Why should many skeletal scientists and clinicians learn the Utah paradigm of skeletal physiology?
Adding later facts and ideas to a universally accepted "1960 paradigm" of skeletal physiology led to the still-evolving "Utah paradigm". The ASBMR's William Neuman award in 2001 to one of the latter paradigm's architects (HMF) suggested that physiologists began to view it as a valid supplement to its predecessor. Nevertheless it diffused poorly among most SSCs (Skeletal Scientists and Clinicians, plus all others who work in any way on skeletal matters), even though success in the quest for knowledge and recognition by many of them could depend on learning that paradigm's insights. Those insights can help to minimize serious errors in some experimental designs and in interpreting some kinds of data. To explain how success in that quest could depend on the Utah paradigm requires explaining the nature of the above errors, some features of both paradigms, some implications of the newer one, and when that quest's success might not require knowing the Utah paradigm. A three-part message distilled from the past for present and future SSCs concludes the article. It took decades to understand such things and find effective ways to explain them, and both matters probably need improvement (to paraphrase Pogo, "We met the enemy and perhaps it was us more than them"). During those decades the author changed from an active SSC hunter-player to a spectator, known to some as a feisty eccentric old dinosaur (FEOD) (Note A). So here a voice from the past would speak to present and future SSCs.
Frost
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Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Southern Colorado Clinic, Pueblo, Colorado 81008-9000, USA. hmfrost@juno.com