ALAN BARON: A PIONEER IN TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE MICHAEL PERONE 1 ,DEAN C. WILLIAMS 2 , AND MARK GALIZIO 3 1 WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY 2 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 3 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON In 2000 a workgroup of the National Institute of Mental Health called on behav- ioral scientists to find ways to integrate basic research with applied research and clinical practice. In their report, “Translating Behav- ioral Science into Action,” they said “Transla- tional research in the behavioral sciences addresses how basic behavioral processes inform the diagnosis, prevention, treatment and delivery of services for mental illness, and conversely, how knowledge of mental illness increases our understanding of basic behav- ioral processes” (NIMH, 2000, p. 2). The term “translational research” entered the vocabu- lary of the behavioral and biomedical sciences, and NIMH, by prioritizing the funding of research with a clear translational bent, chan- ged the way scientists plan, conduct, report, and discuss much of their work. Behavior analysis, in particular, was well- suited to the translational approach and in some ways embraced it well before the turn of the 21 st century. As Lerman (2003) has pointed out, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA)—founded in 1968—has trans- lational research as its raison d’etre. In the early years of JABA, many of its contributors had been trained as basic scientists and published in basic journals including the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB). Nathan H. Azrin, for example, was a prolific contribu- tor to both journals. In JABA’s first year alone, he and his colleagues published five papers there (Ayllon & Azrin, 1968; Azrin, Jones, & Flye, 1968; Azrin & Powell, 1968; Azrin, Rubin, O’Brien, Ayllon, & Roll, 1968; Powell & Azrin, 1968)—and three in JEAB (Azrin, Rubin, & Hutchinson, 1968; Hutchinson, Azrin, & Hunt, 1968; Hutchinson, Azrin, & Renfrew, 1968). There was an inherent integration of basic and applied interests and objectives. As time passed, however, the interests became speciali- zations and grew apart, developing their own criteria for identifying significant problems and their own methods of addressing them. Concerns about the separation were expressed just 10 years after JABA’s initial publication (Deitz, 1978) and by the 1990’s various efforts to reunite the fields were underway—for example, by publishing abstracts from JEAB in JABA to bring basic research to the attention of applied behavior analysts, by encouraging review papers that integrate basic and applied research (e.g., Fisher & Mazur, 1997), and by publishing special issues of both JEAB and JABA that called for better integration of the basic and applied realms (Lerman, 2003; Mace & Critchfield, 2010; Mace & Wacker, 1994). The excitement and worry about transla- tional research in behavior analysis was heat- ing up just as Alan Baron (Fig. 1) was wrapping up a 55-year career in behavioral sci- ence. For those us who were fortunate to be one of his students, Alan provided an inspira- tional model of a behavior analyst at work. He was an insightful teacher, a meticulous scholar, a rigorous scientist, and a demanding but generous mentor. The reinforcers main- taining his professional behavior were intrinsic to his work. Throughout his career, he devoted his energies to his research, to his stu- dents, and to his university, while ignoring numerous opportunities for self-promotion. He was humble and self-effacing: He neither touted his achievements nor complained about his troubles. Although he retired from his faculty position in 2004, he continued to This article is dedicated to the memory and enduring legacy of Alan Baron, our teacher and mentor, colleague and friend. We thank the authors whose scientific papers constitute this special issue in Alan’s honor. Corresponding Author: Michael Perone, Dept. of Psy- chology, West Virginia University, 53 Campus Dr., Morgantown, WV 26506–6040; Michael.Perone@mail. wvu.edu doi: 10.1002/jeab.240 JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR 2017, 107, 1–8 NUMBER 1 (JANUARY) © 2017 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 1