Lester Crystal
I’d now like to invite our next panel to come up to the dais here, and we’ll continue. I must say if I didn’t at the start, I’m sorry. I’ll repeat myself, but I did want to say that I am very honored and pleased to have been invited here by Hyman Field of Partners HealthCare to moderate your opening session, and quite pleased to not only have followed the distinguished keynote speakers, but we have a distinguished group of panelists with us this afternoon to bring their perspectives to the goals of this conference.
I’m sure that virtually all of you know of them. And many of you know them first hand. Dr. Julie Gerberding, director for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention is communicating almost daily to the public and is a familiar presence in the media. She first jumped into national prominence in 2001 when she led the response to the Anthrax attacks. She was then deputy director of the National Council on Infectious Diseases. She’s going to launch our panel and panelists. As I introduce you, you are welcome to come to the podium to make your remarks or make your remarks from wherever you’re seated. Dr. Gerberding.
Julie Gerberding
Good evening. It’s really quite an unbelievable honor to participate in a panel of this quality and to follow two such articulate speakers. Now, I’ve spent most of my professional career thinking about communicating science. It started at the bedside of my patients. And really, if you think about it, that’s what being a good physician is all about, the ability to take very complicated medical information and convert it into language and emotional context that the patient, sometimes a very frightened patient, can take in and understand. But at CDC we have much bigger challenges that we need to address, and all of them bring us to the forefront of communicating about science with society. I’ll just talk about some of the global extremes that we face. Climate change, certainly, extreme poverty. Extremism—or some of our domestic challenges like extreme obesity or the kinds of problems that our children and our adolescents are facing every day.
These are serious health threats and they have in common a requirement that communication and effective communication about science is absolutely an imperative if individuals and decision makers are going to make effective decisions and take effective actions to deal with problems on this scale. At CDC we’ve been thinking a lot about what we need to do as a piece of the science communication and to more effectively communicate about science to our constituents, the people whose health we are accountable for protecting.
As we thought about this, we recognized and learned a few things. One of them is that there is a science to science communication. It’s an under-funded science, and I’m sad to say it’s a very undervalued science. But it is a very important science, and I do believe we need to invest more in it. At CDC we’ve created a new national center for health marketing to try to get the science around marketing health information. We’ve created a new national center for public-health informatics to try to move the e-public health enterprise forward. We’ve created associate directors for communication science in each of our national centers. We’ve created centers of excellence in communication, including one here at Harvard and others in other academic centers around the United States. And we’re trying a number of other things to try to fertilize the opportunity to grow the science that helps us be more effective communicators in this regard. But we’re really at the very beginning of that process.
Another thing that we’ve learned is that science and science communication is a skill. You just heard that from Vice President Gore, and it is a skill that can be learned. I first came across the requirement for that skill at a very early phase of my career when I was responsible for helping people cope with HIV-positive needle sticks. I was a scientist who studied the risk. When people would call me and explain to me that they just poked themselves with a needle containing a deadly virus, I would find myself saying something like, "Well, thank goodness the risk is only .3%. Only three out of every thousand people with a needle stick like this gets infected, but by the way you shouldn’t have sex. Don’t donate blood. Take these pills around the clock for the next six weeks, but don’t worry it’s only .3 percent. " And that really didn’t work too well. What I very quickly realized is that science and science communication is more than about the objective information that you’re trying to translate to people. There is a subjective component to it. If you don’t pay attention to that subjective component, you will never be able to engage people in the conversation and open up the opportunity to truly have a dialogue about the scientific issues that you want to address.
We’ve also learned at CDC that good scientific communication is possible. We see examples of it everywhere. Certainly there are examples where there are scientists who are extremely effective communicators—people like C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general, or Carl Sagan who was mentioned earlier. There are many scientists in academia and government and the private sector who can very effectively translate, but there are not enough of them and it might not necessarily be time best spent doing that when many of them should be producing the science.
There are journalists who are very effective at translating science for the public. At CDC we invest in something called the Knight Ridder fellowship so that medical writers can come and participate in CDC program development—our boot camp—and really see public health first hand so that they can be more effective at translating public-health science to the communities that we are addressing. I’m not sure there are enough journalists who have those skills to really meet the demands of society, nor am I sure that those journalists are receiving that kind of opportunity or availing themselves of that kind of opportunity in all of the scientific dimensions where that kind of communication is essential.
Scientific literacy can be improved, but that’s an even harder challenge because that means helping everyone, through the kinds of educational endeavors that we’ve discussed earlier, raise their capacity to be receptors or participants in scientific dialogue. It’s important that we do it. But it’s going to take a much greater effort than we have contributed so far.
I think the most important opportunity for success is one that we are just scratching the surface of. And that’s not to rely on the one-way communication about science, but to develop the kind of context where there truly is engagement and a collaborative discussion. When we are preparing for a pandemic, one of the major opportunities for this kind of scientific dialogue is in the context of what to do with the things that are going to be scarce. Who’s going to decide who gets the first vaccine? Who’s going to decide who gets the antiviral? Who’s going to decide who gets the ventilator? We’re not used to those decisions in our society.
We’ve learned already if you ask the scientists, particularly the medical scientists, you’ll get a very medical model: the people who are the sickest and who need those interventions the most. Now that we’ve begun to ask people, we’ve learned that people see it differently, especially after 9/11 and especially after Katrina. People believe that the people who should go first are first of all those who are necessary to keep our society functioning and then second, their children. That’s just a vignette, but I think it’s a good segue into the comments that my colleague Dr. Leshner is going to make because what I know about engaging people and the communication of science I first learned by sitting in his office at the AAAS while he waxed eloquently on his ideas and his experiences with truly engaging societies and scientists in a much more collaborative way to effectively communicate and solve problems. So thank you.
Lester Crystal
Dr. Alan Leshner is the CEO and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, he has also held important positions at the National Institutes of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, so he’s been at the forefront in the whole area of communicating with the public.
Alan Leshner
Thank you. I’m also really delighted to be here. Since I used to work in mental health, it’s fine for me to tell you I’m totally intimidated by following Al Gore and Shirley Jackson, one of the most articulate spokespersons for science that I know.
As Dr. Gerberding implied, I am going to focus on one of the themes that Dr. Jackson and Vice President Gore worked on, and that has to do with the nature of the conversation that we have between science and society. I’m going to argue that we need to change both the nature and the intent of that discourse. From where I sit, the science-society relationship appears to be more fragile and more tense than at any time in my scientific lifetime. And it’s not just about issues of public understanding of science. I think that the tension is coming about in large part because as science has progressed, it more and more is encroaching upon issues of core human values. It is getting closer and closer to threatening people’s common perspectives about the world or some lifelong held beliefs and value systems. So just to rattle off a quick list of topics that are obvious. Embryonic stem cells. The whole evolution-intelligent-design issue. In my own field, think about what happens when we understand more about behavioral genetics, or in neuroscience the ability to look into the brain of a living, breathing, awake individual while they’re behaving and watch their mind in action. What does that do to your concept of self? Or your concept of the mind? The soul? Identity? In the face of this tension, I believe that the traditional communications strategies or the approaches used by the scientific community are no longer working, and persisting in them is that old definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
I think the problem is that public understanding is important, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough because the problem isn’t just lack of understanding, and therefore, we have to shift from this sort of educational approach to what I would call public understanding plus, or what we call public engagement. We need to engage in a genuine dialogue with the public to talk about the issues so that we understand—as well as they understand their hopes, their fears, their concerns about the issues.
The rationale is very simple. The tension or the problems are not about lack of understanding. Take embryonic stem-cell research. The problem is not whether or not members of the public think embryonic stem cells will ultimately yield tremendous therapeutic benefits to humankind. It has to do with what you believe about when life begins. If you believe life begins at the moment of conception, you’re against embryonic stem cell research. If you believe it begins later during gestation or even later, then it’s much more acceptable to you. Well, you’re not going to educate your way out of that issue or that conundrum, and I believe what we need to do is to work together with members of the public and in fact try to find common ground.
What are we actually talking about doing, and what is it that’s different? Of course we need a baseline of understanding about the core scientific concept. I would argue that in addition to that, we need a far better understanding about the nature of this scientific enterprise itself: what is and what isn’t science. What’s fake science? What’s not fake science? I won’t go into those in detail, but we need to build a far better relationship with the stakeholders. We need to foster mutual confidence. We need to reach out to people where they are. We need to stop having big meetings where we ask them to come, listen, and get enlightened by our scientific colleagues. We need to engage in small group meetings. I’ve had the experience of going to churches, to synagogues, to retirement communities. Go out to where people are and talk about these kind of issues. Talk about the issues informed by science and technology rather than getting hung up on talking about the details of our science and technology. The point is to try to listen as much as we talk, to find common ground. I’m not talking about trying to bring together the extremes on something like the intelligent-design-evolution issue. I’m not talking about the very far right evangelical fundamentalists who will not change their minds, no matter what, or bringing them together with the evangelical atheists who frequently come out of our community. They will never find common ground, but the rational middle certainly will. I think we need to work together with the rest of society to both advance science and to enable science to do a far better job of serving society in the most effective and meaningful way. We need to find ways to go out to where people are and talk to them about the issues and not just about the science itself. And I think that will do much to help reduce the tension that many of us are so concerned about in the science-society relationship. Thank you.
Lester Crystal
Dr. Rita Colwell was director of the National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2004 and is now chairman of Canon U.S. Life Science and Distinguished University Professor at both the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins. When she was NSF director, she was highly supportive of projects which focused on a public understanding of science. We at the NewsHour are very grateful for that and I now introduce Dr. Colwell.
Rita Colwell
I’ve chosen to speak this evening very briefly about science, engineering, and technology in the twenty-first century. Mainly the new way that science and engineering should be taught and practiced, and in fact is being practiced in this new century. And the biological sciences hold fantastic potential to contribute to the well being of humanity and to this planet that we call home if we can integrate the stunning discoveries of science and engineering within the broader framework of our global society. So I’m going to use the biological sciences to illustrate my major points, and I’m speaking today both as an active researcher who has pursued the linkages between climate and human health, and, as was mentioned, the immediate past director of the U.S. National Science Foundation. In both those capacities, I can state unequivocally that extensive international linkages of science and engineering along with interdisciplinarity illustrate that today’s global scale of research is without precedent. It’s the hyphenated sciences and engineering that hold the most exciting potential.
Science today has breadth and depth that call for a whole new framework. And I use bio-complexity as a way of thinking about the relationships between living systems and the environment. Ecosystems don’t respond linearly to environmental change. And I think the form of a spiral is evocative of life at every level. It underscores the point that if we’re going to understand science, it demands observing it at multiple scales, from the nanoscale to the global. Interdisciplinary and international science and engineering are going to transform science in the twenty-first century. The future is really in what I call bio-info-nano-geo-neural technology.
We’ve entered the age of knowledge and we need to transform our educational systems into one of lifelong learning so that everyone benefits, and we are graced to be alive at a time when science and engineering are extending our vision to the furthest reaches of the cosmos back to the time of the big bang. And at the same time we can peer down into the minuteness in the scales of life, decoding the blueprint of our DNA, of our species, the human genome, and learning the secrets of life for all of our fellow travelers on this planet. It’s only through mapping and nourishing the disciplinary linkages that we can truly reflect and probe the wholeness of the world that we hope to understand. The days are gone when a discipline can go it alone, and now the entire enterprise has to progress as a whole. Let me give you a simple example. At the Lilliputian level of the nanoscale, we can see how nanotechnology is being used to understand Earth’s biodiversity. Researchers have developed microscopic nanosensors that are carried like ordinary pollen on the body of a bee. So a bee collects these sensors called smart dust and they carry it throughout their normal daily activities. When they get back to the hive, a sensor plate downloads the data collected by the sensors. What we have is a map of the bee’s itinerary. Where it went, which flowers it visited, which it pollinated. We’re at the brink of being able to observe complexity at multiple scales through the hierarchy of life. And to understand the interlocking systems of our planet is our only hope to sustain them.
Let me address the serious problem that lies in what I call the valley of death in education, grades four through eight. It’s when girls, the underrepresented minorities, and now increasingly boys are discouraged in subtle and not very subtle ways from pursuing science and engineering. And there have been a number of assessments of educational programs that show a gender gap in science proficiency as early as age nine, and we can trace that through ages thirteen and seventeen when the gap is widened further. There’s been very little change in this trend over the last two decades. At the level of higher education, you’ve heard the term leaky pipeline. It’s an apt phrase for the loss of women and minorities in science and engineering throughout higher education, but I’d like to point out that I would prefer to call it the clogged pipeline. What we’ve done is, in the valley of death we’ve dissuaded women and minorities. Those who go on to become faculty at universities with the lifting of the age limit as here in Boston: The Boston Globe has done a study on the age of professors, now at Harvard, for example, is in the 80s. And 60% of faculty are adjunct, temporary, which means that 40 percent of the faculty that we keep are in the universities to educate our young people.
Now as Dr. Jackson mentioned, mathematics plays another very key role in the theme of the conference today. Mathematics is the single most important factor leading to a career in science and engineering. The American Association of University Women has recommended that states should make algebra and geometry mandatory for all students. These are the gatekeeper classes for college admission, for study in math and science and engineering. Mathematics is the ultimate crosscutting discipline. I call it the Esperanto of science and engineering. It’s the springboard for advances. Mathematics is the powerful tool of insight, and our country’s world leadership of mathematics is fragile. We’ve been relying on overseas talent and have not been attracting enough students in the U.S. to mathematics, and we find that doors are closing to foreign students.
I’ve purposely left this chart on for a long time, because my husband tells me that I tend to use subliminal presentations—so many slides that nobody can see them. I want to make the point that funding is critical for science. You can see that funding has gone up for defense, and there has been a disparity. The funding that’s gone into NIH, important as it is, has led to a decline in the funding for the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering. So when we think about the frontiers of science and engineering today seeming endless, we need the participation and the perspectives of all of our children to probe as far as we can in every direction. And we need to change our thinking about how we educate those who are going to carry out the research, the technology, and the development of the future in a world of science and engineering that’s moving towards international networking collaboration with multiple disciplines, study of complexity, and the integration of these perspectives. Thank you.
Lester Crystal
A variation on "the-needs-no-introduction, " Dr. James Mongan needs no introduction because he’s already been introduced.
James Mongan
Thank you very much, Les. At Partners HealthCare, we’ve been interested in the issue of science literacy for some time now. As a healthcare system which is the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health research funding in the country, it is critical to our mission that our patients and policymakers and the general public understand the important work that we’re doing to advance medical knowledge and to advance patient care in such areas as genetics and genomics, AIDS research, and telemedicine.
We’re also facing serious staff shortages in healthcare, including shortages in primary-care physicians, nurses, and research and technical staff, which will only worsen as the baby boomers reach old age. So to meet this need, we need to encourage more young people to consider careers in science and healthcare, and we need to retrain current workers who’ve been displaced from other industries to work in the growing field of healthcare and the life sciences.
The evidence, however, indicates that this will be an uphill battle. While once a world leader in science education, the U.S. now lags behind. The percentage of Americans ages 18 to 24 pursuing science degrees has fallen to 17th in the world from third, 30 years ago. Currently, although one in seven Massachusetts residents works in healthcare and the life sciences, the demand for people to work in these fields has not led to an increase in the number of high school students who choose to pursue these careers. Over time our competitiveness in the U.S. and global economy will suffer if we cannot reverse this trend. So let me say a brief word about what we’ve been doing to address what Dr. Jackson has so appropriately termed the "quiet crisis. "
For a number of years we’ve worked in the trenches. We’ve built relationships with elementary, middle, and high schools in the Boston area, and provided students with science mentoring, education, and health partnership programs; after school and summer programs; and job opportunities. We’ve also provided training to low-income Boston residents so that they could become nurses, radiologists, technologists, surgical technicians, and respiratory therapists.
Now, while these programs have helped alleviate some of our short-term workforce problems, we’ve always recognized that a much broader effort would be necessary to engage the public more generally in science topics. And so several years ago we applied to the National Science Foundation for a grant to mount an ambitious international science education program, of which this conference is a very important part.
While not in the movie-making business, we decided that a large format IMAX film would be the centerpiece of our efforts. Like Al Gore, we knew how powerful film and media can be in influencing public opinion and action. We chose to focus our film on brain science and how the brain functions under the most extreme conditions. Our example was the grueling Tour de France cycling race, and the mind and body experiences of two cyclists competing in the 2003 centennial tour.
This film, Wired to Win, premiered at the Museum of Science right here in Boston last year to an audience of more than 300 Boston public school students and teachers. We and the Museum of Science donated an additional 50,000 theater passes to Boston-area schools so that as many young people as possible could be exposed to the fascinating world of brain biology. To date, the film has been leased by 43 science museums and other venues worldwide, and we expect to reach six to eight million children and adults, who we hope will be as inspired by the hairpin turns of the human brain as it adapts to rapidly changing conditions as they are by the sport of competitive cycling.
Wired to Win and today’s conference represent some of what we’re trying to do to advance science literacy here in the U.S. and around the world and to encourage more young people to pursue careers in science. We know that it will take all of us in this room and others around the world to effect the real changes that are needed to put science education and literacy at the top of our list of priorities, and to begin to close the gap between all that science has to offer and the potential of science to improve people’s lives. Thank you very much for your attention.
Lester Crystal
The schedule called now for some Q&A, but as often happens in live television, we’ve run out of time. We’re going to move the Q&A to—instead of a general dialogue here—to a reception room where our panelists will be with us and we can do the dialogue one on one. I want to thank them very much. You’ve put out the challenges, and very clearly elucidated, I feel, the challenge of what we have to do in the media. I wish you well in the next two days of the conference. Thanks very much.