LAUSR

Imagine measuring progress in science in 1964 if you were at the mercy of the tools, validated and proven in basic or applied medical research of the day, that would be adopted to test your favorite hypothesis. The forerunners of today’s technology were at best rudimentary when viewed through a seasoned lens five decades hence. With methods and data collection so time consuming and tedious, it would have been more appropriate in retrospect to refer to such times as the era of Bsmall data.^ And even in those primitive days of what would become the medical research enterprise of today, the perceptions of some were remarkably prescient and extraordinarily respectful of what their data could, should, or would mean. Such was the theme of Pratt’s premonition earmarked for future generations, a cautionary tale that holds as much relevance to the discipline of reproductive medicine today as it does for many other research disciplines, medical or otherwise [1]. Consider the opening paragraph of his message, again being mindful of a frontier yet to have been discovered: Scientists these days tend to keep up a polite fiction that all science is equal. Except for the work of the misguided opponent whose arguments we happen to be refuting at the time, we speak as though every scientist’s field and methods of study are as good as every other scientist’s, and perhaps a little better. This keeps us all cordial when it comes to recommending each other for government grants. Anyone who has served on a government-funded peer review panel knows well that being cordial when it comes to your competition (whether real or perceived) is possibly the last quality funding agencies would be looking for in seeking your professional opinion on a grant proposal. Moreover, Pratt’s premise, if applied to contemporary research in reproductive medicine whether here in the USA or abroad, would acknowledge his definition of Bstrong inference^ as the point at which rapid progress in technology and method is coupled to effective inductive inference (my paraphrasing). Or does it? Science at present is inundated with data, supercomputers, biological samples of experimentally tractable or intractable value, and commercial drivers—all of which were absent in 1964. Investigators of old carved careers based on submitting grants that made them the beneficiaries of what would become, and remains today, the largest and most generous of funding agencies in the biomedical enterprise, known as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Competitive attitudes to acquire funding certainly remain, but the goal currently is about making money under the occasional pretense of scholarship. Very recently, ESHRE published its May 2017 Focus on Reproduction providing their readership with updates of all kinds, but two pieces truly stand out in my estimation for their timeliness and relevance to the direction human ARTs is taking (www.eshre.eu/Login/MyESHRE/Newsletters.aspx?ec_ as=B23D91A3D79D493184307FE9BF1F6394). The first is coverage of the BBest of...meeting^ jointly sponsored by ESHRE and ASRM and summarized in sufficient detail so as to inform we members not fortunate enough to have been amongst those in attendance. Here, the collective message is recognizing that differences of opinion rest somewhere in the middle of debates shaped around the manifold * David F. Albertini [email protected]