Lindau Nobel

Third reply from Martin Chalfie

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:21:33 +0100

Dear Greg, Your comment about being a lab monk got me thinking about Neal Stephenson’s book Anathem, which describes an alternative Earth where scientists -- not members of a religious order -- live a cloistered life away from the demands of the outside world. In the end that cloistered world breaks down and the populations mingle, and in our own lives I think that the idea of the isolated scientist is perhaps over-indulged. After I left college I was not sure what I wanted to do and eventually found a job teaching at a private high school. When the summer vacation came around, I had to find a summer job and a friend suggested I talk to a lab head she knew. That summer job resulted in my first publication, built up my confidence that I could do research, and led to my applying to graduate school. But the experience also gave me an interesting perspective on the “monkishness” of doing science. I made friends both at the school and in the lab. Nonetheless, when the teachers took a break from their teaching, they would sit quietly in the teachers’ lounge reading newspapers, grading exams or preparing lessons. After talking all day to our students, we were talked out. In contrast, after working several hours in the lab, I always welcomed the opportunity to take a break and talk with anyone that happened to come in the lab. I agree that much of lab work requires dedicated attentiveness, but that does not imply that researchers are necessarily unfriendly or isolated. Moreover, anyone really committed to his or her work, regardless of expertise and occupation, needs periods of individual concentration. The term “workaholic” has not been used only for scientists. But you really ask whether doing science requires the long hours. Obviously some experiments must be conducted over an extended period or a non 9-to-5 schedule. A friend in graduate school use to take electrophysiological recordings over a 24-hour period (and then sleep for an extended period before analysing the data), and anyone doing genetics with C. elegans knows that sometimes the animals will be ready on the weekend. Moreover, last year at Lindau, Oliver Smithies remarked that he felt that not working at least a little on the weekends was wasteful because that meant that Friday was wasted winding down experiments and Monday was wasted getting everything started again. Nonetheless, I believe that most experiments fit into a reasonable day and a reasonable schedule. The question still remains, then, why people often spend considerably more time in lab than with other jobs. In my experience, part of this extended work time results from the fact that the lab is a home; it is where many of our friends are. Several years ago The New York Times Sunday Magazine had an article saying that contrary to popular opinion, most people liked being at work because they were appreciated for their skills and knowledge. Dedication and passion about what we do also contributes. I don’t feel I can really answer your question about how much time spent on work is too much. (I must admit that I have often told undergraduates who wanted to know how much they should work over the summer that I would never tell them that they were working too much.) I do, however, feel that people find their own levels. I have had several colleagues over the years who were very successful working 8 hour days, but they were astonishingly organized and got more done than I could in 10-12 hours. I have also known several scientists (myself included) who changed their schedules to be home more often when they had families or to pursue other interest. In other words, they lead normal lives, no matter how scientists may be portrayed in art and literature -- a point that reminds me again of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. Early in the book he portrays a class in the cloister in which the students discuss various iconographies, images that the outside world has of scientists. Scientists are viewed as emotionally blank (think Spock in Star Trek), criminally insane (usually as a result of their experiments; think Lex Luthor in Superman comics), absentminded and eccentric, and so on. In reality, of course, we are like everyone else, but if we are lucky we have a passion for working on the unknown. And working hard means that we can also play hard. All the best, Marty

Third letter to Martin Chalfie

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:00:45 +0100

Dear Marty, It is heartening to hear that you think I will do fine in selecting a good problem to work on, since I obviously have my doubts. We have been discussing the choice of a research topic in some detail, but we have not yet touched upon the actual day-to-day practice of science. Scientists are often stereotyped as workaholics, tinkering away in the lab until the wee hours of the morning, which I am afraid describes my own life all too well much of the time. Before coming to Berkeley I spent a year working at the NIH and, to my surprise given the dry material, vividly remember a mandatory safety training video. The specifics of the regulations that were reviewed in the video are of course long gone; what I recall is a quote from a principal investigator, along the lines of, “I am always happy when I see people working late into the night because it means they are excited about what they are doing. However, I do want to make sure that they continue to work safely.” At the time I had a cynical reaction to the P.I.’s perspective: she of course had an interest in the members of her lab working extremely hard and was either unaware of -- or choosing to ignore -- their presumed suffering. Although I like to think I maintain a rich life outside of the lab, these days often enough I find myself working there at odd times, without any sort of compulsion beyond my own desire for results. So, maybe the scientist in that video was wiser than I had anticipated. In my line of work, intermittent long nights running the electron microscope are generally a given if one wants to successfully get good data. I am more concerned about a tendency, which I think is not uncommon among scientists, to work obsessively beyond what is needed to succeed, in fact to an extent that may be detrimental. I must admit to sometimes feeling a bit like a lab monk, toiling away in my little cell somewhere along the sacred Hall of Science, far away from the concerns of the “lay public” you mention in your first letter. I think we agree that science as a whole requires a certain distance from the immediate demands and desires of society at large if meaningful progress is to occur. However, I wonder how much this is also true for individual scientists. It seems like common sense that maintaining a healthy work-life balance is important for a sustained high level of performance, but I am not sure what this entails for a successful scientist. My greatest concern would be to lose out on the diverse array of perspectives in the world, which can inspire flexible creative thinking: you mentioned it is important to interact with scientists in other fields as much as possible, but isn’t important to interact with other types of people as well (for instance, artists), whose thoughts might prove productively disruptive? To sum it up, in your experience, how much is too much? Cheers, Greg

Nature Video with Oliver Smithies ? Hungry for Knowledge

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:36:32 +0200

In this last of five Nature Videos from this year's Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on Physiology and Medicine Nobel laureate Oliver Smithies talks with Diego Bohórquez from Duke University (USA) about being hungry for knowledge.

Oliver Smithies, 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Diego Bohórquez, Duke University, USA

Oliver Smithies is a toolmaker. He shared the Nobel prize for discoveries that led to the development of knockout mice. Diego Bohórquez uses mouse models to understand how our gut regulates appetite. He has wanted to meet Smithies ever since he moved from his native Ecuador to Duke University in the United States. When the two meet in Lindau they have an instant rapport and soon they're sharing ideas about their research projects and talking about what makes a successful scientific collaboration.

See also the other Nature Videos from this year's meeting

Trailer and the first video with Harald zur Hausen about the virus catchers.

Edmond Fischer about combating cancer.

Ferid Murad about the question of Bench or Bedside?

Elizabeth Blackburn about a Life in Science

Nature video: Hungry for Knowledge with Oliver Smithies

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:29:19 +0200

Second reply from Martin Chalfie

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:18:05 +0200

Dear Greg, I like your distinction between justification and motivation and your desire to include wanting to improve the world as one of your motivations. Talking about motivation, however, is tricky, since people have so many reasons, some acknowledged and some not, for doing what they do. And what works for one may not work for another. People give all sorts of reasons for wanting to do science (as they do for any career choice). Many join you in wanting what they do to have the potential to help people. Others are motivated by more personal concerns. For example, the English mathematician G.H. Hardy says in his book A Mathematician’s Apology

The case for my life . . . is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any of the other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them.

Still others become scientists because they want to understand their world more fully or because they feel that they have an aptitude for science or because they feel rewarded for being the first to make a discovery. I’m sure that an individual’s motivation is a mix of desires and that these motivations change throughout one’s career. These considerations, however, do not help a person choose a research topic, and I am not sure my example is informative either. For me (and I suspect others) finding the project that has been occupying most of my career (the study of the molecular nature of mechanosensation) was an accident. When I started my postdoc, John Sulston had just found the first touch-insensitive mutants in C. elegans, but he had decided not to pursue their study. I liked the project more than what I had originally proposed to do (perhaps because I saw more possibilities in the research) and began to work on the mutants. I am still working on them, and I am amazed where their analysis has taken me. In part the different directions of my research arose because finding a new gene often means learning a new area of biology. In fact, part of my excitement in the work is that I am never really sure what I am going to be working on next. Perhaps a mark of a good research topic is that it has the potential to take you in several directions. I am not sure if one motivation is any better than another in helping one achieve success. The optimist in me wants the motivation that you express to help others to make a difference, to be a powerful reason to keep going in the face of the frustrations that come with doing research. And you may well be right that such motivations can help non-scientists understand why we do research. The cynic in me, however, feels that non-scientists do not care as much about our motivations as they do our justifications. Ultimately, the important question might not be why you started or what keeps you going, but what resulted: what you learned and how you applied that knowledge. Considering the thoughtfulness in your letters, I suspect that you will do fine. Good luck with your research. All the best, Marty

Elizabeth Blackburn about A Life in Science - Nature Video

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:10:55 +0200

Elizabeth Blackburn grew up in Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania. It was a long journey from there to a Nobel prize and the lab she runs at the University of California in San Francisco. Malaria researcher Clare Smith is also a Hobart girl, and she’s trying to decide whether to follow in Blackburn’s footsteps and move overseas after she finishes her PhD. Karina Zillner is from Germany. Like Clare, she’s in the final stages of a PhD. She’s developed a method for analysing sections of repetitive DNA. Karina hopes her Eltechnique might be used in Blackburn’s lab, where they study telomeres — repetitive sections of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes.

Elizabeth Blackburn, 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Clare Smith, University of Tasmania, Australia
Karina Zillner, University of Regensburg, Germany

We already have uploaded a Trailer and the first video with Harald zur Hausen about the virus catchers.

The second Nature Video with Edmond Fischer about combating cancer.

The third Nature Video with Ferid Murad about the question of Bench or Bedside?

Next Thursday the last of this year's Nature videos will go online.

13 October 2011 – Hungry for knowledge with Oliver Smithies

Nature Video: A life in science with Elizabeth Blackburn

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:00:48 +0200

Elizabeth Blackburn grew up in Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania. It was a long journey from there to a Nobel prize and the lab she runs at the University of California in San Francisco. Malaria researcher Clare Smith is also a Hobart girl, and she’s trying to decide whether to follow in Blackburn’s footsteps and move overseas after she finishes her PhD. Karina Zillner is from Germany. Like Clare, she’s in the final stages of a PhD. She’s developed a method for analysing sections of repetitive DNA. Karina hopes her technique might be used in Blackburn’s lab, where they study telomeres — repetitive sections of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes.

Third Nature Video is up with Ferid Murad about Bench or Bedside?

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:31:20 +0200

Camelia-Lucia Cimpianu is trying to decide between a career as a researcher or a practising doctor. In this film, she seeks advice from Nobel Laureate Ferid Murad who faced the same dilemma as a medical student in the 1960s. Murad chose the bench, and he subsequently discovered that a gas called nitric oxide (NO) acts as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system. It turns out that NO plays a role in many diseases — and possibly in the head trauma cases that Camelia studies.

Ferid Murad, 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Camelia-Lucia Cimpianu, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany

We already have uploaded a Trailer and the first video with Harald zur Hausen about the virus catchers.

The second Nature Video with Edmond Fischer about combating cancer.

Next weeks every Thursday another video will go online.

6 October 2011 – A life in science with Elizabeth Blackburn

13 October 2011 – Hungry for knowledge with Oliver Smithies

Nature Video: Bench or bedside? with Ferid Murad

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:22:44 +0200

Second letter to Martin Chalfie

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:29:41 +0200

Dear Marty, Thank you very much for your kind reply. From a practical point of view, i.e., regarding what kind of research I plan on doing, I concur with your advice. I share your wariness of translational research and the unrealistic expectation of immediate outcomes from basic science. But still, the problem remains of picking a problem to work on. You wrote that a critical aspect of the research process is justification. I think it would be useful to explore the distinction between justification and motivation. Justification is on some level intrinsically post facto and often defensive; one has chosen to study a certain problem (say, a biological phenomenon), and one must then defend that choice to one's colleagues, qualifying exam committee, reviewers, etc. In fact, many if not most of the rituals of the scientific community surround justification. Motivation, on the other hand, comes before the problem is even chosen. In my experience, the motivation for a basic scientist to study something is generally because it is “interesting”, a necessarily vague term. While I have received extensive training in justifying my work as a graduate student, a real discussion of motivation has been largely absent. As you pointed out, it is almost impossible to predict which scientific discoveries will have significant applications in the long run. As a basic scientist, I must therefore accept that it is very unlikely my research will have a widespread practical impact in society. I now face the problem of motivation: given that I accept this truth, what are the sorts of problems that I would happily work on for the rest of my life? The answer given by many of the laureates at the Lindau meeting this year and echoed in your letter is to follow my curiosity and pursue questions that will “push the limits of our knowledge”. This is a lofty challenge to be sure, and I do sincerely believe in the importance of contributing to human knowledge for its own sake. But I am not sure this belief alone motivates me enough to devote my life to a project. Recently I have begun to consider the idea that one can be motivated to do basic research by a desire to develop beneficial technologies, even if one cannot expect to be successful at it. For instance, lately I -- like many others -- have become increasingly concerned with the myriad challenges humanity will face from climate change. I am therefore considering studying plants, which could potentially lead to development of technologies in agriculture or energy. Even though I can’t count on it, the hope that I might do something practically useful in this regard energizes me to push the basic science forward. And, if all I manage is to figure out more about how plants work, I will be satisfied that I at least set myself to a problem I think is truly relevant to society. Of course, I can’t yet be sure of where I will end up, but I think this kind of thinking could be helpful for other young scientists making such choices, and could have additional benefits for the interactions between the scientific community and society at large. You noted that scientists must explain to the public that, “basic research is not the selfish pursuit to satisfy intellectual curiosity”. The most powerful means of doing so would be by scientists demonstrating that they feel like a part of the public, and that they are trying to serve the society that supports them. Expressing a sincere motivation to help by generating new knowledge as a wonderful part of the scientific journey, rather than merely by the desire to know (with helpful technology as a byproduct that justifies the whole endeavour), seems like it would be much more palatable to most non-scientists. Cheers, Greg Alushin