I kid you not.

Vivian Siegel is at the Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA (e-mail: [email protected]) It is up to each of us to help all the Sarah Palins of this world, and all the Joe the Taxpayers behind them, understand and appreciate the value of all kinds of research, both within and beyond our borders As the Editor of a journal focused on the use of model organisms to advance human health and a former fruit fly researcher, I took it a little personally when Alaska Governor Sarah Palin denounced fruit fly research: “...sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.” (Palin, 24 October 2008). I’d be preaching to the converted if I explained what is so wrong-minded about that attitude (but others have done so quite eloquently; see, for example, Hitchens, 2008; Palmer and Pringle, 2008), and I’d be naïve if I thought that it was an appreciation for the value of biomedical research in model organisms that drove record numbers to the polls on November 4th to elect Barack Obama as the 44th president of the USA, an office he will assume later this month. It wasn’t even what drove me to the polls – I had already voted by the time Palin made her declaration. Palin’s flippant attack on fruit fly research is not the first example of a politician deriding specific kinds of research. For example, a recent PLoS Medicine article (Kempner, 2008) describes a 2003 ‘public controversy’ in which members of congress questioned a number of NIH grants, many of which focused on certain aspects of sexual behavior, for their ‘medical benefit’. This led to a proposed amendment to the 2004 NIH appropriations bill, and then to a joint hearing of the US House Energy and Commerce Committee and the US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. No one lost NIH funding as a result of these deliberations, but according to Kempner, the controversy itself led to self-censorship: to protect themselves from future accusations, many of the scientists involved either changed their research focus, where they do it, or how they describe it to others. The 2003 controversy reminds us that publicly funded research is subject to governmental oversight, and that although we may be quick to dismiss the concerns of these politicians as ‘narrow’, ‘conservative’ or even ‘unappreciative of the value of research’, it is in the interest of ourselves and future generations to recognize the challenges and opportunities before us. We must learn to speak in a language that the public understands and help them appreciate the value of biomedical research. Engaging the public is challenging. As scientists, we are trained to recognize the limitations that might undermine our own conclusions, and it often feels very uncomfortable to present a simplified message. Furthermore, many nonscientists seem uneasy when the language and concepts get too ‘scientific’ and complicated, and seem to prefer ending the conversation to asking for clarification. Movement needs to come from both directions to bridge these gaps. In the long run, we desperately need a more educated and literate public. However, because many factions of our society benefit from the ignorance of our populace, there will be both individual and systematic resistance to these attempts. I remain optimistic, in part because of the expectation the internet has created for available, reliable information. Medical information is among the most highly sought after information on the web (second only to the weather, I am told) and I have been part of the movement to make that information publicly available. One of the criticisms of the public access movement is that the public can’t possibly appreciate complicated research questions; therefore, no benefit is gained by making research articles freely available. Interestingly, this