Who will replace Don Kennedy?

As the search for a replacement for Science editor Donald Kennedy gets underway, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the magazine's publisher, is keeping details of the search close to the vest, but several names have already become the subject of speculation.

AAAS President David Baltimore is chair of the search committee, according to a press release. The Association declined to say who is on the committee, how many people it includes, and how long the search might take. Kennedy has said he would remain in the post until a replacement is named. Even members of Science's editorial board are in the dark. "I don't have any idea who's on [the committee]," John Brauman, a Stanford University chemistry professor and member of the senior editorial board, told The Scientist.



Randy Schekman, University of California, Berkeley professor, and editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences told The Scientist he was asked to submit potential candidates to the search committee. Schekman would not reveal the names, but he said that two of his recommendations are European and four are American.

"One of the problems with the perception of Science, is that it is largely focused on American science," Schekman said. "My international colleagues prefer Nature for that reason."

Nearly all of Science's former editors-in-chief, including Daniel Koshland, who passed away last week, had been professors at US institutions.

Many also have held administrative responsibilities. "It's a job [for which] having some experience both running a large enterprise and understanding science journalism is really important," said Brauman. Kennedy had been commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration and president of Stanford University before joining the magazine as editor-in-chief.

Phil Sharp, a former member of the senior editorial board at Science and current professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said people like Shirley Tilghman (president of Princeton University), Nobel laureate Harold Varmus (former National Institutes of Health director and current president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center), his co-laureate J. Michael Bishop (chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco), and David Baltimore possess the qualities of an editor-in-chief.

Baltimore, for example, "has an outstanding history in science, he's been a leader of several significant policy issues in the country, and president of Caltech," Sharp said. And Bishop is "one of the most gifted writers that you'll find in science," he added.

Sharp said not to take his list too seriously, however. They all have jobs currently "that are sufficiently complex and demanding so they couldn't be the editor of Science and do that." And Sharp said he is not aware of the search committee's progress at AAAS, nor has he participated.

Still, Sharp is not the only one to think of Baltimore for the job. An editor at Science, who requested anonymity, also named Baltimore, and added Marcia McNutt, the president of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and member of Science's senior editorial board, to the list of those he expects will make the short list of possible candidates.

With the exception of McNutt, the common thread among them is a background in life sciences research, which is also the background of Kennedy and most of Science's former editors-in-chief.

But that's not a requirement for the job, Chris Somerville, a professor of plant biology at the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University and member of Science's senior editorial board, told The Scientist. "I could easily imagine someone coming in from a different discipline," such as engineering or the physical sciences, Somerville said.

For example, he said, people like Steve Chu, the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, or Freeman Dyson, a professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and author of several books for the general public, are physicists with broad interests across disciplines. These names are not expected candidates, but merely people who have the qualities the search committee might seek in an editor in chief, Somerville said, adding that he is not privy to the search committee's progress.

Whomever takes on the position will face the challenges of competing with publications like Nature and Cell, which have spun off new journals in recent years, while Science remains a singular entity, Schekman said. Additionally, Kennedy's tenure has seen a number of high profile paper retractions, including the Hwang cloning scandal and a snafu over the neurotoxic effects of the drug Ecstacy. "On the whole I would say it's a problem that needs to have attention paid to it," Brauman said. "And all the journals are concerned about [scientific misconduct]."

Still, Brauman and others praised his oversight of the magazine. "I don't think anyone could do a better job," Somerville said. And, he added, while there are plenty of excellent scientists out there, it's "going to be challenging to find someone like him."

Who do you think should be the next editor-in-chief of Science? What do you think of Don Kennedy's tenure at the magazine? Let us know by commenting here.

Kerry Grens
kgrens@the-scientist.com

Image: Don Kennedy, courtesy of Science/AAAS

Editor's note (posted August 1): When originally posted, the story said Freeman Dyson was a professor emeritus at Princeton University. He is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, which is not affiliated with the university. We regret the error.

Links within the article:

Donald Kennedy
http://www.sciencemag.org/help/about/management.dtl#section_donald-kennedy-editor-in-chief

David Baltimore
http://baltimorelab.caltech.edu/

John Brauman
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/chemistry/faculty/brauman

Randy Schekman
http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/schekman

K.R. Chi, "Daniel Koshland dies," The Scientist, July 25, 2007.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53391/

Phil Sharp
http://web.mit.edu/sharplab

Shirley Tilghman
http://www.princeton.edu/president

Harold Varmus
http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/1780.cfm

J. Michael Bishop
http://cancer.ucsf.edu/people/bishop_jmichael.php

Marcia McNutt
http://www.mbari.org/staff/marcia

Chris Somerville
http://www-ciwdpb.stanford.edu/research/research_csomerville.php

Steve Chu
http://www-ciwdpb.stanford.edu/research/research_csomerville.php

Freeman Dyson
http://www.sns.ias.edu/_dyson

A. McCook, "Hwang faked results, says panel," The Scientist, December 25, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22870

R. Walgate, "Retracted Ecstacy paper "an outrageous scandal,'" The Scientist, September 16, 2003.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/21593

K. Fodor, "Panel recommends changes at Science," The Scientist, November 29, 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/36969/

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