Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Lindau 2011: What do scientists do after winning the Nobel Prize?

Most of us know about the prize-winning work of this year's Lindau Nobel Laureates, but how many of us keep track of what they did after winning the coveted honor? Scientists' lives after the Nobel Prize change dramatically. As former Lindau attendee Richard Ernst put it, they are now expected to be oracles on everything from international politics to religion, even when their knowledge of most other things is as limited as that of other people. There is no common thread; after winning the Prize, scientists' lives become as varied as those of all of us and in some cases a little more interesting. Here's a short portrait of life after the Nobel Prize illustrated with a select few examples...

Read the rest of the post on the Lindau blogs site...

Labels: ,

Lindau 2011: From designing airplanes to designing proteins

An inspiration from the birth of aviation

A few weeks ago I visited the small coastal town of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. Kitty Hawk is where the Wright brothers made their epoch-making first powered flight. Big stones mark the start and end points of the flight. There is a huge monument on top of a hill where they took off and then there are three stones at varying distances at ground level. The three stones indicate the distances covered on every flight; the brothers clearly got better at flying on every attempt.

The Wright brothers' story is inspiring not only because of the watershed in human history which they orchestrated but also because it shows the evolution of a technology at its best. The projects which the brothers undertook cost a few hundred dollars and should serve as a beacon of inspiration in this era of "big science" involving hundreds of millions of dollars. The brothers had a bicycle workshop in which they fashioned many of the components of their infant gliders. They drew inspiration from Otto Lillienthal who had been the first aviation pioneer to make successful glided flights; tragically, Lillienthal was killed on one of his flights, but not before saying "Kleine Opfer müssen gebracht werden!" ("Small sacrifices must be made!").

One of the most important lessons that the Wrights learnt from Lillienthal's adventures was the great value of building 'toy' models. Toy models start from the simplest possible systems which retain the essential features of a phenomenon and then work their way towards greater complexity. This philosophy has been used by many other pioneers of technology, including the scientists and engineers who made the moon landings possible...

Read the rest of the entry at the Lindau blogs website...

Lindau 2011: The beginning

This year I am privileged to be invited again to write for and attend the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany. This year's meeting is dedicated to Physiology or Medicine and the list of attendees provides a glimpse of the diversity and impact of biomedical research. These men and women have made enormous contributions to our understanding of biological systems, from elucidating structures and pathways to providing tools of inestimable value. My first post just went up and I will be linking to others as I write more. Here's the first one.

From messy to magical: Preparing for the future of medicine

In the early 1940s, as war raged over the continent, the British mathematician Freeman Dyson and the Indian physicist Harish Chandra were taking a walk in Cambridge. Harish Chandra was studying theoretical physics under the legendary Paul Dirac while Dyson was getting ready to spend a depressing time calculating bombing statistics at Bomber Command.

“I have decided to leave physics for mathematics”, quipped Harish Chandra. “I find physics messy, unrigorous, elusive”. “That’s interesting”, replied Dyson. “I am planning to leave mathematics for physics for exactly the same reason.” Leave their respective disciplines the two did, and both of them had highly distinguished careers in their new fields at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

I narrate this story because I can imagine almost exactly the same conversation taking place today between a biomedical researcher and any other kind of natural scientist. In fact it’s interesting to compare the status of medicine today with the status of physics when Dyson and Harish Chandra had their conversation. By 1940 physics had underwent a great revolution in the form of quantum mechanics and relativity. Yet there was much to be done and the “second revolution” was in the making. In retrospect it’s clear that very little was known about the strong and weak nuclear forces and nothing was known about the particle “zoo” that would be uncovered in the next few years. It took the efforts of many brilliant individuals to unify crucial concepts and make the whole structure look more consistent and complete.

Medicine in the year 2011 is like physics in the year 1940. Just like physics it has had a recent revolutionary past in the advent of molecular biology. Just like physics there is much of it that is “messy, unrigorous, elusive”. And it’s exactly these qualities that make it a field ripe for another revolution. The future beckons for medicine and biology today as it did for physics in 1940.

Read more at the Lindau blogs website...

Labels: ,

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Putting the filosophy back into fysiks

How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival- David Kaiser

Does philosophy have a place in serious science? Many of the founders of modern physics certainly thought so. Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrodinger were not just great scientists but they were equally enthusiastic and adept at pondering the philosophical implications of quantum theory. To some extent they were forced to confront such philosophical questions because the world that they were discovering was just so bizarre and otherworldly; particles could be waves and vice versa, cats (at least in principle) could be alive and dead, particles that were separated even by light years appeared to be able to communicate instantaneously with each other, and our knowledge of the subatomic world turned out to be fundamentally probabilistic.


However, as quantum theory matured into a powerful tool for calculation and concrete application, the new generation of physicists in general and American physicists in particular started worrying less about "what it means" and much more about "how to use it". American physicists had always been more pragmatic than their European counterparts and after World War 2, as the center of physics moved from Europe to the United States and as the Cold War necessitated a great application of science to defense, physicists turned completely from the philosophizing type to what was called the "shut up and calculate" kind; as long as quantum mechanics agrees spectacularly with experiment, why worry about what it means? Just learn how to use it. Yet this only swept epistemological questions under the rug.


Curiously, there emerged in the 1970s a quirky and small group of physicists in the Bay Area who tried to resurrect the age of philosopher-scientists. In "How the Hippies Saved Physics", David Kaiser wonderfully tells the very engaging story of this "Fundamental Fysiks" group and how it kept alive some of the deep philosophical questions that had haunted the founding fathers. The "Fysicists" came from a variety of backgrounds, but all of them had been dissatisfied; both by the dismal job market for physicists after the Cold War craze and more importantly by the purely practical approach toward physics which they learnt in graduate school. Interestingly they combined their deep questions about physics with the emerging hippie counterculture of the 60s and 70s and it's pretty clear from the book that they had great fun doing this; after all this was an age when non-conformity was encouraged. Discussions of physics concepts blended seamlessly with Eastern mysticism, forays into LSD-induced mind experiments, New Age workshops at the Esalen Institute in California and meanderings into telepathy, consciousness and parapsychology. Books like Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics" which explored parallels between modern physics and Eastern religions only helped the movement. The small group of physicists was also fortunate to get funding from some unlikely sources, including self-help guru Werner Erhard and even the CIA who was interested in possible connections between ESP and physics. Not surprisingly, mainstream physicists often ignored and sometimes actively condemned such activities

However, as Kaiser describes in this fascinating volume, this ragtag group of countercultural philosopher-scientists achieved at least one crucial goal; they kept questions about the philosophical implications of quantum theory alive at a time when most physicists eschewed and disdained such questions. Gradually, they managed to get a handful of mainstream physicists interested in their philosophizing. Much of the connection of this philosophy to real physics centered about a remarkable result called Bell's theorem which essentially reinforced the spooky properties of quantum systems by showing that information in quantum systems can flow instantaneously between particles. Remarkably, this seemingly otherworldly idea of "quantum entanglement" (which gave some of the founding fathers heartburn) now lies at the foundation of some of the most cutting-edge areas of modern physics, including quantum computation and the new discipline of quantum information science. What was considered far-flung by mainstream physicists and kept alive by the Fundamental Fysiks group is now serious physics for many. In fact, at least a few physicists who put Bell's theorem to experimental test are regarded as candidates for a Nobel Prize (these especially include John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger who shared the prestigious Wolf Prize- often a forerunner to the Nobel Prize- in 2010).

In the end Kaiser wants to make the case that by keeping such once-disparaged philosophical concepts alive, the Fundamental Fysicists "saved physics". I am a little skeptical of this claim. They certainly managed to nurture and publicize the concepts, but it was the harnessing of these concepts by "real" physicists who were involved with the nuts and bolts of calculation and experiment that actually saved the concepts and kept them from turning into a purely philosophical mishmash. In addition, a lot of concepts that the New Age physicists bandied about belonged squarely in the realm of pseudoscience and the trend continues; people like Deepak Chopra commit gross violations of quantum mechanics on a daily basis. Unfortunately the line between science and non-science can be thin and one of the most intriguing discussions in Kaiser's book is this so-called "demarcation problem". How does one know if today's philosophy is tomorrow's cutting edge science or just noisy mumbo-jumbo? It's not always easy to say.

Nonetheless, I think Kaiser and the Fysicists make a really great general case for why philosophical questions in science have their own place and should not be rejected. For one thing, they are always fascinating in themselves and demonstrate the endless human quest for meaning and reality; as recent discussions indicate, the philosophical conundrums in physics have been far from answered and continue to be explored through even more bizarre ideas like parallel universes and multiple dimensions. And as this wonderful book shows, at least in some cases these discussions may lead to key advances by influencing mainstream physicists who validate them by subjecting them to the ultimate arbiter of truth in science- hard experiment.

Labels: , ,

Monday, June 06, 2011

Lindau 2011: The beginning

This year I am privileged to be invited again to write for and attend the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany. This year's meeting is dedicated to Physiology or Medicine and the list of attendees provides a glimpse of the diversity and impact of biomedical research. These men and women have made enormous contributions to our understanding of biological systems, from elucidating structures and pathways to providing tools of inestimable value. My first post just went up and I will be linking to others as I write more. Here's the first one.

From messy to magical: Preparing for the future of medicine

In the early 1940s, as war raged over the continent, the British mathematician Freeman Dyson and the Indian physicist Harish Chandra were taking a walk in Cambridge. Harish Chandra was studying theoretical physics under the legendary Paul Dirac while Dyson was getting ready to spend a depressing time calculating bombing statistics at Bomber Command.

“I have decided to leave physics for mathematics”, quipped Harish Chandra. “I find physics messy, unrigorous, elusive”. “That’s interesting”, replied Dyson. “I am planning to leave mathematics for physics for exactly the same reason.” Leave their respective disciplines the two did, and both of them had highly distinguished careers in their new fields at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

I narrate this story because I can imagine almost exactly the same conversation taking place today between a biomedical researcher and any other kind of natural scientist. In fact it’s interesting to compare the status of medicine today with the status of physics when Dyson and Harish Chandra had their conversation. By 1940 physics had underwent a great revolution in the form of quantum mechanics and relativity. Yet there was much to be done and the “second revolution” was in the making. In retrospect it’s clear that very little was known about the strong and weak nuclear forces and nothing was known about the particle “zoo” that would be uncovered in the next few years. It took the efforts of many brilliant individuals to unify crucial concepts and make the whole structure look more consistent and complete.

Medicine in the year 2011 is like physics in the year 1940. Just like physics it has had a recent revolutionary past in the advent of molecular biology. Just like physics there is much of it that is “messy, unrigorous, elusive”. And it’s exactly these qualities that make it a field ripe for another revolution. The future beckons for medicine and biology today as it did for physics in 1940.

Read more at the Lindau blogs website...

Labels: ,

Friday, June 03, 2011

Time to make science popularization popular

When I was in college, “science popularization” was a dirty phrase. Popularizing science was considered the domain of the intellectual lightweights of science. You were interested in science popularization because you were not very good at “real” science itself. More disturbingly, this attitude was the corollary of a larger set of beliefs which saw “science” as tantamount to academic scientific research and nothing more. This view relegated not just popularization but to a lesser extent even teaching to the side. All this was quite surprising especially considering that Pune is the home of astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar, one of the foremost popularizers of science of his generation. But of course, even Narlikar’s “scipop” activities were admired because of his status as a first-rate scientist. The popularization was simply a side-product of his real scientific achievements.

When I came to America two things struck me. First, that science popularization enjoyed vigorous participation and appreciation from both scientists and non-scientists. And second, that some of the clearest writing about science came from people without formal scientific backgrounds. There are indeed many famous science writers like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, E O Wilson and Steven Weinberg who have impeccable scientific credentials, but there’s an equal number of others like Carl Zimmer, Robert Crease, Richard Rhodes, James Gleick, Rebecca Skloot and George Johnson who have written first-rate books on science and its history and philosophy, and whose grasp of basic science rivals that of experts in the field. With the rise of blogs and online media, science popularization has enjoyed an even bigger audience and entire conferences like ScienceOnline are organized and attended by science writers and journalists who are fundamentally science popularizers. I attended ScienceOnline 2011 this year and was very impressed by the scientific passion and drive for science communication that I saw in all the non-scientists attending the conference. Most of these people had basic degrees in science but very few of them were professional scientists.

In this post I want to address the troubling attitude about science popularization that existed among my fellow students in college. I already consider my college years a thing of the past, so recent college graduates should definitely voice their observations and opinions in the comments section. Have things changed?

As I noted above, the real problem with the attitude toward science popularization is that it is endemic of a more troubling larger view of science as being equivalent to research and nothing else. But this view is just plain wrong. Even a cursory glance at the history of science reveals that while research has been the primary driving force within science, teaching, scientific funding, scientific collaborations and even rivalries, the impact of social factors on the direction of research and yes…science popularization, have all played a key role in science’s transformation of the modern world. This history reveals a simple fact that is sometimes forgotten; science is very much a social activity. The image of the lone scientist toiling away in his lab and making a great discovery with immediate impact on society was never really true, and is not true at all in this era of expensive science, international collaborations and interdisciplinary research. These days it’s not enough to have a great idea; one needs to sell it to academic institutions, government agencies, private corporations and other funding bodies.

But most importantly, one needs to sell it to the public. And this is true even if the sale is not actually conducted from a park bench by every individual scientist. The sale is necessary because not only has the majority of scientific research in history been funded from the public coffer but because that funding will stop flowing if the public is not convinced of the value of research. We are already seeing this happening in the US. A country which has been the largest public supporter of science until now is struggling to hold on to the public purse strings through its government agencies, in part because of a fundamentally bad economy but also because public support for basic science has been increasingly tainted by multiple factors including the declining quality of education, fundamentalist religion and a growing inability to separate long-term prosperity from short-term benefits.

The only solution to this problem is better science communication. No number of brilliant scientific research ideas by themselves are ever going to reach the public and solve the problem if they are not presented in a digestible form. In that sense, science “popularization” is really nothing but science “communication”, although the former entails fancier pitches. Hopefully the latter word conveys a much bigger and obvious sense of urgency. Thus henceforth I will refer to science popularization as science communication.

Once the key dependence of scientific support on a public that mostly is not formally scientifically educated becomes clear, the important of science communication cannot be underestimated. Communicate science, otherwise doing science will slowly but surely become an uphill battle. My friends who were erstwhile scientists should have realized that their future as science doers depends in an important way on the science communicators that they disparaged. Perhaps that should have generated more respect for the communicators.

Indeed, even within science the importance of “explanation” has been widely recognized. Scientists who were masters of explanation may not always be as well-known as the movers and shakers of science but within the community their importance is unquestioned. Most people won’t recognize the name of Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman who contributed much more to science by way of teaching, critiquing and explaining than he did through original research. Robert Oppenheimer was similar. At the height of his powers, Oppenheimer once said that the business of theoretical physicists was to explain to each other what they could not understand. Niels Bohr, a scientist who had an almost maddening obsession to state scientific facts accurately, used to stress to his brilliant students and colleagues that they could not claim to have understood the thorny subtleties of quantum mechanics if they could not explain them to each other in “plain language”. Richard Feynman quipped that one could not really hope to have understood something if he or she were unable to explain it to the average layman on the street. It may not be obvious, but all these scientists were implicitly extolling the key value in science of what we are calling science “popularization”.

But assuming that my friends had understood the importance of communication, that may have still led them to their second misunderstanding; that only scientists who are accomplished in research are capable of the best scientific communication. As I have noted before, even a factual examination tells us otherwise; there are as many first-rate formally untrained science communicators as there are trained ones. This leads right away to the larger fallacy stated above; the assumption that knowing or doing science necessarily means spending all your time in actual scientific research.

It’s important to spend some time discussing this fallacy since it also implicitly assumes that being steeped in the fundamentals, getting trained at the best universities or under the best scientists or being the valedictorian of your class are all equivalent to great scientific creativity and necessarily imply an actual research career. This is not the case at all, not just among non-scientists but even among scientists. As the case of Coleman and Oppenheimer reveals, the history of science reveals a multitude of (largely unsung) first-rate scientific “critics”, those who had an excellent grasp of their field but who could not, for one reason or other, achieve creative genius commensurate with their intellect. But Coleman and Oppenheimer were still exceptional scientists. How about science journalists who graduated with degrees in history, english and philosophy and then penned top-notch scientific volumes? The bigger point really is that science, just like many other things, is basically a set of complex ideas that can be digested by virtually anyone if they really apply their mind to it. People who can understand the tortuous meanderings of politics or the vagaries of sports statistics really shouldn’t have much problem understanding scientific basics, and this is proven for example by people who have edited excellent scientific entries on Wikipedia. Most of these people lack formal scientific training and yet have a knowledge of many scientific ideas that rivals that of the best scientists. And yet are we going to cast them aside because they are not professional scientists and will not win the Nobel Prize? There’s another key point; people may sometimes realize relatively late in their career that their real talents lie in other aspects of science like teaching and communication and not research. In fact this happens all the time (and we should be honest enough to own up to it) since many of us don’t really know what we are truly good at until late in our career. Should we then just give up these other scientific activities because we are supposed to fit within only one narrow box? Would we have dissuaded Isaac Asimov (“The Great Explainer”) from writing all those wonderful science books because he was not publishing top scientific papers? Such thinking reflects a very impoverished view of the institution of science and its role in society.

The real big truth is that not only can you understand science very well without being a great scientist but that there is nothing wrong with it. Every field needs its critics, explainers, teachers and creators. As described above, science has always been a multifaceted social activity, and it is unreasonable to assume that anyone who is competent to delve into one of its many corners should also be competent enough to delve into any other.

We live in an age where more people believe in astrology and ghosts than in evolution. In this age the importance of science communication is as or even more relevant than that of actual research, whether this communication is done by scientists or anyone else. When you are trying to discover antibiotics against rapidly evolving bacteria or viruses and when the public which ultimately funds your research is skeptical of this very evolution, you better realize the key role that the communicators of science are going to play in helping you achieve your goals. None of the great ideas that are created by “real” scientists are ever going to have an impact if they are going to reach ignorant and closed minds. Nor are most scientists involved in research going to have the time necessary to communicate science on a regular basis. On the other hand, most people can grasp and appreciate scientific facts when these facts are carefully and patiently communicated by dedicated professionals.

In such cases, it’s best to leave communication to those who do it best and nurture and encourage their potential. We owe them a lot. It does not matter whether they are actual scientists or writers or just scientifically minded members of the public. Science is inherently a social phenomenon accessible to anyone with an open mind; as Oppenheimer put it, what we don’t understand we need to explain to each other. We want to get the message across. The identity of the messenger should not matter.

Originally posted at Critical Twenties

Labels: ,