Labby “Outed” as ASCB Honors Thoru Pederson

For myriad service as councillor, committee member, and scientific Miss Lonely Hearts, Thoru Pederson holds the Distinguished Service Award. ASCB photo by Jesse Karras.

For myriad service as councillor, committee member, and scientific Miss Lonely Hearts, Thoru Pederson holds the Distinguished Service Award. ASCB photo by Jesse Karras.

Ending ten years of excellent advice and clever misdirection, Thoru Pederson was “outed” Saturday night as Labby, the pseudonymous author of the long-running and extremely popular career column, “Dear Labby,” in the ASCB Newsletter. Pederson was exposed as Labby by 2015 ASCB President Shirley Tilghman before a large plenary audience as she awarded Pederson the ASCB Distinguished Service Award, an honor rarely given by the Society and only to exceptional individuals. Pederson is both rare and exceptional, according to Tilghman. Besides writing as Labby, Tilghman explained that Pederson who is the Vitold Arnold Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has been a tireless supporter of ASCB for decades.

This marks Pederson’s 50th continuous year of ASCB membership. He was Program Chair for the 1982 Annual Meeting, served on Council 1982-84, and was elected ASCB Treasurer from 2008 to 2014. In between and in addition, Pederson served on numerous committees including Finance, E.B. Wilson Award, Minorities Affairs, Executive, and Nominating. Most recently, Pederson has agreed to chair the Search Committee for the next ASCB Executive Director.

But it was as Labby, the seasoned academic insider and eternally sympathetic ear that Pederson won his greatest if pseudonymous fame. According to ASCB national office legend, the picture of his literary alter ego was derived from a stock photo of a white-coated model posing as an optometrist that was Photoshopped into the older and scientifically wiser Labby. Of Pederson, Tilghman told the ASCB 2015 Annual Meeting keynote address crowd, “Few people possess the breadth of experience, the insightfulness, and the wisdom to offer advice on such a wide range of topics, or the generosity to labor anonymously for so long.”

The unmasking of Labby sent a gasp, a roar of laughter, and an ovation through the ASCB crowd. Once presented by Tilghman with the engraved glass Distinguished Service Award, Pederson was for an uncharacteristic moment at a loss for words. He rallied to tell the crowd that giving advice to a desperate postdoc worried about ethics or a grad student trapped in a frustrating lab placement was a “mystical experience.” Under the cover of Labby, Pederson felt he could “be a friend when there wasn’t anyone else in the lab to listen.” At those times, it was a privilege, said Pederson, to be Labby.

But Pederson assured the keynote session audience that a new Labby had been chosen to take over the column and that the identity of this “F1 offspring Labby” would, of course, remain a secret.

About the Author:


John Fleischman was the ASCB Senior Science Writer from 2000 to 2016. Best unpaid perk of the job? Working with new grad students and Nobel Prize winners.