November 23, 2020 • 28 mins
How can we come together to tackle big challenges in science and society? Dr. Eric Lander and Niala Boodhoo, veteran journalist and Axios Today host, talk about the importance of trust, humility, and skepticism in the worlds of science and media. Together, they ask how we can find the common ground we’ll need to make progress.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, you're listening to Brave New Planet, a podcast about
amazing new technologies that could dramatically improve our world, or
if we don't make wise choices, could leave us a
lot worse off. Utopia or dystopia. It's up to us.
(00:47):
On Saturday, November seventh, two and twenty, hundreds of millions
of people finally got an answer to a question that
had consumed them for more than eight weeks of balloting
and four days of vote counting, who would lead the
United States of America for the next four years. At
eleven twenty four am Eastern Time, CNN called the president
(01:09):
election for Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
Within twenty minutes, every major network followed suit. The race
was over. But even as one question was answered, another
still loomed large. Well America now finally be able to
move forward and tackle the hard problems facing the country
(01:30):
and the world. My name is Eric Lander, and I'm
the host of Brave New Planet. When we began planning
the seven episodes of Brave New Planet more than a
year ago, I never imagined we'd be wrapping up in
(01:51):
the days just after a presidential election. We'd originally planned
to complete and release this series in spring twenty twenty,
but as with so many things, those plans were upended
by the pandemic. Somehow, though, the timings turned out to
be fitting Brave New Plant. And it's about amazing science
and technology that also poses hard challenges, But it's also
(02:16):
about how we're going to need to come together and
work together to make wise choices in many areas. Yes,
scientific problems, from the current pandemic to climate change, but
also societal problems from economic security to racial justice. Brave
New Planet has tried to show smart, thoughtful, passionate people
(02:38):
who agree on the facts and even agree on the
societal goals, but who disagree on solutions. Yet nonetheless they
grapple with complex problems, argue with respect, occasionally even change
their minds, and make some progress even where there are
no easy answers. To my mind, it's the only path forward.
(03:01):
Brave New Planet's mission is to invite everyone into these conversations.
So today's big question, what's it going to take to
do more of this as a society, to find common
ground on goals and argue productively about solutions. As I
thought about this question, it occurred to me that scientists
(03:22):
aren't the only people who spend their days gathering information
to try to help society solve problems. Journalists do too,
So I thought that a conversation between a scientist and
a journalist about the common challenges we face might be enlightening.
I reached out to journalist Nila Boodoo. NILA's worked for Reuters,
(03:43):
the Miami Herald, and in public radio, where she's hosted
shows on WBEZ Chicago. Now she's the host of Axios Today,
a new daily morning news podcast. Nila Boodoo, Welcome to
Brave New Planet. Hi, Eric, thank you so much for
having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Oh, it's
great to have you. So, Nila, I'd love to start
(04:06):
with how scientists and journalists can with the public, At
least in science, I think there's often a real problem
with humility and trust. You know. For example, when scientists
talk about what do we have to do to make
progress on problems, one of the first things people suggest
is more science education. That doesn't get me wrong, I'm
(04:28):
not opposed to more science education. I teach. I love it,
But I think there's an underlying assumption there that the
problem is that people are just ignorant, that if they
just got more science education, they'd know the facts or
accept the facts and fall in line with the solutions.
And I don't think that's the right place to start.
(04:50):
I mean, scientists do spend their days swimming around in facts,
but I don't think that's a reason to be looking
down on people. I think there's ever a reason to
be looking down on people. It's not a good posture.
We might have been able to get away with it
in the science of the nineteen fifties and sixties. You know,
the authority of scientists in the White Lab Code or something,
(05:13):
but scientists don't have a monopoly on the insights that
are going to matter. I think, you know, we have
to go in feeling we got something really important to contribute,
but it's only part of the puzzle. Yeah, I'm wondering, Nilot,
do you see that same issue in journalism? Well, I
think it's the same thing you said, right, Like, so
you said that, you know the idea that scientists in
(05:35):
the nineteen fifties or sixties or whatever, there's this idea
that scientists where its sort of the end all be
all of information. Journalists were like that too right. We
used to think that we were in charge of broadcasting
out the information to people, and I think, certainly in
my career as a journalist, we've seen that shift. With
the advent of social media the way that information flows,
journalists play a role. I think journalists play a very
(05:57):
important role in moderating, in sifting through, in amplifying voices
that don't have an opportunity to do that. But we
are not the source of I mean, we do not
broadcast information out to people anymore. And I think when
you talk about trust, which is a really important thing
that comes up in journalism, do people trust what we do?
(06:17):
I think a major reason why a lot of people
don't trust what journalists do is because of the way
that we go about doing it, and I think not
having a humble attitude. Now, I will say, when you
look at the data about this, people don't trust the media.
And first of all, I will start with the premise,
I'm not quite sure what the media is. So I
always say that first, like that's kind of my first
(06:37):
phrase to everyone is what is this media? I'm not
sure what you mean? And when you break it down,
I think people who have relationships, for example, with local journalists.
Those institutions score very high. People trust those local institutions,
local journalists as accurate and credible sources of information. I
think when you look at the national level, that's where
(06:58):
you see more of a breakdown. What do you think
about that question of trust? I wonder how important that
is as well when we're thinking about journalism and in
your case science. Oh boy, So look, trust, I think
is the next layer up over humility. You got to
come in with a humble attitude. But what do we
mean by trust the scientists. There's maybe two kinds of
(07:23):
trust that are worth distinguishing between this kind of blind trust,
that nineteen fifties nineteen sixties thing of just deferred to
me as the scientist because I know better than you.
I think there's actually instead a different kind of trust,
and I might call it like earned trust. Earned trust
(07:46):
is I'm going to be if I'm the scientist or
the doctor. I'm going to be transparent about the evidence
we have. I'll tell you why I believe things, and
every bit is important. I'm going to be transparent about
what we don't know. I don't trust people who don't
say I don't know. Some of the time, I don't
(08:08):
trust people who can't explain to me why they believe
the things they believe. So I think we are shifting
and maybe it's true for journalism as well, but certainly
in science, to the idea that people should be asking questions,
they should be probing, and if scientists should bring doubt
about other people's results in evidence, why shouldn't the general
(08:32):
public bring doubt. But again, it's worth distinguishing two kinds
of doubt. There's kind of the cynical doubt. I just
don't trust this science stuff. You know, the diet studies
keep contradicting each other, or you can't trust science because
they can't make up their minds, And I think that's
a very cynical, nehalistic kind of doubt. I think there's
(08:53):
a kind of doubt that I would love to see
more of, which is empowered doubt. I'm not going to
believe you until you give me the evidence, show me
hard evidence. So that's the kind of empowered doubt that
you know, we want to have because that gets people
like properly at the table as peers in this thing.
(09:15):
I fantasize about, you know, how the FDA might go
through its drug approval process for coronavirus vaccines. Just this week,
Feisser issued a press release saying it had really positive
results from its vaccine trial, and the press release didn't
have a lot of details, which was, you know, some
(09:37):
people noted and they're gonna have to come forward with
those details. But I'm imagining how do we get the
country involved in the drug approval process. And so you
can imagine like a Reddit Ama where you know, the
country's sending in questions and folks at the other side,
maybe both the drug company and the FDA are trying
to answer them. And now I don't I don't know
(09:59):
all effects. I'll just make this up, so don't don't
take these numbers to be exactly right, but it might
go something like this. The company starts by saying, well,
we ran a clinical trial with forty thousand people and
half got the vaccine and half got a placebo, and
then we waited until ninety five people had gotten infected
(10:19):
and shown symptoms. And we looked and we found that
ninety out of those ninety five people were people who
got the placebo, and only five of them were people
who got the vaccine. And so it looks like the
vaccine is doing a pretty good job of protecting people.
But then people will write in and they'll say, okay, well,
tell me what do you know about elderly people, people
(10:41):
over seventy did they get protection? What about men? What
about people who have serious health complications? How long is
this protection gonna last? And are there side effects? Some
of the times the answers are going to be we
just don't know. We haven't got enough data yet, we
haven't run long enough to see how long protection might last.
(11:05):
I think people are smartan they can take the information
what we know and what we don't know, and make
decisions based on that. So I think that's really the
foundation of trust. Earn trust is to be direct and
transparent about what we know and what we don't know. Yeah,
so do you think the credibility then you sort of
build the credibility and trust with the government regulator and
(11:27):
in having for example, the CDC or the FDA be
incredibly transparent about the whole process. Well, the government is
here to represent the people, and it's got to do
that job in a way that actually works. Given the
tensions around all these things and skepticism that has occurred
and conflicts, I think the more transparent we can be,
(11:50):
the more that we earn trust. So I think transparency
is one thing, but then also the actual message and
the knowledge, because I think oftentimes we tend to see
this as a binary choice of it either has to
be simple and easy to understand, or it's we're going
to get the full information and it's complex. This is
(12:10):
inherently the problem I think with science communication, and this
is something as a journalist we struggle with. How do
you distill something down into a way in my case
that someone is just hearing it, so they're not even
going to read it, they just hear it. How much
can they really take in at that point? Well, it's interesting.
I think Axeos talks about sort of smart brevity. Yeah,
(12:32):
that's a thing. So I think communication is a really
important thing, and in general science has not mastered the
art of communication. Putting things in such complete detail that
they're incomprehensible is not very helpful. I don't know how
often you take the package insert out of a drug
(12:55):
and read that big thin piece of paper when you
unfolded and look at all of the background data on
this drug. But I bet you know, maybe that's as
often as you read the click license on a piece
of software. Actually, you know what I was going to say.
My mother's a pharmacist, So I just ask her. And actually,
that I think is the key, Right I ask someone
(13:15):
who I know has the knowledge and I trust, and
I think she will distill it down for me. So
your mother plays the role of good scientific communication and
good journalistic communication. And the problem is most people don't
have your mother, And so how do we manage to
get things clear without pulling the wool over anybody's eyes
(13:38):
without oversimplifying? Albert Einstein famously said, and it's one of
the things I quote very often. Everything should be made
as simple as possible, but not simpler, finding that happy
medium of saying there is nothing about this vaccine approval
(14:00):
or many other things that can't be explained clearly without oversimplifying.
I think communicating with honesty and clarity is the heart
of it. And I'll say the one leg up I
feel like I have is at MIT, I teach freshmen
(14:20):
freshman holds your feet to the fire. They want to know,
but they want it clearly, And so I think this
is something we all have to aspire to if we're
going to get a country that's involved in making wise decisions,
whether journalistically or scientifically. So Nyla, let's turn to this
question of bringing people together. Many people feel like they
(14:45):
just want to give up on the prospect of bringing
people together. Everybody's in their tribes. Okay, maybe, but this
isn't gonna work in the long runs. So how do
we find common grounds or at least find meeting ground
where we can meet and talk with each other. Because
I do think most people deep down do want the
(15:08):
same thing things. They want their family to be secure.
They would like to have a healthy planet, you know,
a healthier life for themselves, more peace. I was struck
in the election coverage that there were instances where people
tried not to go head on saying I want to
(15:31):
convince you to vote for my candidate, but instead to
ask what's bothering you? What's on your mind? What are
you worried about? By listening and establishing what are common goals,
when may be able to circle back and say, okay,
if that's the goal, what are the ways we might
(15:51):
get there? Now I realize I may seem like a
hopeless optimist here, and it's not like I'm I'm unrealistic
about it. It's just I don't see anything else that
works other than trying to find that kind of meeting
ground amongst people, and any kind of change has to
start by finding something that shared. So I don't know
(16:13):
what your experiences has been with this. I think that
what I have found as a journalist, and this kind
of goes back again to communication, but I think it
also goes back to this idea of humility is language
is really important here because I think that the way
that you frame something tells people how to think about something. So,
(16:33):
for example, as a journalist, when I am interviewing someone,
I always ask them a question, which seems like a
very simple thing. But actually, if you listen to a
lot of journalists when they're interviewing people, they don't ask
them questions. They make statements or they say, tell me
about something. Well, if you tell someone to tell you
about something, they're going to tell you about something. Oh
that is so interesting because I hadn't actually processed before
(16:56):
that tell me about something is not really asking a question.
And so this is my pet peeve as a broadcast
journalist and as a host, that you should never say
tell me about something to someone you shouldn't because you
can always ask it as a question, because I actually
think our brains hear that differently and they process that differently.
And I think that's just one example of how language
(17:17):
can be so important when we're thinking about And this
is of course we parse every word, you know, as
journalists and as a broadcast journalist, and on our podcast
it is not live, and so we literally do parse
every word. And I wonder for you how you've seen
language is important to you, especially as you think about
(17:37):
brave New planet, right, And when I think about, like
you have this idea, I want to ask you, like
this whole idea of like stewards of the brave New planet.
That's an interesting choice of word that you have, stewarts.
It's a very deliberate one. Stewards of the Brave New
Planet was chosen very intentionally. I think across the political spectrum,
(17:58):
from religious conservatives to very progressive people, there is some
shared sense of stewardship in Eastern religion, the idea that
people are stewards of the planet, you know, that's fundamental
and biblical. We all feel like we have an obligation
(18:21):
to be and want to be stewards of this planet,
and so it dawned on me one day that this
was a word that we didn't have to argue about.
And if we have the common mission of being stewards,
we can now have a serious discussion about how can
we be the best stewards. But we start by being
on the same side. And so let's be optimistic and
(18:46):
say that we have established a common ground and that
we're working on building trust. We've been talking about the
pandemic we've had. You've had some really practical solutions for that.
Because I remain I would say, as a journalist, I
am an optimist, but I'm always a skeptical journalist, and
I remained very concerned about our ability the country to
(19:11):
unite around the science of the pandemic. I share your concern.
We all should be very concerned about it and therefore
work hard to try to overcome it. But then when
we think about other issues that are just as big,
arguably bigger, like climate change, I wonder, how do we
do that well. I think that's a great example to
(19:33):
think about climate change. We went through a long period
of time when the argument is climate changing. I think
we've largely moved past that. The question now is what
do we do about it? What worries me is how
many people feel overwhelmed, pessimistic that there's no prospect of
doing anything without wrecking the economy and dramatically changing daily life,
(19:57):
you know, banning hamburgers and airplanes. I think it's provoked
many people across the whole political spectrum to just throw
up their hands. I think it's terrible. We don't want
people to feel fatalist, stick and pessimistic and overwhelmed. You know,
the ultimate answer, it's a climate change. It's actually pretty straightforward.
The only thing that will work in the long run
(20:18):
is to make renewable energy that's cheaper than fossil fuels.
The minute that happens, the market will move to renewables
on its own. So the answer has to be innovation.
It's just how do you get that innovation. Now, we've
already seen a lot of progress. The cost of solar
energy and wind energy has been dropping dramatically. In some places,
(20:39):
that's cheaper than burning oil. Now, we still need a
lot more better battery storage and better electrification, but there's
every reason to think we can do it. So the
national goal ought to be for America to lead the
world in inventing and producing and selling new energy technologies.
And you know that way, addressing climate change and promoting
(21:00):
economic growth don't have to really be in conflict. There's
actually a great historical example. One of the reasons America
became the leader in semiconductors and computers is that the
government created huge incentives for the semiconductor industry. Way back
in the nineteen fifties. The military bought huge quantities of
semiconductors even when they were too expensive to be commercially viable.
(21:25):
They called it pump priming. So on climate change, I
think we have our incentives completely backward right now, and
I think most Americans could get together around the idea
of using incentives to unleash American innovation. How much do
you think that inertia for lack of a better word,
whether we're thinking of big things like changes in technology
(21:46):
and innovation with climate change, but I'm also really thinking
more on the individual level about people feeling overwhelmed and
pessimistic and sort of resigned. How much of that do
you think results from the way that we communicate, And
by that I'm talking primarily about social media. I think
that's a significant issue. Looking back. There was a time
(22:08):
that I think most Americans thought America could do anything
could put its mind to. I don't think people feel
that as much as they should, but there was a
sense not that long ago that we could tackle any challenge.
I don't think the kinds of wars that people get
into over social media and takedowns, I don't think they're
(22:30):
really conducive to letting people have big aspirations. I think
there are amazing things we can get done. Look at
what's gotten done over the last fifty years, everything that's
been able to be transformed. We can still do that
because I see this as something where people on the
(22:51):
left and people on the right both know that that's true,
and they you know, some may come from a market orientation,
some may come from from a research orientation, but we
know we've pulled things like this off in the past,
and so I'd like to reorient the discussion. So on
that note, how if we're thinking about the stewards who
(23:13):
are listening, what is your final advice or tips for them?
Do something doesn't matter what Go make a curriculum for
schools on some topic that you care about or that
we talked about in the program. Go organize the discussion,
(23:34):
Go talk to you know, a local legislator about it.
I think the key is to start. The point is,
if you feel pessimistic, if you feel overwhelmed, if you
feel paralyzed, that's terrible. Do something something will lead to
something else. Now, no one person changes the whole world,
(23:56):
but together changing our attitude that we can make change.
That is really important. It's the basis of science. When
people set out to try to cure cancer, they say, oh,
my god, that goal is so huge, how am I
going to do it? And yet scientists, step by step,
they take a piece of the problem and they make
(24:18):
progress against it. And so we go from the nineteen
seventies when nobody had a clue what cancer was about
two people understanding, oh, cancer is caused by genetic mutations,
and then discovering, oh, sometimes we can make drugs that
block the effects of those mutations. Oh, we can harness
the immune system to make therapies. You know, any given week,
(24:41):
any given months, you might feel pessimistic because you don't
really see progress. But if you step back and look
over the course of a decade or two, it's breathtaking
how much progress can happen. I think science and society
are pretty similar in this regard. You can take on
huge challenges that of enough people are moving that forward. Oh,
(25:04):
we end up making a big difference. Well, thank you.
I'm glad that we found common ground, and I appreciate
so much that you were willing to sit down and
talk to me about all of these things. It's an honor.
I appreciate it. Thank you, well, thank you, Nila. It's
been great to talk. And to all the listeners out there,
I hope you'll check out NILA's podcast Axios today. So
(25:34):
there you haven't stewards of the Brave New Planet. It
really is time to choose our future. There are so
many amazing opportunities ahead and so many challenges to getting
this right. We can't just throw up our hands and
leave it to others to decide. We all of us
have responsibility to make sure that we make wise choices.
(25:55):
It's going to take a lot. It's going to take
a commitment to renewing the compact between science and society
and to following the evidence. It's going to take humility.
Science is an amazingly powerful way to create new possibilities,
but we also have to ask what could possibly go wrong.
(26:16):
It's going to take trust and doubt, not blind trust,
not cynical doubt. It's going to take earned trust and
empowered doubt where anyone can raise questions and we're all
transparent about what we know and what we don't know.
And it's going to take engagement from everyone. Government, university,
(26:36):
scientific against its corporations, unions, faith groups, student organizations and
geo's all willing to debate in good faith about hard questions.
I'm an optimist, but a realistic optimist. It's going to
take a lot of work, but what's the alternative? And
(26:57):
getting this right as great rewards. I'm committed and I
hope you are too. I look forward to continuing the
conversation utopia or dystopia, It really is up to us.
Thank you for listening. Brave New Planet is a co
(27:26):
production of the Brode Institute of Might and Harvard Pushkin
Industries in the Boston Globe, with support from the Alfred P.
Sloane Foundation. Our show is produced by Rebecca Lee Douglas
with Mary Doo theme song composed by Ned Porter, mastering
and sound designed by James Garver, fact checking by Joseph Fridman,
and a Stitt and Enchant special Thanks to Christine Heenan
(27:50):
and Rachel Roberts at Clarendon Communications, to Lee mc guire,
Kristen Zarelli and Justine Levin Allerhand at the Broade, to
mil Lobell and Heather Faine at Pushkin, and to Eli
and Edy Brode who made the Brode Institute possible. This
is brave new planet. I'm Eric Lander.
Pushkin, you're listening to Brave New Planet, a podcast about
amazing new technologies that could dramatically improve our world, or
if we don't make wise choices, could leave us a
lot worse off. Utopia or dystopia. It's up to us.
(00:47):
On Saturday, November seventh, two and twenty, hundreds of millions
of people finally got an answer to a question that
had consumed them for more than eight weeks of balloting
and four days of vote counting, who would lead the
United States of America for the next four years. At
eleven twenty four am Eastern Time, CNN called the president
(01:09):
election for Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
Within twenty minutes, every major network followed suit. The race
was over. But even as one question was answered, another
still loomed large. Well America now finally be able to
move forward and tackle the hard problems facing the country
(01:30):
and the world. My name is Eric Lander, and I'm
the host of Brave New Planet. When we began planning
the seven episodes of Brave New Planet more than a
year ago, I never imagined we'd be wrapping up in
(01:51):
the days just after a presidential election. We'd originally planned
to complete and release this series in spring twenty twenty,
but as with so many things, those plans were upended
by the pandemic. Somehow, though, the timings turned out to
be fitting Brave New Plant. And it's about amazing science
and technology that also poses hard challenges, But it's also
(02:16):
about how we're going to need to come together and
work together to make wise choices in many areas. Yes,
scientific problems, from the current pandemic to climate change, but
also societal problems from economic security to racial justice. Brave
New Planet has tried to show smart, thoughtful, passionate people
(02:38):
who agree on the facts and even agree on the
societal goals, but who disagree on solutions. Yet nonetheless they
grapple with complex problems, argue with respect, occasionally even change
their minds, and make some progress even where there are
no easy answers. To my mind, it's the only path forward.
(03:01):
Brave New Planet's mission is to invite everyone into these conversations.
So today's big question, what's it going to take to
do more of this as a society, to find common
ground on goals and argue productively about solutions. As I
thought about this question, it occurred to me that scientists
(03:22):
aren't the only people who spend their days gathering information
to try to help society solve problems. Journalists do too,
So I thought that a conversation between a scientist and
a journalist about the common challenges we face might be enlightening.
I reached out to journalist Nila Boodoo. NILA's worked for Reuters,
(03:43):
the Miami Herald, and in public radio, where she's hosted
shows on WBEZ Chicago. Now she's the host of Axios Today,
a new daily morning news podcast. Nila Boodoo, Welcome to
Brave New Planet. Hi, Eric, thank you so much for
having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Oh, it's
great to have you. So, Nila, I'd love to start
(04:06):
with how scientists and journalists can with the public, At
least in science, I think there's often a real problem
with humility and trust. You know. For example, when scientists
talk about what do we have to do to make
progress on problems, one of the first things people suggest
is more science education. That doesn't get me wrong, I'm
(04:28):
not opposed to more science education. I teach. I love it,
But I think there's an underlying assumption there that the
problem is that people are just ignorant, that if they
just got more science education, they'd know the facts or
accept the facts and fall in line with the solutions.
And I don't think that's the right place to start.
(04:50):
I mean, scientists do spend their days swimming around in facts,
but I don't think that's a reason to be looking
down on people. I think there's ever a reason to
be looking down on people. It's not a good posture.
We might have been able to get away with it
in the science of the nineteen fifties and sixties. You know,
the authority of scientists in the White Lab Code or something,
(05:13):
but scientists don't have a monopoly on the insights that
are going to matter. I think, you know, we have
to go in feeling we got something really important to contribute,
but it's only part of the puzzle. Yeah, I'm wondering, Nilot,
do you see that same issue in journalism? Well, I
think it's the same thing you said, right, Like, so
you said that, you know the idea that scientists in
(05:35):
the nineteen fifties or sixties or whatever, there's this idea
that scientists where its sort of the end all be
all of information. Journalists were like that too right. We
used to think that we were in charge of broadcasting
out the information to people, and I think, certainly in
my career as a journalist, we've seen that shift. With
the advent of social media the way that information flows,
journalists play a role. I think journalists play a very
(05:57):
important role in moderating, in sifting through, in amplifying voices
that don't have an opportunity to do that. But we
are not the source of I mean, we do not
broadcast information out to people anymore. And I think when
you talk about trust, which is a really important thing
that comes up in journalism, do people trust what we do?
(06:17):
I think a major reason why a lot of people
don't trust what journalists do is because of the way
that we go about doing it, and I think not
having a humble attitude. Now, I will say, when you
look at the data about this, people don't trust the media.
And first of all, I will start with the premise,
I'm not quite sure what the media is. So I
always say that first, like that's kind of my first
(06:37):
phrase to everyone is what is this media? I'm not
sure what you mean? And when you break it down,
I think people who have relationships, for example, with local journalists.
Those institutions score very high. People trust those local institutions,
local journalists as accurate and credible sources of information. I
think when you look at the national level, that's where
(06:58):
you see more of a breakdown. What do you think
about that question of trust? I wonder how important that
is as well when we're thinking about journalism and in
your case science. Oh boy, So look, trust, I think
is the next layer up over humility. You got to
come in with a humble attitude. But what do we
mean by trust the scientists. There's maybe two kinds of
(07:23):
trust that are worth distinguishing between this kind of blind trust,
that nineteen fifties nineteen sixties thing of just deferred to
me as the scientist because I know better than you.
I think there's actually instead a different kind of trust,
and I might call it like earned trust. Earned trust
(07:46):
is I'm going to be if I'm the scientist or
the doctor. I'm going to be transparent about the evidence
we have. I'll tell you why I believe things, and
every bit is important. I'm going to be transparent about
what we don't know. I don't trust people who don't
say I don't know. Some of the time, I don't
(08:08):
trust people who can't explain to me why they believe
the things they believe. So I think we are shifting
and maybe it's true for journalism as well, but certainly
in science, to the idea that people should be asking questions,
they should be probing, and if scientists should bring doubt
about other people's results in evidence, why shouldn't the general
(08:32):
public bring doubt. But again, it's worth distinguishing two kinds
of doubt. There's kind of the cynical doubt. I just
don't trust this science stuff. You know, the diet studies
keep contradicting each other, or you can't trust science because
they can't make up their minds, And I think that's
a very cynical, nehalistic kind of doubt. I think there's
(08:53):
a kind of doubt that I would love to see
more of, which is empowered doubt. I'm not going to
believe you until you give me the evidence, show me
hard evidence. So that's the kind of empowered doubt that
you know, we want to have because that gets people
like properly at the table as peers in this thing.
(09:15):
I fantasize about, you know, how the FDA might go
through its drug approval process for coronavirus vaccines. Just this week,
Feisser issued a press release saying it had really positive
results from its vaccine trial, and the press release didn't
have a lot of details, which was, you know, some
(09:37):
people noted and they're gonna have to come forward with
those details. But I'm imagining how do we get the
country involved in the drug approval process. And so you
can imagine like a Reddit Ama where you know, the
country's sending in questions and folks at the other side,
maybe both the drug company and the FDA are trying
to answer them. And now I don't I don't know
(09:59):
all effects. I'll just make this up, so don't don't
take these numbers to be exactly right, but it might
go something like this. The company starts by saying, well,
we ran a clinical trial with forty thousand people and
half got the vaccine and half got a placebo, and
then we waited until ninety five people had gotten infected
(10:19):
and shown symptoms. And we looked and we found that
ninety out of those ninety five people were people who
got the placebo, and only five of them were people
who got the vaccine. And so it looks like the
vaccine is doing a pretty good job of protecting people.
But then people will write in and they'll say, okay, well,
tell me what do you know about elderly people, people
(10:41):
over seventy did they get protection? What about men? What
about people who have serious health complications? How long is
this protection gonna last? And are there side effects? Some
of the times the answers are going to be we
just don't know. We haven't got enough data yet, we
haven't run long enough to see how long protection might last.
(11:05):
I think people are smartan they can take the information
what we know and what we don't know, and make
decisions based on that. So I think that's really the
foundation of trust. Earn trust is to be direct and
transparent about what we know and what we don't know. Yeah,
so do you think the credibility then you sort of
build the credibility and trust with the government regulator and
(11:27):
in having for example, the CDC or the FDA be
incredibly transparent about the whole process. Well, the government is
here to represent the people, and it's got to do
that job in a way that actually works. Given the
tensions around all these things and skepticism that has occurred
and conflicts, I think the more transparent we can be,
(11:50):
the more that we earn trust. So I think transparency
is one thing, but then also the actual message and
the knowledge, because I think oftentimes we tend to see
this as a binary choice of it either has to
be simple and easy to understand, or it's we're going
to get the full information and it's complex. This is
(12:10):
inherently the problem I think with science communication, and this
is something as a journalist we struggle with. How do
you distill something down into a way in my case
that someone is just hearing it, so they're not even
going to read it, they just hear it. How much
can they really take in at that point? Well, it's interesting.
I think Axeos talks about sort of smart brevity. Yeah,
(12:32):
that's a thing. So I think communication is a really
important thing, and in general science has not mastered the
art of communication. Putting things in such complete detail that
they're incomprehensible is not very helpful. I don't know how
often you take the package insert out of a drug
(12:55):
and read that big thin piece of paper when you
unfolded and look at all of the background data on
this drug. But I bet you know, maybe that's as
often as you read the click license on a piece
of software. Actually, you know what I was going to say.
My mother's a pharmacist, So I just ask her. And actually,
that I think is the key, Right I ask someone
(13:15):
who I know has the knowledge and I trust, and
I think she will distill it down for me. So
your mother plays the role of good scientific communication and
good journalistic communication. And the problem is most people don't
have your mother, And so how do we manage to
get things clear without pulling the wool over anybody's eyes
(13:38):
without oversimplifying? Albert Einstein famously said, and it's one of
the things I quote very often. Everything should be made
as simple as possible, but not simpler, finding that happy
medium of saying there is nothing about this vaccine approval
(14:00):
or many other things that can't be explained clearly without oversimplifying.
I think communicating with honesty and clarity is the heart
of it. And I'll say the one leg up I
feel like I have is at MIT, I teach freshmen
(14:20):
freshman holds your feet to the fire. They want to know,
but they want it clearly, And so I think this
is something we all have to aspire to if we're
going to get a country that's involved in making wise decisions,
whether journalistically or scientifically. So Nyla, let's turn to this
question of bringing people together. Many people feel like they
(14:45):
just want to give up on the prospect of bringing
people together. Everybody's in their tribes. Okay, maybe, but this
isn't gonna work in the long runs. So how do
we find common grounds or at least find meeting ground
where we can meet and talk with each other. Because
I do think most people deep down do want the
(15:08):
same thing things. They want their family to be secure.
They would like to have a healthy planet, you know,
a healthier life for themselves, more peace. I was struck
in the election coverage that there were instances where people
tried not to go head on saying I want to
(15:31):
convince you to vote for my candidate, but instead to
ask what's bothering you? What's on your mind? What are
you worried about? By listening and establishing what are common goals,
when may be able to circle back and say, okay,
if that's the goal, what are the ways we might
(15:51):
get there? Now I realize I may seem like a
hopeless optimist here, and it's not like I'm I'm unrealistic
about it. It's just I don't see anything else that
works other than trying to find that kind of meeting
ground amongst people, and any kind of change has to
start by finding something that shared. So I don't know
(16:13):
what your experiences has been with this. I think that
what I have found as a journalist, and this kind
of goes back again to communication, but I think it
also goes back to this idea of humility is language
is really important here because I think that the way
that you frame something tells people how to think about something. So,
(16:33):
for example, as a journalist, when I am interviewing someone,
I always ask them a question, which seems like a
very simple thing. But actually, if you listen to a
lot of journalists when they're interviewing people, they don't ask
them questions. They make statements or they say, tell me
about something. Well, if you tell someone to tell you
about something, they're going to tell you about something. Oh
that is so interesting because I hadn't actually processed before
(16:56):
that tell me about something is not really asking a question.
And so this is my pet peeve as a broadcast
journalist and as a host, that you should never say
tell me about something to someone you shouldn't because you
can always ask it as a question, because I actually
think our brains hear that differently and they process that differently.
And I think that's just one example of how language
(17:17):
can be so important when we're thinking about And this
is of course we parse every word, you know, as
journalists and as a broadcast journalist, and on our podcast
it is not live, and so we literally do parse
every word. And I wonder for you how you've seen
language is important to you, especially as you think about
(17:37):
brave New planet, right, And when I think about, like
you have this idea, I want to ask you, like
this whole idea of like stewards of the brave New planet.
That's an interesting choice of word that you have, stewarts.
It's a very deliberate one. Stewards of the Brave New
Planet was chosen very intentionally. I think across the political spectrum,
(17:58):
from religious conservatives to very progressive people, there is some
shared sense of stewardship in Eastern religion, the idea that
people are stewards of the planet, you know, that's fundamental
and biblical. We all feel like we have an obligation
(18:21):
to be and want to be stewards of this planet,
and so it dawned on me one day that this
was a word that we didn't have to argue about.
And if we have the common mission of being stewards,
we can now have a serious discussion about how can
we be the best stewards. But we start by being
on the same side. And so let's be optimistic and
(18:46):
say that we have established a common ground and that
we're working on building trust. We've been talking about the
pandemic we've had. You've had some really practical solutions for that.
Because I remain I would say, as a journalist, I
am an optimist, but I'm always a skeptical journalist, and
I remained very concerned about our ability the country to
(19:11):
unite around the science of the pandemic. I share your concern.
We all should be very concerned about it and therefore
work hard to try to overcome it. But then when
we think about other issues that are just as big,
arguably bigger, like climate change, I wonder, how do we
do that well. I think that's a great example to
(19:33):
think about climate change. We went through a long period
of time when the argument is climate changing. I think
we've largely moved past that. The question now is what
do we do about it? What worries me is how
many people feel overwhelmed, pessimistic that there's no prospect of
doing anything without wrecking the economy and dramatically changing daily life,
(19:57):
you know, banning hamburgers and airplanes. I think it's provoked
many people across the whole political spectrum to just throw
up their hands. I think it's terrible. We don't want
people to feel fatalist, stick and pessimistic and overwhelmed. You know,
the ultimate answer, it's a climate change. It's actually pretty straightforward.
The only thing that will work in the long run
(20:18):
is to make renewable energy that's cheaper than fossil fuels.
The minute that happens, the market will move to renewables
on its own. So the answer has to be innovation.
It's just how do you get that innovation. Now, we've
already seen a lot of progress. The cost of solar
energy and wind energy has been dropping dramatically. In some places,
(20:39):
that's cheaper than burning oil. Now, we still need a
lot more better battery storage and better electrification, but there's
every reason to think we can do it. So the
national goal ought to be for America to lead the
world in inventing and producing and selling new energy technologies.
And you know that way, addressing climate change and promoting
(21:00):
economic growth don't have to really be in conflict. There's
actually a great historical example. One of the reasons America
became the leader in semiconductors and computers is that the
government created huge incentives for the semiconductor industry. Way back
in the nineteen fifties. The military bought huge quantities of
semiconductors even when they were too expensive to be commercially viable.
(21:25):
They called it pump priming. So on climate change, I
think we have our incentives completely backward right now, and
I think most Americans could get together around the idea
of using incentives to unleash American innovation. How much do
you think that inertia for lack of a better word,
whether we're thinking of big things like changes in technology
(21:46):
and innovation with climate change, but I'm also really thinking
more on the individual level about people feeling overwhelmed and
pessimistic and sort of resigned. How much of that do
you think results from the way that we communicate, And
by that I'm talking primarily about social media. I think
that's a significant issue. Looking back. There was a time
(22:08):
that I think most Americans thought America could do anything
could put its mind to. I don't think people feel
that as much as they should, but there was a
sense not that long ago that we could tackle any challenge.
I don't think the kinds of wars that people get
into over social media and takedowns, I don't think they're
(22:30):
really conducive to letting people have big aspirations. I think
there are amazing things we can get done. Look at
what's gotten done over the last fifty years, everything that's
been able to be transformed. We can still do that
because I see this as something where people on the
(22:51):
left and people on the right both know that that's true,
and they you know, some may come from a market orientation,
some may come from from a research orientation, but we
know we've pulled things like this off in the past,
and so I'd like to reorient the discussion. So on
that note, how if we're thinking about the stewards who
(23:13):
are listening, what is your final advice or tips for them?
Do something doesn't matter what Go make a curriculum for
schools on some topic that you care about or that
we talked about in the program. Go organize the discussion,
(23:34):
Go talk to you know, a local legislator about it.
I think the key is to start. The point is,
if you feel pessimistic, if you feel overwhelmed, if you
feel paralyzed, that's terrible. Do something something will lead to
something else. Now, no one person changes the whole world,
(23:56):
but together changing our attitude that we can make change.
That is really important. It's the basis of science. When
people set out to try to cure cancer, they say, oh,
my god, that goal is so huge, how am I
going to do it? And yet scientists, step by step,
they take a piece of the problem and they make
(24:18):
progress against it. And so we go from the nineteen
seventies when nobody had a clue what cancer was about
two people understanding, oh, cancer is caused by genetic mutations,
and then discovering, oh, sometimes we can make drugs that
block the effects of those mutations. Oh, we can harness
the immune system to make therapies. You know, any given week,
(24:41):
any given months, you might feel pessimistic because you don't
really see progress. But if you step back and look
over the course of a decade or two, it's breathtaking
how much progress can happen. I think science and society
are pretty similar in this regard. You can take on
huge challenges that of enough people are moving that forward. Oh,
(25:04):
we end up making a big difference. Well, thank you.
I'm glad that we found common ground, and I appreciate
so much that you were willing to sit down and
talk to me about all of these things. It's an honor.
I appreciate it. Thank you, well, thank you, Nila. It's
been great to talk. And to all the listeners out there,
I hope you'll check out NILA's podcast Axios today. So
(25:34):
there you haven't stewards of the Brave New Planet. It
really is time to choose our future. There are so
many amazing opportunities ahead and so many challenges to getting
this right. We can't just throw up our hands and
leave it to others to decide. We all of us
have responsibility to make sure that we make wise choices.
(25:55):
It's going to take a lot. It's going to take
a commitment to renewing the compact between science and society
and to following the evidence. It's going to take humility.
Science is an amazingly powerful way to create new possibilities,
but we also have to ask what could possibly go wrong.
(26:16):
It's going to take trust and doubt, not blind trust,
not cynical doubt. It's going to take earned trust and
empowered doubt where anyone can raise questions and we're all
transparent about what we know and what we don't know.
And it's going to take engagement from everyone. Government, university,
(26:36):
scientific against its corporations, unions, faith groups, student organizations and
geo's all willing to debate in good faith about hard questions.
I'm an optimist, but a realistic optimist. It's going to
take a lot of work, but what's the alternative? And
(26:57):
getting this right as great rewards. I'm committed and I
hope you are too. I look forward to continuing the
conversation utopia or dystopia, It really is up to us.
Thank you for listening. Brave New Planet is a co
(27:26):
production of the Brode Institute of Might and Harvard Pushkin
Industries in the Boston Globe, with support from the Alfred P.
Sloane Foundation. Our show is produced by Rebecca Lee Douglas
with Mary Doo theme song composed by Ned Porter, mastering
and sound designed by James Garver, fact checking by Joseph Fridman,
and a Stitt and Enchant special Thanks to Christine Heenan
(27:50):
and Rachel Roberts at Clarendon Communications, to Lee mc guire,
Kristen Zarelli and Justine Levin Allerhand at the Broade, to
mil Lobell and Heather Faine at Pushkin, and to Eli
and Edy Brode who made the Brode Institute possible. This
is brave new planet. I'm Eric Lander.
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