Supervillains are Real and I Heard One Give a Lecture

Or, how not to bridge the gap between research science and the public

If in 2024 New York City is attacked by a platoon of psychic octopus men directing poisonous quadrocopters with their minds, you heard it here first. Or, to be more accurate, I heard it first at the University of Pennsylvania, and am now spreading the warning, albeit at grave risk to myself, my family, and for all I know, my ancestors. After all, “the sky is the limit”.*

*This is ominous foreshadowing.

All I wanted was to get a glimpse into cutting-edge neuroscience research. I’m neither an actual nor aspiring scientist, but I enjoy learning about research from my layman’s perch. So I jumped at my friend’s recent invitation to attend a lecture event at the University of Pennsylvania. Four neuroscientists would give fifteen minute talks about an aspect of their research, talks geared for a lay audience. Perfect. Wonderful. Information wants to be disseminated. Expertise is sexy. I’m there.

The lectures took place in a glimmering new building on UPenn’s ever-metastasizing campus. The evening’s noble stated goal was to bridge the informational gap between researchers and the general public. More Scientifically-Versed America, less Science Versus America. The event drew roughly 150 people, most under 40 years of age, including my cohort of friends.

The first three speakers did admirable jobs of framing their so-cutting-edge-it’s-bleeding research in terms I could generally understand. And it was impressive research indeed. Did you know that obesity during pregnancy may put that child at risk for both obesity and behavioral issues? Or that cocaine use might create an epigenetic effect that could cause behavioral problems in your grandchildren? This was the realm of their study, and their preliminary findings pointed in these directions.

Equally impressive, the first three speakers, each in their own way, exuded a love of knowledge, of asking questions and then rigorously pursuing the answers. They were generous in praise of their labs, circumspect about drawing sweeping conclusions from their research, and quick to point out what was still unknown. They also seemed comfortable with the daunting reality that all scientists face: that they are merely constructing a single level of humanity’s pyramid, building on their progenitors’ work and adding a few sandstone blocks upon which the next lab will build. I felt improved, in the 19th century sense of the word, for hearing them speak, and excited about humanity’s innate curiosity.

Then Dr. Dennis Eckersley was introduced, the lights flickered ominously, and somewhere in Manhattan Peter Parker abruptly stopped talking and got a queer look on his face, prompting the following exchange:

Mary Jane: “Peter?”

Peter: “…sorry, what?”

Mary Jane: “What is it? Something wrong?”

Peter: “No…I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”

The final presenter was not actually Dennis Eckersley, Hall of Fame pitcher and archbishop in the Church of Great Mustaches. But he did look an awful lot like Dennis Eckersley, with the 1970s cop show hair and mustache. And he did not talk like a supervillain from the end of a Spiderman movie, intoning manically atop the Chrysler Building wearing a suit made of a million sentient mechanical hornets. No, he spoke like a supervillain from when we first meet him: a brilliant if arrogant scientist, brimming with confidence in the limitless potential of his impressive but somewhat unsettling research.

Dr. Eckersley did not address himself to lay people, but to what he seemed to assume was an auditorium filled with science students. His PowerPoint slides were straightforward and a little obtuse, interspersing low-quality photographs of lab equipment with unexplained charts and several milquetoast New Yorker cartoons. And he spoke with the impatience of a man busy inventing the future but being forced by funding’s necessities to stop and build a little bandwagon along the way.

Dr. Eckersley works in neuro-engineering and bionic connections. His lab, he announced proudly, has developed techniques for growing nerves and axons in culture, quickly and to extraordinary length. He has “engineered living tissue in culture,” a phrase becoming more common but which still carries a patina of the fantastic. These grown nerves can be rolled up into constructs which, when inserted into a body, can help a person’s nervous system bridge damaged gaps. When your spinal column is severed by the viscera-encrusted serrated edge of a robotic alligator tail, to pick a random example, your body cannot repair the gap between the upstream and downstream parts of your spinal column. But Dr. Eckersley’s process can insert lab-grown axons which will induce your body’s nerves to grow across that gap and connect to the stump on the other side. It’s the “one weird trick that your nerves’ personal trainers hate.”

Listening to this talk was one of those moments when you feel the line separating real-world science from science fiction ratchet forward one notch. But whereas the other three speakers would have tempered the promise of their lab’s advances with all that remains unknown, there were no blurry spots in Dr. Eckersley’s vision. Rather, he denounced the unsatisfactory, dogmatic status quo and proclaimed his approach unrivaled and bursting with unexplored potential.

I had never experienced scientific hubris in real life. But this was classic supervillain setup. I sat forward in my seat and noted the auditorium exits.

Dr. Eckersley introduced a second application of his research. (He didn’t call it Project Dark Omega but he should have.) These lab-grown axons can facilitate our nervous system’s integration with devices. Devices like a mechanical hand or — the unspoken implication hung heavy in the room — a plasma cannon-cum-hand. But right now our ability to manipulate prosthetic devices with our nervous system is limited. “The state of the art isn’t great,” Dr. Eckersley said flatly as he rested an elbow on the lectern and clicked to the next slide. I imagined him turning slowly on a bar stool, elbow on the mahogany, hand tinkling a blood-red martini. His rival, disheveled and bankrupt, has met him at the specified place and time. “Well Dr. Gibson,” he’d say with a toothy grin, “are you ready to join the winning team?”

Where was I? Oh, the slide on the screen showed an unintelligible graph. It referred somehow to our current ability to integrate devices with our nervous system; the graph’s heading read, “Restoration of function or parlor tricks?” With today’s methods we can move a cursor on a screen, Dr. Eckersley said dismissively, but we will never be able to pick up a dime, or catch a baseball, or punch through a window to snatch Mary Jane out of a moving subway train. We cannot achieve proprioception (muscle control plus sensory perception) and anything less is unacceptable.

The textbooks are ignoring obvious, demonstrable truths! For example, growing axons over tremendous lengths is possible (despite what, apparently, textbooks would have us believe) because it happens in nature. “We’ve had wonderful results in the large animal model,” Dr. Eckersley said, speaking over a slide showing a drawing of a blue whale. “He had a neuron in his brain that connected to his tail.” Wait — had? Did he kill a blue whale? Dr. Eckersley merely stroked his mustache, leaving us wondering.

“This growth goes against the dogma we’ve been taught in textbooks.” His lab can grow these axons really fast, and really long. They’ve got the world record, 10 cm! “We’re kind of the only ones in the race, so it doesn’t really count,” he admitted, getting a laugh from the crowd. It seemed like a sign of self-awareness, but when you think you are the only person in the world with a clear-eyed understanding of the proper course, then the race you’re running is the only one you believe counts, and you are not really joking at all. Another classic sign from the supervillany enneagram.

“But we aren’t the first to think of things along these lines,” he said, and clicked to a slide of a medieval torture rack.

This drew a shallow, trepidatious laugh from the crowd. It was an odd joke. Was he priming his audience to later accept a morally questionable premise? He transitioned away from that slide as if it had been a New Yorker cartoon and never addressed it again.

He showed us eerie images of nerves at magnification, cells and axons dyed lurid greens, reds, and oranges. We saw photographs of devices used in his lab to grow his axons, some of which looked like props from a Dr. Frankenstein movie. What we did not see was any sharing of the credit. “I’ve been a little remiss,” he said at the end. “I didn’t put in the slide with the huge team of people who've worked on this…so I’ll just take the credit.”

That got another laugh, but I was later told that not acknowledging one’s lab is a big no-no in research talks. Of course, I don’t know whether that etiquette applies if your team is psychically leashed to your will with creeping neurologically-invasive tendrils. Then it probably really is all you.

In our modern world, it’s hard to picture a science-based supervillain without an accompanying shadowy corporation bankrolling all those evil plans. And sure enough, Dr. Eckersley flashed a generic logo and forgettable name on the screen. “I have a disclosure — some of the technology I will talk about has been licensed by Penn to a startup company.” Shadowy and faceless tech company backing cutting-edge bio-technology? But of course.

This financial disclosure was the only caveat Dr. Eckersley presented throughout a fifteen minute talk about experimental clinical biology. The previous lecturer explicitly delineated the assumptions within his research, and he was studying coked-up rats.

Seen in a certain light, Dr. Eckersley’s presentation was a slightly smarmy sales pitch for an astounding approach to healing. But isn’t that what the supervillain always wants us to think? It was unsettling, and then came the post-talk Q&A.

A student, likely never to be seen or heard from again, mentioned how the peripheral nervous system can, when it regenerates, experience a lot of improper matching between motor and sensory nerves (natch). Did Dr. Eckersley lab look at this in its grafts? Dr. Eckersley handled the question coolly, explaining that the brain is amazing at remapping motor nerves in situations like reattaching a severed hand. “Sensory does not remap as well, and the real issue for any transplant is pain. Where a sensory fiber might join to a muscle unit.” From my seat, this sounded like a bad situation. Pain nerves activated anytime a muscle group contracted? That’s the nightmare. Dr. Eckersley’s nonchalant feeling about this horrible pain scenario was basically, I’m not worried about it. To wit: motor function goes great. Pain…well, it’s acceptable so long as it—I mean the patient—can move capably. Can catch that ball. Pick up that dime. Bring me that girl.

We were nearly done, and I was sitting with an alert disquietude over what I had heard. And then my friend asked what he admitted was a “wild question.” What were the limits of this sytem? Could we have five hands, seven hands? How much remapping can happen in the cortex to control supernumerary limbs?

“That’s a great question!” For the first time in the whole presentation, Dr. Eckersley’s eyes lit up. And what follows is a verbatim transcript of his answer, bolded for portentous emphasis:

“That’s a great question. I think that especially [for] young people, your grandkids are going to ask you, ‘So, uh, did you have to use a keyboard?’ *snicker* I think, forget limbs, there’s going to be just everything. Imagine just changing channels, or whatever. This is going to be, I mean, driving vehicles…right now the DOD is very interested in this. Rather than take all that time with that toggle switch, you just think this. So it’s not just simply limbs…the sky is the limit. There is nothing that we do with our hands to manipulate the environment that couldn’t be done just, perhaps, in our minds.”

There the Q&A, and the talk ended.

Munching on cheese cubes afterwards, my friends and I compared notes on what we had just heard and seen. And the sum total was this:

A brilliant doctor experimenting with wild biological engineering, a chip on his shoulder against the status quo, dismissive of mainstream educational consensus, a supreme confidence in the limitless potential of his research, a hubris that diminishes the role others have played in his achievements, the backing of a shadowy biotech company, a cavalier attitude towards pain in his subjects, and allusions to connections with the Department of Defense. Plus he looks like Dennis Eckersley and maybe killed a blue whale.

Holy moly. Somebody call the Daily Bugle.

—

So I am exaggerating examples for effect, I realize, but there is a lesson to be gleaned. I came to this public symposium to learn a little about progress in neuroscience.

I also attended because I believe deeply in the importance of researchers and scientists educating the public about their work and its value.

When research happens in distant glimmering towers, and those who conduct it speak only to each other, we risk cultivating a public that does not appreciate, or even fears, scientific research. That evening I saw three beautiful talks which presented well-balanced insights into the realms of obesity, decision-making, and cocaine addiction. Those scientists, as evidenced by their demeanor and mere presence, seemed to share my values about the importance of the exchange of ideas happening in that room.

And then Dr. Eckersley took the podium and made me feel like I was in a superhero comic. He sounded like the kind of scientist that makes people afraid of scientists. I am riffing on his talk somewhat, but this talk really happened, it was both impressive and alarming, and you can watch it online here.

Perhaps Dr. Eckersley’s work will take us into a brilliant future of brain-machine interface, of restoring function to people with devastating injuries. Perhaps Dr. Eckersley merely misread his audience, and expected the room to have desensitized radar for comic book science villain hubris.

But if I am later found under the Brooklyn Bridge, glued to an I-beam by a sticky mass of sentient tissue, don’t say I didn’t warn us. Didn’t warn us all.