COMMENTARY Life in marginal lands

Death by the opposite sex

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LETTERS I BOOKS I POLICY FORUM I EDUCATION FORUM I PERSPECTIVES

LETTERS edited by Jennifer Sills

PAMELA PLOTKIN1* AND JOSEPH BERNARDO2 1

Department of Oceanography and Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Marine Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. 2Department of Biology and Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Marine Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

References 1. G. Taubes, Science 256, 614 (1992). 2. B. J. Gallaway et al., “Kemps’ ridley stock assessment project final report” (2013); www.gsmfc.org/publications/Miscellaneous/

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Fueling Innovation M. MCNUTT’S EDITORIAL “WHAT AWAITS THE new NSF director” (6 December 2013, p. 1145) highlights the high stakes in Washington’s budgetary and policy crosscurrents. McNutt underscores the sad fact: “Basic research” is hurting. One crucial question is whether the National Science Foundation (NSF) can continue to hold its “basic” banner high. Recall 1965 Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman’s powerful admission: “Physics is like sex; sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” A great country must support its geniuses, and the United States continues to thrive because we have. NSF must foster the next generation of world-class talent and those with originality in every field. Does Congress want only practical outcomes, and right away? If so, American science may suffocate. Prioritizing mostly short-term, conventional paths is a bad national strategy for research. As McNutt wisely argues, a second critical institutional question now is NSF’s independence. Independence means selecting fertile fields and supporting the best-of-thebest investigators. NSF’s quality controls, so well managed in the past, must be sustained, not undermined.

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IN DECEMBER, AS WE CELEBRATED THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT and all of its accomplishments, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) terminated support for the recovery of an icon: the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii). This sea turtle nearly slipped into oblivion in the 1980s, and controversial tactics were used to save the species (1). The Bi-National Recovery Plan for the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle Program, supported largely by USFWS since 1978, worked to protect the turtles, their eggs, and their offspring at their primary nesting beaches in Mexico. As a result of these efforts, the number of nesting females increased exponentially from only a couple of hundred turtles in 1985 to nearly 10,000 turtles in 2009. This is one of USFWS’s greatest conservation successes. Unfortunately, the recovery of the Kemp’s ridley has come to an abrupt halt. Since 2009, the population increase has slowed substanNesting Kemp’s ridley sea turtle. tially (2); the slowing rate correlates spatially and temporally with multiple natural and anthropogenic stressors in the Gulf of Mexico. Kemp’s ridley requires continued monitoring and research to assess the impacts of these stressors. Calls for better science in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill have highlighted the need to continue monitoring sea turtle nesting beaches to provide data such as nest counts and other demographic parameters that are essential to population assessments (3). Similar recommendations were made by a National Academy of Sciences study (4). Scientists and leaders of nongovernmental organization and industry will meet in November 2014 to develop a plan for continued monitoring and to carry forward the efforts begun by USFWS almost 40 years ago (5). The ridley case study exemplifies broader findings of both the efficacy of research and management funding for pulling species back from the brink of extinction (6, 7) as well as the apparent trend of stagnant or diminishing funding levels (8, 9). A recent analysis (7) shows that sadly, global expenditures on biodiversity conservation are woefully inadequate overall and uneven; nations that underfund conservation research relative to their expected capacity to do so also show a growth in the extinction status of their mammal faunas over a 12-year period beginning in 1996. International financial flows to underfunding nations are crucial to stem biodiversity loss (7), a conclusion that is highly relevant to the ridley as well.

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Kemp%20Ridley%20Stock%20Assessment%20 Report%20Final%20June%2027%202013.pdf. K. A. Bjorndal et al., Science 331, 537 (2011). National Academy of Sciences, “Assessment of sea-turtle status and trends: Integrating demography and abundance” (2010); www.nap.edu/catalog/12889.html. Second International Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle Symposium, Brownsville, TX, 18 to 19 November 2014 (www.kempsridley.info). P. J. Ferraro et al., J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 54, 245 (2007). A. Waldron et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 12144 (2013). V. J. Bakker et al., Conserv. Lett. 3, 435 (2010). Anonymous, “State of financing for biodiversity: Draft global monitoring report 2012 on the strategy for resource mobilization under the Convention” (2012); www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/cop/cop-11/information/ cop-11-inf-16-en.pdf.

CREDIT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Sea Turtle Funding Dries Up

LETTERS “The public interest requires doing today,” said 18th-century British statesman Edmund Burke, “those things that men [and women] of intelligence and good will would wish, 5 or 10 years hence, had been done.” At a time when spectacular research opportunities exist and when global competition rises, our engine of innovation—the science and technology that drive economic success—is sputtering. Protecting NSF’s traditional responsibility provides a major component of the fuel we need. RODNEY W. NICHOLS Former Executive Vice President, The Rockefeller University, President and CEO emeritus New York Academy of Sciences, S&T Consulting, New York, NY 10028, USA. E-mail: rod. [email protected]

Research Tax Credits: An Important Tool IN HIS NEWS & ANALYSIS PIECE ON THE LAPSE of the U.S. research and experimentation (R&E) tax credit (“U.S. tax credit: Boondoggle or boon for research?,” 3 January, p. 13), D. Malakoff quotes Citizens

for Tax Justice advocates who argue that we might be better off “if Congress killed the credit and used the money for targeted, direct research grants.” While we do not defend the credit in its current form, we believe (and have recently explained) that optimal innovation policy requires a mixture of financial incentives for research and development, including tax credits as well as other tools such as grants, patents, and prizes (1). Targeted research grants are effective only when government decision-makers can obtain reliable information about the costs and benefits of potential research projects. For many new technologies, the government is at a comparative disadvantage when it comes to picking winners, and market signals may provide a more accurate proxy for social benefits. Under these circumstances, incentives such as tax credits may be preferable to grants. Because tax credits only refund a portion of research expenses, they are generally used in combination with private investment and do not displace the role of markets in allocating resources. Tax credits might appear inferior to patents as a way to leverage private information

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because tax credits impose a higher cost on the federal budget, but this disadvantage is illusory. The reward to innovators from patents comes from higher prices on patented products, and these higher prices impose a “shadow patent tax” on consumers comparable to the more transparent taxes that fund tax credits, grants, or prizes. This is not to say that the current implementation of the R&E tax credit is ideal, but we think that tax credits play an important role in our innovation policy portfolio. DANIEL J. HEMEL1 AND LISA LARRIMORE OUELLETTE2* 1

Washington, DC 20002, USA. 2Yale Law School Information Society Project, New Haven, CT 06511, USA. *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Reference 1. D. J. Hemel, L. L. Ouellette, Texas Law Rev. 92, 303 (2013).

The Changing Role of Medieval Women IN HIS PERSPECTIVE “WOMEN, FERTILITY, AND the rise of modern capitalism” (25 October 2013, p. 427), A. Alesina correctly pointed

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LETTERS to the importance of the Black Death, alongside new Protestant ideas, in transforming Late Medieval European economies. He and other economic historians have noted that the Black Death substantially reduced the population of rural producers, bringing better returns to labor by comparison with earlier periods. Alesina also argues that women’s fertility decreased as their labor in the fields increased. Alesina did not mention the export industry or social unrest, both of which contributed to economic changes and the status of women during this time. In the 14th century, England was becoming a major exporter of high-quality wool products. Initially, the benefits from these exports were enjoyed by the elite. However, centralized control of production was inefficient, and there was little to motivate their obligated labor force (1). Raw wool export also was increasingly supplanted by more local cloth production (2). The changing wool economy drew more female producers into the labor force. Women took jobs in weaving, basic production, and the growing service economy. The social unrest that characterized this

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period also contributed to women’s changing roles. Growing commerce brought new opportunities for women, not only as producers, but also as marketers. As E. P. Thompson pointed out (3), women were often the leaders in riots in the marketplaces because they were more involved in market transactions than men, they understood market conditions in detail, and they had much to gain from institutionally improved market conditions.

author on the relevant 1998 paper. The HTML and PDF versions online have been corrected.

RICHARD E. BLANTON

News & Analysis: “Sleep: The brain’s housekeeper?” by E. Underwood (18 October 2013, p. 301). The article should have stated that amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s disease build up outside, not inside, neurons. The HTML and PDF versions online have been corrected.

Department of Anthropology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

References 1. R. Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social History (The Hambledon Press, London, 1985). 2. R. Britnell, Britain and Ireland 1050–1530: Economy and Society (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2004). 3. E. P. Thompson, Past Present 50, 115 (1971).

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS News & Analysis: “Cavefish study supports controversial evolutionary mechanism” by E. Pennisi (13 December 2013, p. 1304). The story stated that Susan Lindquist and “colleagues” were the first to propose that Hsp90 acts as an evolutionary “capacitor” by masking underlying mutations. In fact, Suzannah Rutherford was the first and only other

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Policy Forum: “International cooperation on human lunar heritage” by H. R. Hertzfeld and S. N. Pace (29 November 2013, p. 1049). The phrase “reinforced and formalized” was missing from the sentence: “Article II of the OST reinforced and formalized the international standard that outer space, the Moon, and other celestial bodies would not be subject to claims of sovereignty from any nation by any means, including appropriation.” The HTML and PDF versions online have been corrected.

Letters to the Editor Letters (~300 words) discuss material published in Science in the past 3 months or matters of general interest. Letters are not acknowledged upon receipt. Whether published in full or in part, Letters are subject to editing for clarity and space. Letters submitted, published, or posted elsewhere, in print or online, will be disqualified. To submit a Letter, go to www.submit2science.org.

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