the reputation of the school, exceptional ones 0 % !! Rest, you need to cover from your grant.
• In case of dire financial situation, the university has the right to reduce your salary even if you are tenured, but failed to support yourself completely from your grant.
• For state universities these numbers are substantially lower.

Once again, it is not as hard as people say it is.

If you want to be in science to maintain a decent livelihood one very good option is to work in the industry. If you can manage to develop one set of expertise which is valuable to a pharmaceutical company, you would be a high value candidate. A lot of times these are technology oriented. My experience in this is all theoretical. But you should be ready to be very flexible in terms of your project. Another key issue is to develop very good connections and network. It is not very easy to land a big pharma job. More than 90 % of industry recruitment happens through network not via Nature/Science advertisements.

For the ones who happen to have a Ph.D. and doing post-doc, one under-explored possibility is technical writing/grant review/scientific management. NIH hires a lot of people in grant management field. But you have to remember something which I found here. A number of journals hire scientific writer editors which are worth exploring. Once again networking is the main key in theses options, but the pay scales are better or equal to med school levels mentioned above.

Further Resources:

Nature's guide for mentors
HHMI Lab Management
Breaking All the Rules
Follow career advice at Science Careers

A day at Pittsburgh Zoo

Washington DC Landmarks

How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children?

This is a very thoughtful Post from David Pogue..

Here was my response and thoughts on the topic:

David,

Fantastic piece. I’m glad to see your rational judgment about the internet danger. I would be wondering what the over-reacting mother would do about her child’s sex education. An interesting read would be Sex Ed for the Stroller Set by JODI KANTOR . Although there are horror stories like: Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World, and ‘My Space’ hoax ends with suicide of Dardenne Prairie teen , I do believe they are very limited in no. As a parent of pre-teen, I think it is most important to teach children the difference between right and wrong as early as possible. So that they can make the right judgment when exposed to such dangers. They should be made aware of the dangers of the online world in a similar way to other earthly dangers of living as soon as possible, so that they can protect themselves. The other aspect would be the parent education. Parents also need to be as fluent as possible with the online world of Blogging, Myspace, Facebook etc. There is absolutely no pride in making statements like, “My daughter can figure out photo e-mailing better than me”. Please, it just makes you look dumb and creates a far lager generation gap with the next generation.— Saumen Sarkar

A Day at the Aviary

Comments on Stephen Quake's Column on Science Funding

Link to the original Article

Thoughtful and wonderful. Great choice of topic and columnist, Olivia.

As a new faculty (haven't been a year yet) my feelings are very appropriately described by Dr. Quake. Since I've joined the new position, I've been telling people that it is exactly like a small business. The Institution gives you some capital (with strings attached) to start your business. They pick you, not always based on your scientific potential, more based on your success in obtaining funding - if you have been lucky to post-doc with a scientist in an Institution where your mentor and the Institution allowed you to write small grants and made supporting commitments. Then the real struggle begins - you’re essentially expected to establish, sell and turn a profit (in the form of indirect costs from your grants) back to the investor (the Institution) within let’s say between two to three years. I personally do not know a lot about typical venture capital funded start up businesses, but tend to think that these are some quite extreme parameters that a new faculty is expected to operate. This excludes all other faculty related commitments – typically 15% of expected time.

Having complained about all that I do realize, and in fact cherish the fact, that above all “we get paid (albeit poorly) to pursue our hobbies”. There is typically no “boss”, and no regular work schedule. However, one aspect I find objectionable about some of the senior scientists/faculties. Some of us do not value the communication of our science part. I have heard very senior and excellent scientists say that there should be a mechanism where you just staple your papers and NIH should fund you. Two objections - first it is your responsibility to the society, which is funding your research, to communicate your science. Thus you are responsible to write simple well explained grants, so that people see the importance of your research. Second, it just shows blunt arrogance. How many Americans really know the name of NIH compared to NASA? Do they know that NIH’s annual budget is much higher than NASA? Why the country which spends highest amount of money in scientific research still have debates about evolution among common people? I think we scientists have really done a poor job of communicating life science research to the society.

As with other services, science has just become more and more expensive. With the advent of knowledge and discoveries, it always opens up more questions, more new topics of research. The list of interesting scientific problems always grows in geometric progression. On top of which, the amount of findings reported in a typical scientific paper grows with time. There is probably no journal which will now accept a paper reporting cloning and sequencing a gene! Thus, financially most of the times, the cost of a scientific paper published today is higher than five year ago just in terms of content generated. Therefore, it is not sustainable to practice science this way. This makes the determination of interesting project worth funding even more difficult. We do need to think about a different way to go forward. I don’t know what and how, but want put forth one idea: Biosphere. How about creating a portal for creative ideas in modern biology? I think there is a large no. of ideas, thoughts, that glimpses scientists' mind, and never get tested, because of practical limitations. But, there is someone, somewhere who may be able to test the idea or hypothesis. Therefore, the portal, which will primarily work by wiki principle, will provide people the chance to check out ideas, or get thought provoking facts. This can help in changing a large no. of me-too type experiments and papers and we will rest easy knowing that some of our radical new ideas might get tested and stop complaining about NIH funding.

The bottom line - Convenience

Convenience, or a false sense of convenience, is the most important thing that people want.Why did the explosion of blogging, podcasting etc., essentially content generation exploded in internet era? Part of it is of course ego satisfaction, as I had discussed before, but the other part is it has just become very easy and convenient. I think this should be the most important thing in any product design, marketing approach. I'm sure most marketing guru knows it, but it sometimes get lost in other complicated issues.

Several examples: E-mail - just because it was easy and convenient. Now, when other more convenient ways of communicating are becoming available e.g. texting, tweettering, people are slowly shifting. Think about why do we use all the abbreviations and shortcuts. Wikipedia has become one of the most referenced source, because, it is a lot more convenient to find info and refer to it than finding any other source. In fact our sense or perception of truth, I'm sorry to say, a lot of times depends on convenience. I can argue that one reason for Barack Obama's history making successful campaign was they were very effective in making it more convenient to organize, and get involved than before.

Am I sounding cynical? Well, I don't mean to. It is only because the word "Convenience" has some negative sleazy connotation. May be a better word/phrase would be "make it easy"....

The Shrinking God-o-sphere

As the scientific knowledge grows the unknown, all lumped in GOD shrinks...

Would there be a equilibrium? Not really..

Your Brain Lies To You !!

This would be very interesting - How we might be hardwired for perceiving facts

Your Brain Lies to you

With respect to my previous thought, loss of Editor, it may have real bad misinformation spreading. Which is very bad. Or on the other hand, Editors are not influencing the facts presented according to their bias, as discussed in the article, which could be quite good. We shall See....

It may provide some explanation of the observation reported in a recent paper. It claims that "gossip has a strong influence on the resulting behavior even when participants have access to the original information (i.e., direct observation) as well as gossip about the same information."

Therefore, if we are hardwired for perciving facts not directly observed, we will obviously pay more attention to gossip. Besically, we want to fit any observation to an already known model or explanation. Thus the job of a Scientist becomes even more difficult, to always be directed by the facts/observation not by previously known models.

Rethinking Democracy or Wishdom of Masses

Does Democracy really work ? or may be I should rephrase, does it work to take the whole socity or the mankind towards a better life?

Let's define: Opinion of masses controling the path forward - Democracy. I personally still think that it is so far the best way that we know and most successful as well, judging from the success of the western progress and recent progress of India/Brazil etc. Also, leaving in US for last 12 yrs. and learning and realizing the power of the polotical process has made me aware of the power of democracy in keeping the society rolling.

But, I'm starting to believe, that in order for the Democracy to work you need to have proper education. Good communication is absolutely necessary. Therefore, as technology pushes the boundaries of communication more and more, Democracy would work better and better.

On the other hand, no creative art can be created by democratic process, it is always done in a completely non-democratic manner. There is no art form which was created by a team of people through a democratic process, you always needed a director or a top boss to pick and choose from different ideas to achieve the final shape.

To continue.....

The Bio-Sphere Idea

How about creating a portal for creative ideas in modern biology? I think there are a large no. of ideas, thoughts, that glimpses scientists' mind, and never get tested, because of practical limitations. But, there is someone, somewhere who may be able to test the idea or hypothesis. Therefore, the portal, which will primarily work by wiki principle, where people can check out ideas, or get thought provoking facts, can help in changing a large no. of me-too type experiments and papers.

It is not to propose that me-too experiments are not necessary, or I'm pretending to be judge of the me-toos. It only, when better ideas are available, people will be intrigued or be more enthusiastic in carrying out better science.

Of course, it cannot be completely editor free. There has to be some kind of editorial intervention to remove profanity etc. and to determine policies for the ongoing forums, as well as for curation and categorization. But the basic premise will be a sharing of ideas that you might have thought of while reading a paper, listening to a seminar, talking to someone, which you may never be able to test or execute.

The contentious issue will be how to ascribe credit to the original thinker? Since, the contributor of the ideas are not going to carry out the ideas further out, they are assumed to be given up ownership of the idea. However, it will be the policy to expect acknowledgement. The editors, contributors and the staff will regularly scan the scientific literature, if they come up with findings, where the ideas posted in the "Bio-Sphere" were carried out without acknowledgement (of course you have to allow reasonable time limit e.g. 1 yr. after it was published in "Bio-Sphere"), it would be mentioned as the idea tested with links with the original posting, without the presumption that it was taken from "Bio-Sphere" without acknowledgement.