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I NEWSFOCUS BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on January son of tremendous energy;' says Jonathan Modernizing an Cole, a sociologist at Columbia University and chair of the center's board of directors. "He's willing to take risks and experiment;' Academic Monastery Cole says. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker credits Kosslyn, his former graduate A venerable institution tries to reinvent itself by applying behavioral science to adviser, with breathing new life into another 21st century problems venerable institution. "The Harvard Uni- versity psychology department had been a Thomas Kuhn wrote much of his landmark 2011. - The culture here was that of a monas- backwater, coasting on its reputation, before 1962 book, The Structure ofScientOc Revo- tery71G3sslyn says. He wants to open the cen- Steve reinvigorated it in the 1990s with an haions, at a secluded retreat in the foothills ter upmore to the outside world and emphasize aggressive program of hiring young mid- above Palo Alto, California. In the 1970s, real-world problem solving over heady aca- career scientists, which vaulted the depart- future Nobelist Daniel Kahneman spent time demic ruminations. He has proposed, among ment into the front ranks," says Pinker, who here in the formative days of the field that other things, setting up networks of research- joined the department in 2003. Pinker also came to be known as behavioral economics. ers to examine specific issues, from how to cites Kosslyn's leadership through the finan- For decades after the Ford Foundation started make technology more accessible to elderly cial crisis as evidence that he's the right per- it in 1954, behavioral and social scientists cov- people to documenting psychological obsta- son to turn around the Stanford center: "I'd eted an invitation to the exclusive Center for cles to peace in the Middle East. "We want to be surprised if Steve didn't make the center Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. make behavioral science relevant," he says. financially viable and intellectually vibrant The center's yearlong fellowships offered within a few years:' leading scholars freedom from teaching and Food for thought The world was a different place when the other academic obligations, as well as a quiet Kosslyn is soft-spoken and unassuming, and center was founded, at the midpoint of a cen- place to reflect and write. Those who came he looks every bit the professor in round tury that had brought two world wars, the produced seminal works in fields as diverse as wire-rimmed glasses and a tweed jacket. At Holocaust, and the Great Depression. And political science and primatology. the same time, he's proud to say he saw the then there was the Cold War. A San Fh2ncisco But in recent years, the center seems to Grateful Dead perform on campus when he Chronicle article about the center's launch many observers to have lost some of its lus- was a Stanford undergraduate in the 1970s, raised the specter of mind-control methods ter, attracting fewer big-name scholars and and he keeps an electric bass in his office. He presumably under development in the Soviet producing fewer high-impact works. In part plays whenever he can find a group of musi- Union. "This could be a weapon of great because of financial issues, nearby Stanford cians with similar skills and tastes (mainly power in Communist hands, unless compa- University took over the once-independent classic rock). He and his wife chose to live in rable advances in the West produce effective center in 2008. "The decision the trustees San Francisco, more than 50 kilometers away countermeasures,- the article reads, appar- faced is do they just want to let it limp along, from the center, because they were turned off ently quoting from a statement from a group dissolve it, or try something new,- says by what Kosslyn describes as the material- of social scientists convened by then-Vice Stephen Kosslyn, the center's current director. ism and anti-intellectualism of Silicon Valley, President Richard Nixon. They opted for something new and whose office parks and suburbs sprawl out The center's founders realized that solu- recruited Kosslyn to shake things up. A distin- below the center's hillside perch. "I don't like tions to societal problems could come from guished psychologist, he left his post as dean the culture," he says. the social and behavioral sciences, but they of social sciences at Harvard University to Several of his colleagues say Kosslyn is also realized how poorly developed these dis- become the director of the center in January well-suited to revive the center. "He's a per- ciplines were, says Robert Scott, a former 398 27 JANUARY 2012 VOL 335 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org PublishedbyAAAS EFTA01120405  NEWSFOCUS I Intellectual haven. The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford has provided a quiet environment for scholars to think and write since 1954. The center's library (renter) houses hundreds of books written by past fellows. Stephen Kosslyn, the center's new director, wants the center to engage more with real-world problems. lems. One proposed network, for example, would study how to design software for elderly people that accounts for age-related changes in vision, memory, and coordina- tion. Another team would identify the daily grievances that most foster resentment and mistrust between Palestinians and Israe- lis and obstruct the path to peace. Kosslyn hopes to fund these and a handful of other Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on January 29, 2012 projects he's proposed through a combina- tion of federal grants and donations from foundations and individual donors. Kosslyn also hopes to create "center insti- deputy director of the center and its de facto Paradigm shift tutes:' each headed by a resident scholar, that historian. One early adviser, the Austrian-born "The center was a phenomenal place in its would tackle broader issues. His ideas for sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, proposed that the time for a select group of people who had a these include a war crimes archive and a cen- center be based on the European model, in rare kind of experience that couldn't be got- ter on personalized data mining that would which promising young students learn at the ten anywhere else,- Cole says. "But that's examine how search engine and other com- feet of the masters, Scott says. That model not the world we live in today?' In one nod to panies that collect personal data online could didn't last long. "It was very un-American," modernity, the old-boys' network (literally, for use it to benefit the people who provided it. Scott says with a chuckle. the most pan) that hand-selected fellows was Kosslyn envisions these centers generating Instead, a more egalitarian culture replaced years ago by a competitive applica- specific questions to be tackled by future quickly emerged. Despite its somewhat iso- tion process. Nearly half of the members of "impact networks" ofscholars. lated setting, the center was designed to fos- this year's class are women. But other changes At the same time, Kosslyn says he wants ter informal exchanges among its 50 or so have reduced the center's magnetic pull, Cole to preserve and encourage the interdisci- resident fellows, Cole says. Cozy, low-slung says. The Internet has made far-flung col- plinary discourse the center has always pro- buildings house private offices for each fel- laborations easier, for example, and more vided. One day last fall, fellows gathered for a low, but their arrangement around several researchers today have spouses with profes- panel discussion, part ofa new series Kosslyn courtyards forces a certain amount of walk- sional careers, making it difficult for some started to foster crosstalk among disciplines. ing between buildings, increasing the like- prospective fellows to move to Palo Alto for The topic was culture and economics, and the lihood of chance encounters. Lunch is not a year. (Fellows typically visit the center on panel comprised two Stanford economists, left to chance, however: Fellows were, and sabbatical from their home institutions, which Peter Reiss and Frank Wolak, and Jing Tsu, still are, expected to attend lunch each day, continue to pay at least part of their salaries.) who studies Chinese language and culture at catered by the center's private chef. "Where Then came the financial crisis. By 2008, Yale University. They discussed how to define you eat you tend to talk, and where you talk the returns on the center's endowment were culture and determine its influence on eco- you get ideas: Cole says. barely keeping up with its growing operat- nomic activity (and vice versa) and whether The center has no permanent faculty or ing costs, and the board agreed to let Stan- cultural scholars might use tools from eco- students and no laboratories. In the early ford take over the center's finances and nomics to quantify culture. days, candidates were nominated by past administration. The center's endowment Kosslyn realizes that preserving the cen- fellows and other academics and ultimately was folded into Stanford's much larger fund ter's idyllic environment and getting scholars selected by the center's board. For the cho- just before the stock market crashed. Mak- talking to each other will be the easy part. sen ones, an invitation would suddenly ing matters worse, foundations that once His plans to establish the center as a hub for arrive out of the blue. "It was considered a contributed to the center have tightened translational social science research will huge honor," Cole says. Alumni include 22 the purse strings. "They're not interested in require raising money in extremely diffi- Nobel Prize winners, 10 Pulitzer Prize win- paying for people to come here for a few cult times. But he says the amounts are fairly ners, 44 MacArthur Fellows, and 128 cur- months and maybe write a book, and I don't modest, perhaps $200,000 per year for an rent members of the National Academy of blame them," Kosslyn says. impact network and $300,000 per year for Sciences. "The simplest way to describe Kosslyn thinks shifting the focus to a center institute. He thinks he can convince what the center then offered was what most real-world applications of behavioral sci- potential donors that it would be money well a people who went into academia thought they ence will make the center more appealing to spent. The line between philanthropy and were getting into and never found—that is, a donors. One way he wants to do this is by investment is getting blurrier, Kosslyn says, genuine community of intensely interacting, creating "impact networks" of six to eight and the center has to prove that it can give 8 smart, interesting people from diverse scholars, including resident fellows and out- something back. Its future may depend on it. fields;' Scott says. side collaborators, to work on specific prob- —GREG MILLER www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 33S 27 JANUARY 2012 399 PublishedbyAAAS EFTA01120406