Dick Waring Oral History Interview - Part 2, September 26, 1997

Dick Waring: If we can't do that, it's not one of the options. The only other option is to base it on scientific principles, that you predict where you are going to find the owl, where you are going to predict where you are going to find these things, and what will happen if you change that. You have to change your philosophy from first principles to a modeling philosophy, and account for large changes in it before you go there and after you change things. That's better than observing and then telling, simply reporting, what you observed. I liked the observing, but you need the theory at the front end, and that takes a lot a work to develop a theory. You have to read very widely and very conceptually, and you have to think and you have to figure out where to try it, and sometimes you can't do it. Sometimes you're a decade away, just because the message like that can't be heard yet. Sometimes, you're not the person to do the theory. In physics, they don't ask the people that do the measurements of 00:01:00neutrons and these things, to theorize-- they just have to take measurements. In biology, we are supposed to be theorists, measuring people, and administrators. And guess what sometimes suffers? Usually the theory.

Max Geier: You say the LTER network is addressing some of those concerns?

Waring: Not by themselves, because it will take the right people. We knew this when we had the IBP, that we had to look to the theories method often outside our immediate field, or with people who that had lots of experience and who are no longer overly involved in measurements. It takes time to think. When you see the Andrews people writing text books, then, they have time to think. But, it takes six-and-a-half years of your life to write a text book, on sabbatical, 1100 references, you know each one. Well, it's great! It's the greatest learning 00:02:00experience you can do. But, it's something you can't do if overly involved with a huge number of graduate students and huge numbers of administrative needs and huge numbers of measurements. Because, how are you going to do it? You are already working 60 hours a week on this text book.

Geier: What you are saying it's a case of grant writing, the collecting of data, or teaching?

Waring: Or teaching, yeah.

Geier: What professor?

Waring: Trying to take breaks to think and revitalize yourself, and pause and see what you have after five years; that is integrative. Remember that is the only thing we are ever going to do that makes a difference. It's not going to be our new methods or, what's the German quote for science's advance by new methods, new ideas and funerals? Okay, funerals help a lot, but you could go 00:03:00back a hundred years. What I am telling you is nothing more than scientific philosophy sort of updated with really successful integration. What makes it different? Good ideas that are testable. Do they have to be right? No, they have to be interesting and important. Lots and lots of problems in the world are not yet clearly testable. Doesn't mean that they are not real problems. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be spending some money on it, but, if you're asking me, is that a really good investment for our best scientific talent in universities on problems that we are not quite sure what the theoretical basis is? And I'm saying, some is there, but we need the theory. And we need general models, and we need testable models in places where we haven't made the measurements yet, so we're not calibrating the models. We are testing our understanding of these things. Further away the better.

Geier: What you are saying, is that you haven't seen much of that taking place at the Andrews or following the Andrews group?

Waring: No, I wouldn't expect they could. Because of the terrible commitment in time and effort just to keep the Andrews moving. Now, a lot of them are interbedded with it so they can't really break away and get independent funding. You have to write a clean hypothesis, and you have to show the new methods that can be developed from that. Some of them can do comparison at other sites. But that compares morphology. There's nothing wrong with that, but it may not break the theory streak.

Geier: Can you give an example of people doing this kind of research you're talking about?

Waring: The guy that just got the award from the University of Minnesota. Little bitty seals, giraffes, and fertilizing, and doing those things. Doesn't mean he is right, but he's got some ideas and he's trying to test these things, and look at how many species you need before you are redundant. And what do a large 00:05:00number of species do in terms of when you have a drought. It's sort of a test. And, not everything has to be experimental. The other thing you begin to predict, let's say you go to tropical forest and it is a very infertile tropic forest with just nitrogen fixers and very low growth, and in those cases you say I would only expect very intelligent primates to be present. Now why would you say that? Because theory says that intelligent primates are the only ones to find fruits which is all that is edible and then call their buddies to find out, "Hey, the fruits over here." If it is a very fertile place, then you have lots of leaves on a half dozen trees that are edible. You don't need a big brain for that. Therefore, your primates in most cases and maybe more primates than in a richer place, those shouldn't have to be as bright. It doesn't have to be right, 00:06:00okay? It comes from the literature, but what an example.

It is examples like those that you give to your students with their own problem, they have a problem and you make them think, or you help them think. Well, give me a theory, what do you think is the key variable, what, were, how does it change? How would you test it? Let's go to the literature. That takes time. It takes a minimum of six months for a graduate student, usually a full year in this office, and talking and learning the field before you both feel comfortable that we can really test this. Sometimes, you have already done the work and it's a master's student. You have a journeyman opportunity; you are going to use these tools, this is going to come out of it, it will be interesting, you will have mastered these tools. That is a master's degree. That's the certification that you can do this, write it up, meet the deadline and we will give reasonable 00:07:00thanks. It is different than a Ph.D. Or, of course, that is different than my idea of a Ph.D. And I don't want you to run blind for five years like the British system does and say, well, if you do well - great, if not, tough. (Chuckle) Because we will lose some people from the Midwest that are still struggling with what is science. They are working hard and they are dedicated, but we forgot to introduce them to science. I do have a philosophy anyway, it is not a random drift is it.

Geier: Where were you from in Minnesota, by the way?

Waring: Ah, I worked out of Ely, and my wife is from Crookston.

Geier: I was born in Crookston.

Waring: So, you understand my Midwest. (Laughter)

Geier: Can you think of an institution that might embody some of the ideals that you have been talking about here?

Waring: Hubbard Brook, and The Ecosystem Center at Woods Hole [MA], particularly when I was there in '80, whenever it was. They had Jim Rollo and John Hobbie, so they had an oceanographer and a terrestrial ecologist that are administrators, trying to worry about money and people and contacts with Washington to make sure the opportunities are greased with good grants. They're also private institutions. And in this little bitty building, they will have a bunch of people that are all in soft money and they are all writing grants, and the secretaries, they're not called secretaries, but the administrative assistants 00:09:00are all involved. When a grant gets funded, everybody celebrates. Okay, they have post-docs in from universities, and they have graduate students working, and when they are writing stuff the senior scientists are helping the young scientists learn how to phrase it and write these grants. They focus on the hypothesis, which is a biological approach. Other people promise to your product. You know how to put the references in, and then just cheer when they get it funded. Well, they are all dependent on this soft money and they are all dependent on the next generation. And people pealing out of there have all worked in these collaborative relationships with other universities and other students, so they have a big network. They are doing teaching, and they have seminars every Friday, and they sometimes have the janitor come, because he found it very interesting. He would come and they would play music. It was sort of a weird group in an old wooden building. The library was 100 feet away, open 00:10:0024 hours a day, every day of the year, including Christmas, and books, journals were all lined as any biologist could figure it out, alphabetically, from the bottom floor to the top.

Geier: Hmm.

Waring: In summer, the whole thing fills up with all the scientists from the Ivy Leagues, wanting to come there and establish themselves in the first place. That is when all of these other people go to do their field work. So, they have it the nine months during the quiet times, so they can do lab work. That's my example right now. And they have a nice LTER thing at Harvard Forest that they are participating in. We work there, too. It's this little building in this unit of people, and watching them grow and spin off and go elsewhere and do well, and keep the contacts and bring in the new people; it is really exciting to see. I 00:11:00think a good scientific philosophy is there, good methods are there, and the esprit-de-corps or whatever you want to call it, is still there because it isn't too big and too loose. You see this really, really fine thing. If you get a chance, you should go sometime.

Geier: Yeah, if I do this much longer, I probably will. I was going to ask for you to characterize that system more as a mentoring process or more of a cooperative process?

Waring: It's mentoring. I had mentors. You can't be a mentor unless somebody has done it to you. How powerful it is early in your career, and how much difference it makes in how you think and who you work with, and you have all kinds of friends. The people you actually sign on to do this thing jointly with, you have to trust them. You don't have to take them home for dinner, but you have to 00:12:00trust them. They are going to keep their word and this is going to be fruitful, and preferably really exciting. And when that happens, you will never forget the interrelationship and neither will they. That doesn't always happen. Sometimes you have to work with that, but if you have a choice, that is what you work for.

Geier: You mentioned at one point, your mentor at Berkeley, but I don't think I got his name.

Waring: It's Ed Stone

Geier: Ed Stone

Waring: Yes Berkeley. And, Egolfs Macusis

Geier: How do you spell it?

Waring: E-g-o-l-f-s, Egolfs, Egolfs.

Geier: I want to make sure I have it spelled right.

Waring: He is Latvian. Pretty sure that is right. He was a scholar who spoke 00:13:00three languages. I had another guy, Jack Major, who I had originally came to work with me at Davis [UC]. He was another scholar that spoke three languages. So, I always felt like I was sort of an absolutely inadequate scholar and absolutely inadequate at languages, but I could see the value of both. I had a chance to go overseas, and I actually did speak and teach in German once. I love the library. I find things in the library that I can integrate and think about in a way that I can't just by traveling. I like to travel too. Stone ran a very 00:14:00large integrative project with his graduate students where they had all kinds of controlled environment chambers and all kinds of equipment, and I worked with those graduate students. I helped them and they helped me. He supported me because I was his TA in ecology. I was not getting my Ph.D. from him, he was just on my committee. But, he still supported me. He's 80ish.

Geier: Still alive, huh?

Waring: Yes, he is still alive, well, both of them are alive [Stone and Major], and I dedicated my part of the second book to them. There's other people, too. University of Washington, Richard Walker; he is a mentor. I helped develop with Brian Clearly, a model of a pressure chamber that came out to be very useful for taking the pulse of a tree and find out how much water stress it is under. Well, he asked us to build one and then he introduced me to a whole bunch of his 00:15:00German colleagues, because he really does speak German. And it ended up that I worked with two of them on my first sabbatical. So, that introduced me into 14 countries in Europe, and German things and the only article I ever published in German. So, there is Richard Walker and he is very active in the IBP. He was one of the big professors up there that I worked with.

Geier: At UW?

Waring: At UW, yeah. It really makes a difference. Us Midwest boys wouldn't do well if we hadn't run into these mentors.

Geier: I was just curious, the difference between this university [OSU] and 00:16:00University of Washington. Something about teaching, graduate degrees? Do you have any regrets that you came here?

Waring: My regrets are more that we have lost some key faculty and we never replaced them until very recently. One was in atmospheric science, we used to have a long time ago some very strong atmospheric science people right in the department here. One got a job and the other guy didn't get tenure, and for about 8 years there was nobody here to work with. Those at the University of Washington were harder to work with, but they had two of them. So, I was thinking at one time about a position up there in botany, because they had the talent and lots of money. What they didn't have there, and Jerry Franklin 00:17:00discovered right way, is a lot of tolerance for people that have completely different viewpoints, which we have here. Jerry and I used to argue a lot about his theories and my theories. But, there is a certain tolerance where my students aren't caught up in having to make a decision on whether to take that class or not take that class. They have always had a problem at University of Washington, particularly the College of Forestry, with in-fighting. I think it was the original dean that I knew. He encouraged this. And it was like, God, you should never encourage the faculty to in-fight. I mean, they are predisposed to do that for space and for students and for philosophy. Oh, you want to encourage it (chuckle) for money. Then Dale Cole became an associate dean, and Dale has a lots of problems in dealing with people. It just perpetuated until he retired 00:18:00this year. I mean, they still have a different dean, and that. I go up there and I love to talk to (Tom) Hinkley and Franklin and (Chad) Oliver, but it isn't equal.

We have our problems, too, particularly my philosophy that I would like to have more of a science department and move the management and extension over to forest resources. We originally split the departments in order to allow that to happen, but that is history and not many people want to be quoted either. (Chuckle) I just worry about the next generation of scientists in the department, because I can't worry about the next generation of extension agents. Bill Emmingham, I'm sure, is worried about it. I worry about seeing whether we can get these proven post-docs that are now around the country, including some here, into the department. This would include Mark Harmon, Barbara Yoder, I 00:19:00mean, they have over-proven themselves. It gets to be mental stress where you can't continue any longer unless you get up to a certain level of doing all these things without having nine months or five months of salary. They are proven. It is not a case of I wonder if they can work with our people? Gee, I wonder if they are good at writing grants? I wonder if they will graduate? They have already done it. It is what you get tenure for. And, they have already done it in spades with a couple, three million dollars, in grants.

So, I'm concerned how to get that those kinds of people into the department. Not necessarily in abundance, but we have had three or four retirements, Perry, Herman, Lavender, who've not been replaced. These are all full-time scientists. 00:20:00These weren't extension people. They were the guts, at least, the core group of the older generation of international scientists and travelers. There is no question that in their time they were scientists that made the Forest Science Department recognized. Then there is my generation, which includes Dave Perry, who I think I did mention. I am near retirement and [Mike] Newton's near retirement. All of this is good, if you believe in funerals. (Chuckle) But, for the next generation, there is going to be an underpinning of science in the general relation to NASA and NSF and global kinds of things. You've got to have those kind of people not advertised as an assistant professor position, when there is nobody left on the staff that does that. Phil Sollins is still here, we're down to the last one. The rest are soft money.

Geier: They keep on retiring and not replacing them.

Waring: So, you may have the same problem. They must have somebody teach four or five courses.

Geier: Well, we have been doing fairly well. Although at one time, we were nationally ranked in geography. One of the top ten. That was twenty years ago. And since then, it got down to three faculty and they almost didn't replace the last one.

Waring: It is interesting the normal life span of leadership, actual leadership, is about ten years, and of apparent leadership ideas, about 20 years.

Geier: I like that term of "apparent leadership."

Waring: Well if you ask all the deans in the country to rank these universities, they rank them from a ten-year heritage. They don't rank them for today. If you ask the graduate students that are recently out and the post-docs, they will rank them for today.

Geier: A lot of truth in that.