An Evening with Alan Alda

good afternoon and welcome to scripts my name is Jamie Williamson I'm the executive vice president here and let me be the first person to welcome you to our campus I see a lot of familiar faces I'd like to inquire how many people is this the first time you ever came to scripts excellent well I could spend about an hour up here giving you an introduction to scripts but that's not the purpose evening today I just like to say a few things about scripts though I mean this is the largest biomedical research institute in the country we have campuses here in La Jolla and a sister campus in Jupiter Florida we have 150 faculty here and another 50 faculty in Florida and the research interests in basic research span disciplines of chemistry neuroscience structural biology immunology and then molecular medicine so in addition to the basic research we have an amazing graduate program we have our own independently accredited graduate program and it's consistently ranked by our peers in the top 10 in chemistry and biology by us and News & World Report another great arm of Scripps is the Scripps translational research institute and that's led by dr. Eric Topol and that specializes in genomics personalized medicine digital medicine and there's a new effort for artificial intelligence in the life sciences and the last pillar Scripps whose caliber which is drug discovery institute not-for-profit that was founded by our president Pete Schultz he folded that into scripts when he became the president now four years ago and it is an engine for a rapid drug discovery and it's really putting some teeth into the notion of bench-to-bedside medicine so that's a good introduction to Pete and I'd like to welcome our president Pete Schultz to the stage who will introduce our special guest thanks Jeanie and I'd like to extend my welcome to everybody here as well and I have the pleasure of introducing Alan Alda everybody knows about Alan's career as an actor screenwriter and director not only in TV with mash but in movies his most recent movie marriage story he's won six Golden Globe Awards and six Emmys but what you may not know about is his impact on science I first met Alan at the suggestion of one of our board members Sherry Lansing and I met him in a restaurant in New York and I'm like I was a little bit [Music] skeptical because I'm ins a scientist and I'm gonna have dinner with an actor but it was an amazing discussion about science and how Alan is using his experiences from his acting career to impact science he actually has picked probably the most significant area anyone could have an impact on science other than providing more funding for science and that's communicating science to the public and as you all know scientists can take an incredibly simple idea and make it unbelievably complex to show how smart they are for instance we're making a drug for osteoarthritis and I could describe that drug is a small molecule protein protein interactor that binds to a cytosol ik protein called filament a at the c-terminus and interferes with the binding of a transcription factor CBF beta which induces it to translocate to the nucleus and turn on Kandra genic runks one genes and how many of you would know what that is or I could say it makes cartilage okay and how many of you would know what that is okay so that's scientist and you know there's this old question if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around here does it make a sound and I think in the case of science and scientific discoveries there clearly is a sound and there's a huge impact and it's important not only to hear the sound but to listen to the sound because it can have a huge impact on global welfare and that's kind of the mission Allen is taken on through his hosting of the series Scientific American frontiers introducing science the lay lay community and also in founding the all the Center for communicating science it's stunning Brooke which really teaches it's taught thousands tens of thousands of scientists how to better communicate not only to the public but to their students and their colleagues and it's a wonderful thing and that was my first interaction with Allen and then I had the good fortune of having a roundtable with Allen and Bill Gates and myself that are Florida campus talking about how nonprofit science and biomedical Institute's could could impact global health by accelerating the development of new medicines and that was a wonderful discussion and it showed again emphasize how insightful Allen is and after that we actually got together with with Alan and his folks and decided maybe it would be a great great idea to form a partnership and I expand his impact on the scientific communication to the west coast and a host is a center here at Scripps for folks on the west coast who really don't want to go to the East Coast to learn about science communication so that's that's how we came to be and we're really looking forward to that collaboration and the final thing I want to do though is I never do this but Allen wrote a terrific book if I understood you would I have this look on my face and it's a wonderful book by the way okay and I want Allen's all the great Allen's all the autographs on this book [Music] next book talk to you you know doesn't matter who I ain't okay wait [Music] [Applause] you know I got to finish signing this I can't turn him down so this is what I look like signing something and I get funny I don't sign things or do you sign things when you're out in public no thank you so much what a what a pleasure to be here would I I mean I've you know people that say like a hackneyed phrase but it really is a wonderful experience it's even better to work here it's great I bet it's good I spent the last two or three hours talking with groups of scientists who work here at Scripps for research and each one chemists neuroscientists people from calibre and one group who came then came in and we shook hands and they introduced themselves they said we were working on infectious diseases I said oh my god I just shook hands with you but they're so fascinating and what I loved is how no matter what I asked them they had a clear way to express what they did not not like the example that Pete just gave us they were really clear and then I realized they had studied with the older communication center well I I missed the training that we had I'm sorry I don't understand hopefully you can get me in for God's sake they didn't the program I so I you know it's interesting I had the chance when I did the science program which I did because I was so interested in science all my life and I don't think the people who ran the show knew that they just knew that I had been on mash and had some tenuous connection with science through fake surgery right in distillation of Jim yeah Jim well they I was able to distill gin which is very scientific and then so they sent me a letter asking me if I'd like to host the program but I think they sent it out to a lot of people because it was addressed to dear occupant but I must have interviewed I I think maybe 700 scientists in 11 or 12 years this is scientific America Scientific American frontiers it was on PBS that length of time and how was the first one the first one was a little hard for me because I I wasn't as smart as I thought I was and I didn't realize the value of ignorance and I have a really natural supplier and I never pretended to an ignorance they didn't have it was January but I began to learn to use it to say I don't understand what that means and sometimes it would be basic physics and they they'd look at me like every schoolchild knows this but I was absent that day or I just forgot or I didn't put two and two together I mean it was fascinating talking to the chemists today because their work is so interesting to me and when I was in college my father wanted me to be a doctor and I didn't want to be a doctor I didn't want to have to touch sick people and feel blood and stuff like that so I he said well just do me a favor just take a pre-med course in chemistry and I was so determined not to be a doctor that at the end I took a final exam and got ten out of a hundred in my final the teacher said why are you here but interestingly when I look back on that the teacher never once talked about the importance of electrons in chemistry it's all about the electrons yeah it's so it's everything is I mean that's why these things stick together right and all they talked about was the mechanics if you do this and do that it's to get this set of letters because totally unrelated to life to me and I couldn't get it so when I was on the Scientific American frontiers program and I realized that by asking naive questions they suddenly looked at me in a different way the scientists I was now somebody a person who needed to know they weren't talking to the lens they couldn't get away with a little mini lecture because if it sounded like a lecture I'd shake the vital the bells but it seems like you were a natural for this because you have inherent curiosity I am I am very curious I'm always trouble since I was a little kid I was always trying to figure out why is something like that mmm that kind of thing what I what I discovered while I was standing next to the scientists was I was bringing out their humanity by my own curiosity by my the way I related to which I developed through studying improvisation as an actor and relating as an active to the other actors every time I tried to act them and that made a big difference and then at one point it got crystallized for me we were doing this show in Chile that was 8,000 feet up on a mountaintop I was in an observatory was going to interview astronomers in a few minutes and I was sitting in the lobby waiting for them to light the room and I got this tickle in my gut and after a while it wasn't a tickle it was the worst pain I had ever felt in my life and they had a medic up there and they and I was crumpling on this bench I was all in pain so much I saw him looking ahead I don't think he had ever done anything medical before and finally he came over and I'm totally collapsed on the bench he says say you all right actually no I got this terrible pain I started here it went down here I think maybe it's appendicitis and he said yeah I think so too right yeah I didn't have too much confidence so they took me down an hour and a half a bumpy mountain road and I'm screaming and pain and they did this little dimly lit er where the doctor was brilliant and he knew what I had right away it wasn't wasn't my what if they appendix I wasn't my appendix it was about a yard of my intestine that had lost its blood supply that crimped and within a couple of hours my intestine and I were both going to be dead but this was what crystallized the communication for me I still remember the doctor leaning down to look into my face looking right into my eyes and he said here's what's happened some of your intestine has gone bad and we have to cut out the bad part and so the two good ends together and I said oh you're gonna do an end-to-end anastomosis he said how do you know that I said oh I did many of them on mad [Applause] and it's true that's the first operation I learned about it so how did you go from you know there were many years of scientific scientific American frontiers then how did you go from that to the center for communication I realized that just as in that moment with the doctor he spoke to me in words I could understand he was checking my face to see if I was getting it and I was the one speaking Latin or Greek or whatever it was he was talking in plain language but he was totally accurate wasn't dumbing it down so it lost its meaning it was true and I thought the connection he had with me is just like the connection that you have in an improvisation the best improvisation is just one that and makes that connection possible it's not making jokes if that kind of a problems not comedy improvisation so I thought let me experiment with scientists and see if I can help them by teaching them improvisation so as an experiment I had 20 engineering students at USC the gay vote minute talk about their own improvise for three hours and then they gave a minute to look again about their work and everyone in the room was shocked to see the difference including me I didn't know if it was gonna work and then I realized that we could help scientists become good communicators while we were teaching them to become quick scientists but there were no schools interested in doing it I won one Nobel Prize winner who ran a university said to me oh we haven't got time for that we have too much science to teach but it's the essence of science how can you do science unless you communicate with other scientists we all think we're good communicators well we all do not only scientists not if there's a stereotype that scientists are not as good communicators these other people it's food that they often speak the language that a lot of us don't understand but we all speak a language that's hard for other people to understand if we know something in great debt the details that matter we want to tell all the details we want to speak in our special language because it makes us feel good to speak in our language and I if I said to you if you've never been on him he said and I said to you would you do me a favor grab that gobo wolf over there off the century and hurry up because this is the multi nice shot what else I think I could earn the last yeah the a gobo is a go a big thing that blocks lights will light a tree is a century stand that you hold a light on or a gobo that was made a hundred years ago for the first time by the century stand company said century one so it is a show business language and there are many other terms a lot of people don't know and so we could I kind of want to talk about language and there's there's an announcement that we well yeah there's something that I'm so happy about we you know we the Center for communicating science has taught in every state in the Union and eight countries and we've trained fifteen thousand scientists and medical professionals but one of the things for years we wished we had was a place on the west coast where we could train all the scientists and researchers and medical professionals all up and down the west coast without there having to fly to us or our having applied to them and we found a place to partner with near here in fact it's not only the reason it's near here is it is here it's whoops Misha [Applause] and you you folks had scripts have been so so good to work with it and as we planned out this partnership there's a space that we'll have available to us to train people from scripts to train more of the researchers at Scripps and to train researchers all up and down the west coast and this sign will be out front of our of our training so I was telling my family about this event and that I have a discussion and there seem to be a corner graphic split yeah Mike knew who I was and nobody else it wasn't quite that bad number one son 39 years old said that's fantastic and 32 and 30 year old son and daughter said who's that and and I realized that and when I so I actually read your book too just so I was prepared for this little discussion and I have been imprinted by new for hundreds of hours over the period of decades I'm really sorry well well so is I because I'm reading the book and it's in your voice I just you know I'm just paging through it and and the whole thing and it's it's a remarkable book because it is your personal just description and you've gone through almost in a in an academic way the science of communication but like and a lot of what you write is about empathy with other person and in discussion and forming that relationship and so you know as scientists we we think we're good communicators and we tend to communicate in a very ritualized way we're judged by the ritualized way which which we communicate we write papers and they have a certain structure we give lectures and they have a certain structure and the thing that we really don't have any training or even experience and most of us aren't very good at it is communicating to the general public right and you know something we've found first of all it's so important to communicate with the general public and science reporters do a wonderful job and I'm so grateful to them for what I've learned about science women they take a great risk in representing the work of scientists when they themselves are usually not scientists but what I've always wanted to hear in the days when I was interviewing them on the Scientific American frontiers I wanted to hear the scientists tell their own story because they're the ones with the passionate nature they're the ones or doing that are devoting their lives to talk about the voting your life - one of the people I introduced a woman who was an expert in one kind of spider she slept for seven years on lava bed so she could be there when the spider woke up in the morning that's a dedication that's dedication I mean you can't you don't see that kind of dedication and what was the question who's interviewing you because so let's let's let's turn to the subject of a little cab you Larry yes because that's that's one of the things that if you use a scientific word like violence everybody understands what that scientists know it is the public nodes you might use a word like thermodynamics most of the scientists will have gone through a class where they're exposed to that the general public might not and then you can go through an example like like heat news that have some or some jargon or even an acronym and people don't don't they don't that's not in their vocabulary no if you have to sometimes you have to use a word like that and I always try to say plain language first and then refer to the hard word the hard form of the word because if you use the hard word first you just put up an obstacle I don't hear what comes next to the next few seconds but plain language gets in and then the willing to hear the other term for it we almost have a situation of like Tower of Babel though even within CN but and you know it's what's difficult about that is not so much speaking different languages but using common words in different ways when Obama's brain initiative is begun I've heard this before people who were in the room they had nano scientists together with neuroscientists see if they could figure out new ways to explore the brain which is a great idea bring together these two disparate disciplines but they were so disparate that they argued for hours more than one day about the meaning of the word Pro one guy thought probe meant this now the guy thought probe meant is right one of about one of my scientific mentors said that you know that a scientific field is truly mature when people start arguing about nomenclature yeah so that's what that's worth the only real estate that's left and that's the you know very much alive with the other thing we found because when I started I thought the most important thing was to have scientists communicate better with the public for many reasons the public needs to understand how important science is to their lives why do scientists or even discovering things basic information about the nature basic research why does it matter it matters because at a place like this which is so remarkable understanding of how nature works is put to work to keep our health secure the understanding of nature and the application of its medication so people need to understand in the general public how much science is benefiting and the needs of trusted more that takes more than communication as a transfer of information takes communication as contact between the communicator and the person list it takes related without that relating we're just slathering people with information and it's not getting in and they're not building trust you're building a big guy here and a little guy here but then we found that it wasn't just the public that was benefiting scientists communicating with other scientists were communicating better in the same lab sometimes and certainly across disciplines when they're spread apart by different silos of knowledge and we've even been told this is so amazing to me we've been told by senior scientists learning to communicate to somebody who doesn't isn't familiar hasn't studied their their science their their branch of science learning to do it in a way that shows them the big picture helps them understand their own work subbudu subdora love with you but you knew that i sum it up you suffer lover Saravanan Amida their Jewishness Nippert it that logically again at to this got verge that's me no no no bonus Nats - oh that's good what quarterly do you listen you stupid never ah somebody yeah yeah as Jamie lost his mind so what that's called is gibberish what made you say that well I got you up on gibberish well it was just the current subject that you were talking about I I wanted to talk about the way that you weaved improvisation into the school and I know this is one of the fools that news but there are many other interesting games and exercises right you know the whole the whole idea when we teach communication we don't give lectures we don't try to reduce it to a set of tips because tips can be useful if you already know something and it's a reminder to do it but if you're not making contact with the audience you're looking over their heads if you're avoiding them one way or another or you're putting your whole talk on our point slides and turning your back on the audience and reading the slides to them this is not communication that's X commune Asia I'd somebody said once I loved which line power corrupts and power point corrupts absolutely so what we do instead of talking about is we put people through experiences that are transformative we we help them relating in ways they hadn't been able to before maybe I'll make sure yes for instance some one of the baby would you mind standing are you do I get an autograph for my son okay very good now this is mirror and this is a basic thing because well I'll talk about it later what you say okay you'll be my mirror okay which means is everything I do you do as if you were the mirror exactly at the same moment now switch I'll be you you've done this before I think I would say I'm a little behind you let's see let's see if they can tell whose mirror all right okay Yahoo wait who's who's the mirror I am how didn't we know because he was a little ahead of me this is why this is such a basic exercise it's the job of the person leading the discussion to make weird to the person pissed it's not the responsibility of the person listening to understand but the other one to be clear and when you physicalize it like this you really get in the correction of this person is my responsibility I have to take care of them so they understand what's going on here and I love and that's about as much as we explain have a sense one of the things that I think is a current challenge that scientists need to do a better job has to do with this information disinformation yeah so so you know the scientists are suiting up to you know explain something like climate change and you're geeking out with charts and all of this and you're trying to sound scholarly and then somebody posts a picture of a snow drift it's three feet high in the front of their house and say what's what global warming yeah and so we're getting our butts kicked by disinformation and so so do you have any thoughts about how we welcome but one of the things that really interests me is some recent research that shows that in spite of what might expect having more information doesn't necessarily help people become advocates of these of the notion that global climate change is real the more information they get the more they were but rebutted with information of their own that may or may not be accurate but it's important to them to abut it and in ways that sometimes sound scientific but the the problem is that it if they have an allegiance to something else whether its political or religious or scientific some reason that makes them need to adhere to a different beliefs more information to give them the less less effectiveness whereas on the other hand the more they know that you're just like them the easier code and I think it's really important not for us not to any of any of us will talk about climate change I think it's really important for us not to sound like we know you're ignorant and you have to shape up they're bright people most of them you know they and they want the best they don't want their crops to fail they don't want the water to you poisonous they don't want the fish to disappear so then depending on what they really need we can help them get it we all work together but the determined to become toxic I I could do this all night I would love to love to just keep chatting but we do want to move on and have some questions for the audience right and but I do want to have one last question so you have a podcast clearance I have a wonderful podcast I hope everybody it's great called clear and vivid and we have great scientists on like Eric Topol scripts we have comedians we have diplomats like Madeleine Albright coming up we have Paul McCartney we've had yo-yo ma it's not we have a whole range of people because they all have something interesting to say about relating and communicating so I'm glad you brought it up in fact I can't stand not talking about it well one of the traditions on your podcast is at the end you asked seven questions right seven questions so I'm I'm not gonna ask seven but I want to turn the tables on you a little okay and ask you one of your questions so what is it that you would like people to understand about you what would I like people to understand about me that question it's not so easy in order to shout the question yes nothing comes to mind I think I've you know I think I really do feel no matter what I do they're gonna get an impression of me that I can't control I mean well that's about all [Applause] okay so at this point I'd like to invite Pete and Laura to come up to the stage eight you know Laura's Laura Linden Feld who is the director of the oldest Center for communicating science at Stony Brook University so I'm gonna pick some questions out of the audience and and then we can engage the rest of our panel here questions for he is my put him on the spot but I was hearing Alan talk about passion and clarity and I wanted you to tell us what your passion the question that he's actually what he about what what he's passionate about it scripts yeah what what am i passionate about I think I think the reason I took on this opportunity was like Alan I think science can have a bigger impact basic research and science my focus is in on communication but on bridging the impact of science on medicine and global health and I think we're creating a really interesting new model where we not only make great scientific discoveries but we're accelerating the development of new medicines for those discoveries and we have drugs now in the clinic for away for metastatic cancer prostate cancer quitting just filed an IND for a new potential cure for cancer with a gates folks for TV and childhood diarrhea and we're just hopefully the end of this year we'll have a very novel chemical vaccine that you take a little flu shot effectively once every six months or more and you're completely protected from HIV which would completely block the transmission of HIV please so I think we're starting to realize that we can actually is an academic institution and do more than just basic research but facilitate the application so that's what I'm most excited about [Applause] no don't hear Daniel oh go ahead thank you I applaud what you're doing with the communication training for physicians scientists I think it's terrific and really important but there's another side to it what about scientific literacy for the general public and the educational system will there be any effort to try to enhance the receiving side of the enhanced communication that you're espousing on the part of the scientist there is a great quote from George Bernard Shaw saying that the greatest danger to communication is the illusion that it has taken place so while you have the brilliant idea to enhance communication from those who are teaching it what about enhancing the receiving side to scientific literacy can you I couldn't the short version of the question you can get the same laughs Eagle okay it's what are you doing about scientific literacy to make sure the public is engaged in the process of learnings about science yeah it seems to me really important for scientists to communicate with the public and pass on to them through through the prism of their own passion for their work which is emotionally excited to the rest of us an understanding of their work and not only the discoveries they're making but the way they do it the way science works the way science makes an advance and then sometimes has to retract the paper because they realized that their data was mishandled by accident or any other way they need to know that if they hear that coffee is good for us one year and bad for us the next year that it's because science doesn't make a pronouncement for all time about most things I mean gravity still is gravity but there are aspects of it that change their ways of looking at it that change that give us new insights but the general public is busy living their lives they're busy working they're busy bringing up their children they haven't spent 20 30 40 50 years devoted to a single aspect of nature the way many scientists have we can't expect them to know as much as professional scientists and we have to help them understand it I hope we find ways to increase curiosity I don't know how to do it I wish somebody would do a study on it and figure out how you can take somebody with a modicum of curiosity and help them enlarge it until it brings them the pleasure of discovering things about nature or understanding things about nature that other people have discovered curiosity is the key to staying alive in many ways and that would bring us to the point that I think you're hoping for which is more people having an understanding of science if so fact oh thanks question right here everybody here that I'd I'll try to give you except you ask you a tip about talking when people are not interested at fine tips really hard Idol I prefer these exercises that transform us without putting it into words because the tip goes in one day or not the other tip in an experience for me is I there's a there's a speed sign in the town where I live in the country in Long Island and the sign says 25 miles an hour and I've always gone routine we have always blunt 40 miles a night and one time I got a ticket the ticket getting the ticket was important because the speed sign was the tip the ticket was the experience now let's hear from lower we really don't offer tips but I'm gonna give you one and it's this because of this fabulous new partnership you can come here and take a workshop that's my tip climb out for a workshop come for two days get the experience it's really amazing we do a lot of these all over the country and what's so fantastic about this of bringing scripts and alda together that we now have this site this location right here overlooking the beautiful Pacific where you can sign up as an inn ladies in general that's my tip get some training it doesn't naturally happen buy it this is an example this woman couldn't speak an hour he taught me I was completely introverted before I met you right well you couldn't get a thing out of it but I'll get outta here I'll give you a tip tutor to actor to Lordship the essence of speaking is listening if you're listening to the person you're talking to I'll listen to you if you tell them what you know without caring what they know how they feel about it forget it and you really learn how to do it if you sign up to this woman's board so Laura so we you know we teach communication in the graduate program we have our course on writing writing papers grants and we have a course on speaking but it's always lecturing should we think about including communication to the public as a course in graduate education to prepare our scientists for engaging the public unfortunately you've got up here I think you know and this comes back to you our question before about how do you make the science more literate scientific the public more literate about science it's about its same skills it's the same principles if you can imagine what it feels like to be the person with whom you're trying to connect if you can try to put yourself in their shoes at their head what does it feel like what might they be thinking you different words are gonna come out whether you're writing a grant proposal or giving a public talk so that that same activity of trying to imagine what do they feel like what do they want what do they need and that then becomes a responsibility for you we take that very seriously as scientists when we write a paper or grant and I think that that sense of responsibility toward wanting to land with your audience can easily be extended so I like the idea that you're doing that and we can help okay let's let's take another question oh it's a good follow up for Laura I was oh I was one of the fortunate faculty here at Scripps to actually participate in the communication training this fall and for me the most useful but also most challenging exercise that we had to do as part of this training was to distill our research down to first one minute which is very hard and then I think it was two minutes then one minute then 30 seconds and so from this this I found this to be very valuable and I've actually used some of these skills but I'm curious in your in your experience working with a lot of different scientists what do you think was the biggest takeaway that a lot of them got from this training the biggest takeaway that most people like what is the feedback that you get when we fill out the evaluations of the exercise or the the training that they that they really apply afterwards well a lot of people love that exercise because it gives them something about their science that they can reframe differently I think the biggest thing that people take away is they come to understand that communication and you said you said something along these lines before Allen it's not these finding these perfect words and saying it to you and you get it that's just not how life works it's about being present and the relationship and having a sense of responsibility for the other person did you have that experience or we were successful and if that's why there's no tips it's hard it's hard work I think of what you just said as thinking of the person you're communicating with as your communication partner not the target of your communication but it's a cooperative process when it worked really well okay that's what you're saying I so hi I would like to hear your thoughts on what you believe is impeding the Advancement of science more is it ineffective communication is it lack of funding or is it something else you know what is impeding science more is it lack of the communication lack of funding or something else well lack of funding is tight at least in part to lack of communication and not not the communication will solve everything but it sure solves an awful lot the poor communication causes a huge problem and to community by the way this is this is another way of putting with what large is communication is not simply the transfer of knowledge not the transfer of information it's this getting into the head of the other person which how you feel in a way that engages them and gives them the opportunity to respond to you either by saying I don't understand you or I don't agree with you or you make that clearer that doesn't seem to apply in this situation or that situation and suddenly you're both exploring an idea together that's to meet communication and unless we can do that with the public and with government agencies and funders and with one another science will be hurt by it why I'm sorry I took over the answer what do you think it is you're right the problem of funding the politicization of science it's all nested and how we communicate about it it's and communication is nested in power dynamics so we're not gonna be able to address these issues if we don't look at the communication itself as you were speaking I recalled we had a woman in a workshop and she I thought she crystallized it so beautifully she said at the end we went around we said what are you taking away from this and she said I learned that I had to listen in order to be heard yeah that's good not a great line what about Pete what do you think what we heard science I think I think clearly funding of science increases its impact but I think communicating science effectively amplifies the impact of the science that's done okay so I think they go hand-in-hand if you do something that's really important and it could have a huge impact on the public if you don't make it clear what that impact could be and how to engage you know society and realizing that impact should the experiments kind of like a you know a shot and a force that nobody listens to okay so and you really need to do both seems to me it's very important that the relationship between science and the general public be warmer and more understanding of one another somebody told us good I forget who said it what the source was I think there was a poll that came out today that showed that something like forty or forty six percent of the American public isn't sure whether vaccination leads to autism not that they are convinced it is but even just not being sure is could be a huge tragedy for the whole country and I think I think you know as a scientists we're all privileged to do science and did we get money to do whatever we think is exciting to do with great co-workers for our whole careers and you know I think what we need to realize is with that comes an obligation to give back by making sure we maximize the impact of the science we do I think it goes both ways sometimes scientists think they're in a and ivory tower and have no obligation with the money that they've been given to do whatever they want and we we who are not scientists are missing out on one of the pleasures and one of the great beauties that we can experience in being a which is to get a glimmer of a few of nature that scientists get by devoting their lives to we don't we don't get to devote our lives to it but we could get some of the benefit of their knowledge if we had a way to understand it better it would be to me it's similar to saying tomorrow there will be no more motion no music of any kind it will all disappear and we're in that now with science it's for many of us there's no science yeah I know and I think I think scientists like us playing a bigger role in teaching you know it young young age potential fun and excitement of science I remember when when my daughter was in kindergarten they asked me to do a science demonstration and so I decided to I'm a chemist everything up okay so I put together a little rocket and we I lined up the whole class and the playground and everybody else was watching it and I put down this rocket okay and I was just crossing my fingers and I put it down when I said count the five one two three four five a thing blew up and it disappeared and luckily the wind was perfect and it landed 10 seconds later right at my feet and I looked at everybody and I said so who wants to be a scientist everybody was yeah but I think we need to do more of that - Allen right thank God it didn't land on your head yeah I'm not gonna tell you about what my polymer thing with the team did to the teachers varnish on our desk we want the good example did you I mean you have this engaging curiosity did you ever think about being a scientist no I never did I just love learning about science I got an award from the National Institutes of Science supposedly for helping communicate science but I think it was really in gratitude for my not becoming one okay look maybe any other questions going down right here I'm Chris Buescher I'm the executive director of the Parkinson's Association here in San Diego and I would like to know if you have any special thoughts relative to communications in terms of Parkinson's disease in the Parkinson's community they shouldn't yeah everybody hear that yeah as I guess most people know I was diagnosed with Parkinson's about five years ago the thing about two years ago I decided to maybe more maybe three years ago I can't remember I decided to speak publicly about it and the reason was that I wanted to communicate to people who had recently been diagnosed not to believe or give in to the stereotype that when you get a diagnosis your life is over and most of us when we under the burden of that belief most of us don't tell people and try to hide it some people don't tell their their family some people don't tell their the workplace colleagues and they it's so interesting when I I wanted to help them understand that your life is not over there are things you can do exercises you can do there are medications you can take that can keep can prolong your the time that it takes before it gets much more serious and it's not to diminish the fact that it can get really bad but to think that it's that your life is over as soon as you get a diagnosis is wrong I've gone five years like I'm busier almost busier than I am and I'm getting a lot accomplished and I look forward to I don't know how many years but as long as I got I'm going to be very grateful for it but it's not it's amazing how good it feels not to keep it a secret the burden is off you free I mean I know people notice my hand shakes of course my hand shakes I got Parkinson's [Applause] we got time for one one more question over here yeah here I think I speak for the whole scripts community when I should say I'm really excited to have all the center here on campus a little closer on the mic thank you I think I speak for the whole scripts community when I say I'm extremely excited to have all the center here on campus and I'm just wondering if you could comment on the vision for the this West Coast branch how it will be the same or different on the branch of Stony Brook and and what about Scripps Research drew you to this opportunity I'm sorry I didn't hear the last part what about what about Scripps research made it a particularly good fit for the West Coast branch well why was Scripps a good fit for the West Coast branch oh it's out saying my version of them you can say yours and then you can say your it's a perfect fit because Scripps is so inventive innovative the the you don't when you have this many smart people together the more they can spark one another the better the product will be in the final the final analysis and they'll spark one another more when they're communicating better and this is a symbol this whole campus is a symbol of human ingenuity human desire to find the horizon and go past the horizon it's a natural place for people to come from all up and down the coast to find out how to make these amazing things they know about nature available to other people it's the perfect place I'm so proud to be here and I thank you so much welcome [Applause] this concludes the formal part of our presentation and I want to make sure everybody knows that we had a little reception there'll be jazz and libations outside afterwards we're gonna disappear for a little while and we'll join you but we do have we just wanted to give a little token of our appreciation to Alan we're really looking forward to our partnership with you in the center to help amplify the impact of the science everybody is doing and I think it's not only gonna be rewarding but I think you can see from tonight that it's also gonna be a lot of fun okay and really looking forward to it and I want to thank you for your time Alan and we have a little token of appreciation for you so it so let me let me explain the gift we we didn't want to just give you some chunk of glass with the Scripps logo so this is like get a lot more than MIT that I can four digit to hockshop yeah so what's really interesting what is it okay one of our faculty members David Goodsell is a computational biologist but he's also an incredible artist and he paints renderings of cellular components based on real data and so we thought it would be fitting to give you such a painting this is a picture of a part of a nerve cell and a neuron is the beginning in the end of all successful communication [Applause] thank you all for coming thank you [Applause]

Channel: Scripps Research

Views: 6,195

Rating: 4.9058824 out of 5

Keywords: biomedical research, drug discovery, science communications, alan alda, san diego, la jolla, communications trainings

Id: BKf2uAeor6o

Length: 63min 32sec (3812 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020