Chapter 01: The Role of the Department of Scientific Publications and Its Editors
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Mr. Pagel explains that the Department of Scientific Publications supports faculty in the writing of research articles. This role is key because the reputation of an institution is built on the reputation of its faculty who advance their public stature entirely by publication. Scientific Publications is also responsible for a number of institutional publications, including Cancer Bulletin and Onco-Log, an online newsletter for physicians in private practice. In addition, the Department provides writing programs for faculty and students. Mr. Pagel notes that the Department has a good reputation among the graduate students, who go on to successful careers in part facilitated by their ability to write and publish.
Mr. Pagel defines the purpose of a research article: to disseminate discoveries to peers and those outside a specialty. In his view, an editor’s main role is to help researchers understand the important of providing the context in which a discovery emerges –and to which it contributes. Many are not aware of such background, and it is needed so that articles have meaning to audiences beyond a researcher’s specific field. He notes that sloppy writing often suggests sloppy science, so an editor helps a researcher achieve clear and accurate writing. Editors in the Department of Scientific Publications work primarily on articles. Most books are already under contract with a publisher (who handles editorial work), though they do support faculty who are exploring publications avenues for books. He also notes that though faculty at MD Anderson contribute chapters to books (and Scientific Publications provides editorial support), these matter much less than articles to the evolution of a faculty member’s career. A great scientific article, he explains, tells a story that situates a discovery in the history of a field and also gives a real sense of a scientist involved in a research process that leads to the unveiling of an important answer to a scientific question. He has worked with some great writers at MD Anderson, among them Drs. Isaiah J. Fidler [Oral History Interview], Lester Peter, and Margaret Kripke [Oral History Interview].
Identifier
PagelW_01_20120801_C01
Publication Date
8-1-2012
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Walter Pagel, ELS (D), Oral History Interview, August 01, 2012
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Overview Overview Definitions, Explanations, Translations MD Anderson Snapshot Professional Practice The Professional at Work On Research and Researchers
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And I always make sure I see the counter doing its thing. I’m Tacey Ann Rosolowski interviewing Mr. Walter Pagel, Director of the Department of Scientific Publications at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. This interview is being conducted for The Making Cancer History Voices Oral History Project run by the Historical Resources Center at MD Anderson, and the interview is taking place in Mr. Pagel’s office in the Pickens Academic Tower on the main campus of MD Anderson. This is the first of perhaps two planned interview sessions. You’re shaking your head. One, one, one. Okay. Today is August 1, 2012, and the time is ten minutes after two o’clock, and thank you so much for giving your time to the project.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Glad to be here. I hope you find something.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. I hope so, too. I’m sure I will. I mean, as a writer myself, I’m interested in what you have to say.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Okay.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So, you know you have one eager listener. I wanted to start out, as I mentioned earlier, with some general questions and then go to the more chronological treatment of your career. I wanted to start with the question of what role you feel the Department of Scientific Publications serves here at MD Anderson—not only for the individuals who come for various kinds of support with manuscripts but also for the institution as a whole?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
My theory—I believe it to be true for any academic institution—which is that the success of its academicians is the success of the university. The institutional reputation is built—this one is built on its cancer-care outcome, yes. But it’s also built on the reputation of its faculty and the discoveries they make which are nothing until they’re published somewhere. That’s fundamentally how we contribute to the institution. Other ways that we contribute—we have been, as I’ve mentioned earlier, responsible for the institutional publishing—and that’s included important reports over the generations practically since the day this place was founded. The Cancer Bulletin for most of its existence, The MD Anderson OncoLog is its physician newsletter—well anyway, as the institutional publishers of things that a publisher wouldn’t publish but an institution needs to have out there—or used to need to have out there.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What’s that difference between what a publisher would publish and what an institution publishes?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
A publisher needs to sell their stuff. We don’t need to sell it. We just want people to read it. That’s essentially it. And then finally we—since we introduced a writing education program, I believe—and the people who run, for example, the postdoctoral office would agree with me—that our program has an effect on what kind of students are interested in coming here—what kind of trainee, what kind of postdocs. The demand for this training is very high and contributes to the kind of students that the institution gets as well as to the success of those trainees. The trainees in the long run probably—well, that’s not true. I was going to say they don’t have that much effect on the institution, but the truth is that every great academician in this place names what’s happened to its best—his or her best students, so yes, that too.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s all part of—I mean I like the phrase that Michael Ahearn [MD [Oral History Interview]] used—the pipeline. And it sounds like you’re very much part of that. And I hadn’t anticipated what you said—that the writing program actually helps you attract students not only create stronger—
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Well, you know, that’s a theory. I don’t—there’s no surveys of the students of that, but it has a reputation now among the students who are here, and there has to be conversation between students that are already—trainees who are here—these are postdocs mainly—and trainees in the home countries. We’re speaking mainly of Asians, of course. There has to be an underground conversation about that that makes this program better and more attractive, I should say. And there’s probably ways to prove that, but we haven’t bothered with that one.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
The second question I wanted to ask you is basically about the editor’s role in working with an author. How do you see your role as you work with someone who’s preparing a scientific manuscript—either an article or a book?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Those are two very different things. An article is almost inevitably about a discovery that the person has made. That person wants that discovery to be known. The person wants that discovery to be known by the people that matter to them—their peers primarily, but even beyond that sometimes. Those who have made what they hope is a really important discovery want the context of that discovery—the importance of the context of the discovery to broader audiences to be clear. I think I’m losing track of what I’m talking about here.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What was the issue with context? I’m interested that you brought that in.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
It is—I would call it a weakness. It might just be a standard attitude of scientists which is that if you talk about—I have to think how to say this. They tend to overlook the importance of context for their discoveries and rely on only their closest peers’ understanding that this discovery is a key step on the way to something all their peers wanted. But what they don’t think about very much when they want a wider audience to see it is that you can’t count on those readers to know that context, and you need to establish it. So if you want to be published in science—at least in theory—you need to say what field you’re putting this kind of specificity on and what the unknowns are in a way that appeals to more than just your closest colleagues. A lot of people tend to kind of write for their lab mates, and it doesn’t work very well if you want to be published in something other than a second-tier journal. I had one other —
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What about the book—oh, I’m sorry.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
No, I think—well sloppily written stuff is thought to be representative of sloppy science. Many people say that—not just us, including scientists. So care with the English language does matter. I don’t mean that it needs to be brilliant or necessarily even eloquent, but it needs to be accurate and correct. It would also be—might not be a surprise to you that people—because manuscripts are basically pieces of things joined together—that often the pieces have contradictions between them, and it’s up to editors to find them. One of their jobs is to find those contradictions and point them out to the author to help him find them and then fix them. Could you remind me of what the question is because I think I’ve gotten far afield?
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
No, you haven’t really. I just—you were talking about the work of the editor vis-à-vis an article, and I’m wondering how it’s different with a book.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
With a book—so first of all, people don’t write books in science. They write chapters in books or they edit books. I shouldn’t say people don’t, but as a rule I don’t know of anyone here who’s actually written a book. There are two ways to be part of a book, and one is to write a chapter for a book or two or three and the other is to be the academic editor of the book who sometimes their only role is to get their peers or colleagues who know the subject area to write a chapter on it, and sometimes it is actually to make sure that the chapters fit together. And they’re almost inevitably—not always, but almost invariably their books are already under contract to a publisher. So, speculative books practically don’t exist. Anybody who writes one—I’ve discouraged them strongly because you run a big risk you’re wasting a lot of people’s time, and I’m not sure you could get people to contribute to a book that doesn’t have a publisher already signed. We do work with people in the publishing process as well as editing their books, although I will say that because our other roles have expanded so much our role in books—our willingness to take on book projects is much less than it used to be. Not that we don’t love books. We love books. We love the chance to see a whole field or a whole area the way you do with a book, and my own association with individual faculty members has been strongly affected by those who I’ve worked with who were editors of books.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
The publishing industry has changed enormously.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
It has and the—not only that but the importance of book chapters to the careers of the academicians here is much diminished, so these are scientists and clinicians that are not literature professors or the sorts of people whose careers are very clearly advanced by books. They are people whose careers are advanced by discoveries, which means journal publication.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
The third question I wanted to ask you is what’s your take on really great scientific writing? What makes it? Is there an art of really good scientific writing and when do you know it? How do you know it when you see it?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Obviously I’ve already said something about context. What to me makes a great scientific article is a story—a story that fits in to other people’s stories and a story that feels real when you read it. It feels like a scientist was involved in devising the experiments, was involved in interpreting the experiments, and was involved in saying what the importance of these experiments was and relating that importance to other stories that are there in the literature. So my McGovern lecture was basically about that—telling the story of your science and saying things like if you discover something unexpected the best story is that you didn’t expect it—what you were hoping to find and what you actually found were different. But it’s the inclination of scientists to pretend that they were looking for what they never thought they would see because they want it to be a very clear—I don’t know what the reason is. Maybe they want to seem all-knowing or something. There’s some reason for them to do that. The other is to leave out context as I said, and to not say enough about what came before them in a way that is at all interesting. When people say what came before them in an interesting way and manage to get you to think that important questions about science are about to be unveiled—or important answers about science are about to be unveiled because these questions have been holding us back, or there are lots of people involved in working on these questions, or these questions affect the health of millions of people, or anything like that. And I don’t mean a first sentence that says breast cancer is a deadly disease. I mean something far more specific. So, that’s what I think makes—that’s a lot to say. I can’t give you one phrase for what makes a great thing except a story. A story that—that’s all. That’s good enough.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Who would you—what names would you put out as really great writers who you admire in the sciences?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
In the sciences I admired someone who’s not here anymore—Lester Peters. I admire Josh Fidler [Isaiah Joshua Fidler, DVM [Oral History Interview]], who is brilliant at context. I admire Margaret Kripke [Ph.D. [Oral History Interview]], who was just brilliant at writing. Those are the three that stand out for me. I hope I’m not leaving anybody out. Most of the other people who do really well I think of as doing well because of their science and not because of their brilliant writing. I’m not saying that Margaret Kripke or Josh Fidler or Lester Peters didn’t have great science but they just knew how to tell about it.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, thanks. I’m sure we’ll uncover more details about those subjects as we continue. Is it okay if we switch now to the chronological approach?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Sure.
Recommended Citation
Pagel, Walter ELS and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 01: The Role of the Department of Scientific Publications and Its Editors" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1270.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1270
Conditions Governing Access
Open
