Salk Institute Sheds Lab Coat for Limelight : Science: After three decades of shunning publicity, the Salk Institute seeks higher visibility, a development that hasn’t come without pain.
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, which supporters call the bestkept scientific secret in San Diego, is opening itself up in an unprecedented way as a new administration tries to assure the institution’s future.
With a series of briefings for media and the community, as well as a fledgling willingness to answer questions, the Salk is pursuing the limelight that it long has shunned.
“It is important for scientists to reach out to the community, because, in the end, that’s who we’re serving,” said Ronald G. Evans, a Salk professor who says the faculty supports the changes. “We owe it to our neighbors, and to the community at large, to let them know what we’re doing--and that the Salk is in fact playing an important role in biomedical research.”
A significant step in the effort was a press release sent out 1 1/2 weeks ago detailing a Salk associate professor’s success at genetically engineering brain cells that reproduce indefinitely in laboratory culture.
The research would have gone basically unheralded to the public without the release, because it was to be published in a journal that is respected but largely unmonitored by the lay press.
The release arrived a week ahead of time--giving science reporters plenty of time to consider the story, ask non-Salk scientists about its significance, and plan their coverage for the July 13 release date. (Scientific journals embargo research papers until the journal’s day of publication.)
For other scientific institutions in San Diego, from UC San Diego to private biotechnology firms, such press releases are routine--sometimes to excess.
But for “the Salk”--as it is usually called--the release marks a contrast with what has come before. It just hasn’t been all that often in the institute’s 30 years that reporters have had the option to say “no” to a profferred Salk research story.
Scientists there generally have been willing to answer questions if asked--but reporters had to find out about their work without the help of the public-relations blitz that characterizes most scientific institutions.
“I was told that my job was to keep the Salk Institute out of the newspapers,” said Dennis Blakeslee, who was director of scientific information at Salk from 1981 to 1983. “I was constantly getting into trouble if I said anything other than ‘no comment.’ ”
Blakeslee says the conflicts continued between him and the policy’s originator, longtime Salk chief Frederic de Hoffmann, until Blakeslee eventually was fired. He works today as science editor for Scripps Research Institute.
De Hoffmann retired in November, 1988, after 18 years as Salk president after becoming infected with the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion. He died in October.
Founded by polio vaccine inventor Dr. Jonas Salk in 1960 with a March of Dimes grant, the Salk was envisioned as an institution that would look at the fundamental cellular mechanisms of life. Although the research would be very basic, it would lay the groundwork for solving some of medicine’s hardest puzzles, its founders hoped.
De Hoffmann took over the institute’s chief administrative job in 1970, and his skill at raising funds was credited with keeping it financially solvent. Today, the institute has three Nobel laureates among its 45 faculty members; 175 other M.D. or Ph.D researchers; and another 300 employees.
Although they wouldn’t say much about it while de Hoffmann was alive, those who implemented his policies at the Salk now confirm it was de Hoffmann’s personal antagonism to the press that underlay the closed-doors policy.
“For his own personal reasons, I think Dr. de Hoffmann had a less than cordial relationship with the media, which made it difficult for people to know us,” said Kenneth Klivington, assistant to the president for scientific affairs since 1984.
In recent years, it has been common for Salk researchers to publish research reports at least monthly--and frequently more often--in two of the mainstays of the publicity-generating research press, Science and Nature. But, in the last three years, the Salk issued only four press releases about research results, including the recent one.
All four of the releases were written since June, 1989. Results in less visible publications were not covered by press releases at all.
Klivington obtained those figures from his files last week at a reporter’s request--a level of cooperativeness simply unheard of in the past.
Also marking how far the Salk has come in public relations, Klivington noted that, about two weeks ago, the Salk published its first-ever brochure listing faculty members and their research interests. Again, such lists are routine at other scientific institutions trying to enhance their public image by attracting press coverage.
If change is in the air on the La Jolla bluff on which the Salk sits, it hasn’t been a development that has come without pain.
Notably, in February the institute triggered a controversy because of an incident that some felt gave the appearance that the Salk had begun charging $10,000 for interviews.
A producer for German television was asked to make a $10,000 donation in order to be given an interview with Renato Dulbecco, a Nobel Prize-winning researcher who was the institute’s acting president at the time.
After publicity about the incident, Dulbecco--who since took the presidency permanently--protested that it was all a misunderstanding. News interviews would always be given freely, he said, but not entertainment interviews.
Still, the incident did not go unnoticed among the science-writing press.
Charles Petit, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and president of the National Assn. of Science Writers, called the policy “dumb” at the time. He remained unconvinced last week by Dulbecco’s distinction between news and entertainment.
“I’m not sure about that distinction, because the best science communication is entertaining,” Petit said.
“They’re trying to have it both ways, saying the interview’s worthwhile only if they get the $10,000,” he added. “If an interview is a waste of their time, they should just say no.”
Dulbecco was out of the country and could not be reached for further comment last week.
Dianne Carter, who under de Hoffmann served as his spokeswoman, denied last week that there was any connection between the controversy over the $10,000 incident and the Salk’s new openness. Carter is director of institute affairs at Salk.
She said the openness has evolved slowly since Dulbecco took over as acting president and then accepted the permanent post this year after an East Coast biologist rejected it.
As with so much in science these days, the Salk’s new community-oriented approach at least partly is underlain by the need for money.
Because De Hoffmann’s departure left the Salk without a chief fund-raiser, the institute hired a development director in October for the first time in several years. This new director, Ann Mound, in May began inviting potential donors from the community as well as reporters and editors to a series of “Back to Basics” meetings. The visitors hear institute scientists talk about their work and go on a tour.
All this is necessary because of De Hoffmann’s retirement not only as the Salk’s president but as its tireless fund-raiser as well. Today, about two-thirds of the institute’s $34-million annual budget comes from federal research grants, the rest from private foundations, Carter said.
But, as federal funding has become harder to get even for researchers as respected as those at Salk, higher visibility in the San Diego community may bring donations to help fill the gap, Mound said. In addition, the institute is raising $10.5 million for a building to provide lab, office and meeting space.
Mound is concentrating her fund-raising on individuals in the community who may not have known much about the Salk’s work before. The Salk’s changing relationship with the media will make that job easier, she said.
“The most important thing that I do doesn’t really have to do directly with the press--but, because of the situation that the Salk was in when I came, it was obvious to me--and I think Dr. Dulbecco and everybody feels that way--that it’s time for some outreach. I know that we need the press.”
The irony of all the new openness is that the Salk seems to have done fine without it, said one local public relations representative who has watched in wonder over the years.
“What’s very interesting is that they have been so controlling in what they do with the press, and what they allow the press to do with them, and in fact it has hardly hurt their reputation at all,” said this person, who asked not to be identified.
“Over the years I never did see it hurt them nationally or even locally. I think they got as much ink as they wanted. They got it when they wanted it and how they wanted it.”
