By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
In 1980, I conducted a survey of U.S. entomology departments. This was before the Internet so I surveyed our 41 university entomology departments by mail. They all provided the requested details of their programs: masters and doctoral degrees awarded, number of faculty, and where faculty came from.
Today, by using the Internet, it was easy to again check on our remaining university entomology departments. The story is alarming: the U.S. has only 22 of the 41 departments remaining as specific entomology departments. Eight have reduced their entomology faculty by merging with closely-related departments. Eleven dramatically shrunk to very few entomologists, therefore offering no entomology courses or up to a 15-hour undergrad minor. In my 1980 survey, only the five smallest departments in 1980 had under ten faculty (9, 8, 6, 6, 5). Today, the smallest departments only have two or three entomology faculty and they no longer offer their PhD and even MS degrees.
This abandonment of entomology has occurred in some of the more prestigious universities including U.C.–Berkeley and the University of Kansas. And this decline has been underway for four decades.
As a Fellow of the Indiana Academy of Sciences, I often attend their annual meetings despite living three states away. During one meeting at Indiana University, I was walking down a science hall when I noticed some bones and a tag hanging down from the top of a hall cabinet—it was from a dodo bird, now extinct. It should have been safely secured in a collection. But there no longer was a curated collection.
One very great I.U. entomologist was Alfred Kinsey. Although he made his name in another field, he was an expert on gall wasps. He had a major collection and five million specimens were donated to the American Museum of Natural History. When Kinsey died, another entomologist continued the coursework. But before he retired, he was instructed to disperse the remaining entomology collection—there would be no more entomology at I.U. Indeed, they had likewise encouraged a very famous and tenured botanist to take a better offer elsewhere, and take the university collection with him. My botany colleagues tell me that the decline in botany departments nationwide is even more severe.
What is the reason for U.S. universities consolidating their sciences and eliminating certain fields of study? Federal and corporate funding was shifting to molecular biology, the study of DNA and the chemical reactions in plants, animals and microbes. As a result, U.S. research in zoology and botany has substantially declined. Some important collections of specimens, often going back centuries and revealing the extinction of species or shifts in ranges, have been orphaned. The majority of cutting edge research papers in these fields are now authored by entomologists and botanists in Europe and Asia.
Today, there are many U.S. “biology” departments where no one can identify anything green or furry! This shift away from plants and animals to just molecular biology has resulted in isolated specialization. This in turn has resulted in faulty science.
In early research into the possible transfer animal for SARS-CoV-2, an article was published in the Journal of Medical Virology in January 22, 2020 using “similar codon usage” to argue the virus passed from bats to humans through a snake! Another article published inMolecular Biology and Evolution used a genome deficiency to indicate that dogs were the intermediate host! Both journals supposedly have peer review. But peer review by molecular biologists who don’t know anything about snakes or dogs did not catch this wrong research. This second report especially caused unnecessary alarm among dog owners.
Another much more comprehensive and valid study was published in July 2020 in Science that addressed the ability of various mammals to harbor this virus. Finally, this was good science. The 21 authors included both molecular biologists and zoologists.
Today we hear charges that other countries are stealing our science. But this is wrong. For decades we have been cutting back in entomology, botany, particle physics, and many other fields. Other countries have now become clear leaders. They did not close their zoology and botany departments. They did not abandon their collections with centuries of valuable specimens and data.
A country that decimates 46% of its university departments in certain fields, will not remain a leader in those fields.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.