Robert Bazell

January 27, 2021

Information

In this episode of Science et al., Daniel speaks with Robert Bazell, who worked as NBC's chief science correspondent for 38 years. In that capacity Robert earned many awards including five Emmys, the Peabody Award and the DuPont Award. The two discuss how science meshes with politics, social movements, and the scientific community itself.

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00:09Hello and welcome to Science et al podcast,
00:12but everything science sponsored
00:13by the Yale School of Medicine.
00:15I'm your host, Daniel Barron.
00:17And in this episode I'm
00:19speaking with Robert Bazell.
00:20Robert or Bob as he asked me to call him,
00:24worked his NBC's chief science
00:25correspondent for 38 years.
00:27In that capacity, Bob and many awards,
00:29including five Emmy Awards,
00:30the Peabody Award, and the DuPont Award.
00:33He also authored a bestselling
00:34book called her two,
00:35The Making of a revolutionary
00:37treatment for breast Cancer,
00:38which was adapted as a TV film.
00:42Now Bob is supposedly formally retired,
00:44even though he's quite busy at
00:46yells Department of Molecular
00:48Cellular and Developmental Biology,
00:50where he spends his time mentoring
00:52aspiring journalist scientists.
00:53An anyone who wants to communicate
00:56more effectively with the public,
00:58including myself.
00:59I ran into Bob's Science
01:01journalism panel at Yale,
01:02where he was one of the primary panelists.
01:05I had never met him in person
01:07and didn't recognize him,
01:09but instantly recognized his voice.
01:11And after the panel discussion,
01:13I Googled Bob and reviewed
01:15some of his videos,
01:16some of which I still
01:18remembered from decades before.
01:19It was kind of strange to see him
01:22with Bill Clinton and a lot of
01:25the AIDS and cancer treatments
01:26and the Human Genome Project.
01:29It was really, it was really.
01:31It was really fascinating.
01:32Bob's had an enormous impact,
01:34only that I and I suppose many of
01:37listeners think about and appreciate science.
01:40It was a real honor to speak with Bob
01:43about his work and to see from his eyes at,
01:46you know,
01:46the 10,000 foot view how he views
01:48science and how science meshes
01:50with politics and public policy,
01:52social movements and with the
01:54scientific community itself.
01:55So here we go.
01:56Thanks again to
02:07Well, thank you for coming and for
02:09letting me pick your brain yet again.
02:12It was really interesting so I
02:15had not really met you formally,
02:17but I first I could say heard your
02:20voice from the back of a lecture
02:22Hall during a panel discussion with
02:25Carl Zimmer Anneliese Sanders,
02:27an I recognized your voice.
02:30Really quite quickly actually.
02:31So I was like, oh, wow,
02:33I know this guy and so after that I just
02:37I did what I think by your definition
02:40would be a not quite a deep dive but.
02:44Dipping my toe in the finger
02:46of your huge body of work.
02:48And obviously you've reported on
02:51far more than 4000 stories and I
02:54was able to go on to NBC's website
02:56and watch some of the videos that
02:59you had made like some of the
03:01reporting you did for the TV.
03:04By
03:04the way, if you want to see videos
03:07from history, you can open the
03:10Yale Library and Vanderbilt.
03:13Library has an archive of every television
03:15show that's been produced since 1968,
03:17and you go live stream it. I had no idea,
03:20so you can watch just everything.
03:22You can watch everything.
03:24Well, let's pick a moment in
03:26history that's kind of scary.
03:27Actually, there's
03:28a lot of junk on television. There's a
03:31lot of junk, but it also is for me.
03:34It's been a very useful
03:35tool for undergraduates,
03:36because if I'm teaching a course on,
03:39say, the history of HIV AIDS,
03:41which I'm doing now, or.
03:43Events in public health that I take it back,
03:46take them back and show them these.
03:49Videos 'cause I wouldn't have access to them.
03:51NBC owns them, but I can show it,
03:53show it to them and they are absolutely
03:56fascinated to hear the inside story of.
03:58How this happened and then to see
04:00the people that they're not just
04:02reading about it in an article or
04:05at a Journal article or a popular
04:07article, many of whom you interviewed?
04:08Yeah, why didn't they see me interviewing
04:10them and then I can tell them
04:12what they're really like.
04:14This person was a decent person.
04:15This one is not one of the videos,
04:18so there are 480 videos on the NBC website,
04:21so this is 10 to what I did.
04:23Sure right, but you know,
04:24it's still a lot for me and
04:26there's one video in particular.
04:28It was from 1981.
04:29Where you had this excellent white linen
04:32sports coat and purple tie purple shirt,
04:35your hairs gotta fro delivery.
04:36Bring all that up.
04:39Great, so great and you're interviewing
04:41BF Skinner about some experiments
04:43that he's doing with pigeons.
04:45You know unpacking and, well,
04:47you know the different files and stuff.
04:50I had a great honor and for a long time on
04:53the Today Show in the 80s where I they won't,
04:57they took a science segment which is
05:00very rare an I was allowed to pick and
05:03anything I wanted to and I found out
05:06that Skinner was still around, which was
05:08surprising because it was so famous.
05:11And he was a great interview.
05:14It was a very wry sense of
05:16humor and the funny character.
05:18And he had this idea of everything.
05:20Everything as I recently started
05:22wearing hearing aids myself.
05:23But in those days,
05:25hearing aids were quite visible and he,
05:27being the behaviorist that he was,
05:29he told me that the effect of
05:31hearing aid seems to be it made
05:34people scream at him 'cause
05:35they would see it here.
05:39Operant conditioning.
05:40He didn't think the hearing aids
05:42were enhancing his hearing,
05:43but he may make people screw you.
05:45Wow that would have been
05:47such a wonderful experience.
05:48I've obviously never met Skinner,
05:50but I've read a lot of his
05:52work and seeing how it
05:54influences and he had some
05:56students that I followed up with
05:58who made enormous fan of all.
06:00Of other people, for instance,
06:02people were trying to teach
06:03a language to chimpanzees,
06:05and they proved that they could
06:07get pigeons to do exactly what
06:09these people are getting the
06:11chimpanzees to do.
06:12Pressing the buttons,
06:13community communicating
06:13right exactly spelling out
06:15words which really weren't really doing
06:17well. There was such as a light going
06:20through a lot of your work and I wanted
06:23to kind of start farther back because
06:25I find it absolutely fascinating.
06:27So you did your undergraduate
06:29work and Berkeley.
06:30Seemingly at a time when there was like huge.
06:36Protest political unrest.
06:37You know the 60 seven was it when
06:40you graduated, graduated in 67.
06:42I started in the fall of 60 three and
06:44the free Speech movement was in 64 and
06:47Berkeley was way ahead of the rest of the
06:51country in terms of being disruptive.
06:53And I had my eye on my own back.
06:56Story to that is that I had dropped
06:58out of high school an I worked
07:01as a merchant Seaman for awhile.
07:03I'm traveling around the Pacific
07:05so I got that. I got to Berkeley.
07:08I got the equivalent of GD and
07:11I went to Berkeley
07:12and I'm sorry can we step back?
07:14Can you help me understand
07:15what a merchant Seaman is?
07:17Oh I have this vision of EB
07:19White working on a cruise
07:21vessel going up to Alaska or
07:23something was not that different.
07:24I was in a cooks and stewards union
07:27so that I wash dishes at sometimes
07:29if I got a good job you would
07:31bid on jobs at the Union Hall.
07:33If I got a good job I would
07:36be able to wait on tables or.
07:40Sometimes I had to clean up rooms,
07:42it was it was interesting mixture
07:44of things and sometimes it worked
07:46on freighters which were much
07:48more less contact with the public.
07:50But this was long enough ago that
07:53there were American passenger ships,
07:55so people were traveling to Hawaii
07:57and Australia and Tahiti on ships was
07:59quite an experience, so I was a bit.
08:04In front of my classmates when I got there.
08:07In terms of life experience and
08:10so that made me right away.
08:13Wine, wonder why these people are
08:15wasting their time protesting?
08:16Not that I disagree with the politics,
08:18but in retrospect a lot of them
08:20are very brave people who had gone
08:23to the Mississippi freedom Summers
08:25and put their lives on the line.
08:27And but when they came back they wanted
08:29to pick a fight with the University,
08:32and in retrospect,
08:33a lot of it was kind of silly at the
08:36time was whether you put a table
08:39here or 30 feet away from there
08:41an to give out pamphlets so.
08:43I had trouble at first getting used to it,
08:46and I think that the politics of Berkeley.
08:49Played a lot in my ending up
08:51being a journalist because.
08:53It was always very disruptive Ann.
08:56It was hard to concentrate, I didn't.
09:00I had was on track to be a scientist,
09:04I an I went away for a year and worked
09:07at the University of Sussex and then came
09:10back which allowed me to stay in Berkeley.
09:13Usually you have to do your
09:15graduate work someplace else,
09:16but keeping on the track to
09:18do what I had to do,
09:20I went to work in the laboratory
09:22of a Nobel Prize winner and this
09:25he was Melvin Calvin who discovered
09:27the photosynthesis cycle which
09:29is now known as the Calvin Cycle.
09:31But of course it wasn't in those days.
09:34Anne.
09:35He had a huge labion 20 combination
09:38of graduate students and postdocs.
09:41Ann,
09:41we decided in because that was the
09:44way we did things in those days too.
09:48Demand that he get off the Board of
09:50Directors of Dow Chemical because
09:52it made napalm.
09:53An he said to us,
09:56do go to hell just you're fired, he fired.
10:00All of us just called his name
10:01is student newspapers called the
10:03Saturday Night Massacre.
10:04So this is when you are Berkeley
10:06hours Berkeley. So I was right.
10:08This is what I was pushed.
10:10Fast forwarding to undergraduate student.
10:11K and I had finished by.
10:14Or else for my PhD and I was about
10:16to thinking about it thesis and at
10:18that moment I happened just fortuitously
10:20to meet somebody from Science magazine,
10:23and that's how I got into journalism.
10:25But if it hadn't met,
10:27Melvin Calvin hadn't kicked me
10:29out of his laboratory.
10:30I might have been assigned to this day.
10:33Oh wow, so that's that's
10:34absolutely fascinating.
10:35So so during your undergraduate years,
10:37you were you were writing, and I didn't
10:40write so much under my eyes.
10:42In my undergraduate years,
10:43I started that more as when I
10:46came back as a graduate student.
10:48And wrote a column for the
10:50Daily Californian's newspaper,
10:51but then they would buy.
10:53This is now in 1970 and.
10:57Long before can skate and
10:59a lot of other things,
11:00there was actually shootings
11:01in tear gas constantly.
11:03At Berkeley.
11:03It was a very,
11:05very disruptive from from
11:062 control of the protests.
11:07Or, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
11:09This is a part of history
11:11that I don't know very well,
11:13so this is absolutely fascinating for
11:15me. Yeah, I wanted we could go off on that,
11:18but it's yeah, it was.
11:20There were so good science and good
11:22teaching and smart people there.
11:23Obviously it's a world class
11:25University and but I think that.
11:27In retrospect, the politics were
11:29so dominant that I got less out
11:32of the experience of being there
11:34that I could have if it were,
11:37say, yeah, or
11:38someplace else. What was it like
11:40working at a scientific lab?
11:42You know, a science lab.
11:44During a moment when there was a
11:46heavy anti science sentiment in
11:49your generation. I don't remember that my
11:51generation had anti science sentiment.
11:53The environmental movement was
11:55just beginning and I I had never.
11:58Seen as anti science and you talk
12:00about anti science now in terms of the
12:04regulations that the Trump administration
12:06is trying to illuminate. But I don't.
12:09I don't ever recall feeling and I any
12:12anti science sentiment and I don't.
12:15And Pew surveys now and things
12:17got along for a long time.
12:20In science, it held it enormous respect.
12:22Still an
12:23was then I guess I associate the
12:25protests against the war and
12:27against experimentation. Things like
12:29that. Yeah, well,
12:30the report is against the war for sure,
12:33and I felt very strongly and myself,
12:36and that it was an awful situation.
12:38But it wasn't about science except in
12:41very specific ways like making weapons.
12:43But the scientific community
12:45was growing enormously.
12:46In those days and one of the first stories
12:49I covered when I got to Science magazine
12:52was the war on cancer that Richard Nixon was.
12:56Forced to sign. He wasn't.
12:58Nobody put a gun to his head,
13:01but he was politically
13:03very wealthy lobbyists.
13:04Who spend all our time on health matters,
13:07name Mary Lasker.
13:08Put together this coalition of Democrats
13:11and Republicans and and they didn't want
13:13to hear about basic science they wanted.
13:16Why isn't there a cure for cancer and used
13:19and became known as the War on cancer even
13:22though it wasn't officially called that?
13:25But of course whenever you declare war
13:28on something that people start asking.
13:30Or are we winning the war?
13:32And that question goes on today?
13:34Because the.
13:36Numbers of.
13:37Cancer deaths in the United
13:40States especially are.
13:42Despite all the miraculous sounding
13:44things we hear about immunotherapy's
13:47another and targeted therapies,
13:48other treatments is vastly driven
13:51by the amount of people smoke or
13:54how many people are obese and
13:56things environmental factors that
13:58have nothing to do with treatment.
14:03So. The decision for you did go
14:06to Science magazine and become a
14:08full time writer. Yeah, I was. I
14:11was on the staff was very early announced.
14:14Now it's a giant and very.
14:16Very very good section
14:18of of Science magazine.
14:19But in those days just a few of us,
14:22I think I was a third
14:24higher reported on some of the biggest
14:26science stories that have happened in
14:28the last for more than my lifetime.
14:31At least the last 30 four
14:33years already I was.
14:34I was at NBC for 38 years
14:36an the I came there in nine.
14:38I went to local news for six months in.
14:421976, and then they sent me
14:45to Washington for a year.
14:48But I was always tagged to be the
14:50science and medicine correspondent.
14:52Was that on account of
14:54your science, training or
14:55person? Because of my size training,
14:57they in the mid 70s there were
14:59still only three networks,
15:01which of course makes an enormous difference.
15:03If you want to talk about televisions,
15:06nothing like the media environment of today.
15:08An enormous percentage of American
15:10public sat down at 6:30 or 7:00
15:13o'clock and watch the Evening
15:14News on one of the three networks.
15:17And that's why my voice was familiar to you.
15:20Because you.
15:20You heard it when you were growing up,
15:23along with almost everybody was
15:25on television and I remember a
15:27colleague when I got the NBC
15:28very beginning in my career.
15:30He said you have to realize there
15:32were fewer of us and he meant network
15:34television correspondents for the
15:35major news organizations here.
15:37There's fewer of us than there
15:39are members of the US Senate.
15:42I never thought of that. Yeah, that's
15:44fair, yeah, and he was so
15:46we had a position and uh,
15:48of authority and responsibility and I
15:50hope we carried out the responsibility,
15:52but it was nothing. And, you know,
15:55get recognized on the street.
15:56Then you know people like you reckon.
15:59Remember, my voice is for
16:00very heartening experience,
16:01so I had a touch of celebrity
16:04without any of the burdens of it.
16:06I was never.
16:07That's pretty ideal I guess. Yeah, right,
16:09because it was. It's
16:11interesting. Because the.
16:15I almost never had anybody complained
16:17to me about stories when they recognize
16:19me and I would get recognized a lot.
16:21And usually people wouldn't bother
16:22me with them when they did,
16:24it was just complementary.
16:26They say they enjoyed this story
16:28about this or that I remember.
16:30Speaking to Michael Kinsley,
16:31who was an editor at the
16:33time at the New Republic,
16:34where I occasionally wrote articles,
16:35and he was on Crossfire with Pat Buchanan,
16:38and he said, everybody came up to him,
16:40and they wanted to finish the argument.
16:42So if you're on,
16:43and that would be just the beginning
16:45of that kind of television where
16:47people scream at each other,
16:49we didn't do that, we told,
16:51told a story,
16:51and a certain amount of time.
16:53So it
16:54occur to me that you know,
16:56and I'm sure this is delivered on
16:57account of your the medium, that you're.
17:00Reporting on, but your story is.
17:03Almost invariably presented a
17:05scientific topic like some science
17:07concept very clearly very simply,
17:08but they also had a almost a case study,
17:11like a person involved,
17:13and so it's like you're
17:15presenting the concept and then
17:16the application of the concept.
17:18In the real world,
17:20an was at a common formula.
17:22Yeah, it was a very standard form,
17:24formulaic thing,
17:25and sometimes occasion there
17:26would be the occasional scandal.
17:28Or is the thing that things that
17:31didn't workout as as you plan,
17:33but for the most part.
17:35If you're telling a story
17:37about a medical advance,
17:38you have to have a human being in it,
17:41and I think that sometimes you
17:42can convey the wrong impression
17:44because you want to have the more
17:46attractive human being in it.
17:47And like, for instance,
17:49if you're doing a story about cancer
17:51that that was one of the questions
17:53I always ask my students is what's
17:55the biggest risk factor for cancer.
17:57And of course,
17:58people say chemicals or cigarettes
17:59is the most common answer,
18:01but of course it's age.
18:04Only one
18:05one out of eight women will
18:07develop breast cancer. Yeah,
18:08but most of them will develop in
18:10their 60s and 70s and then add
18:13it as since that's my cohort,
18:15I'm not eager for it to happen, but I'm just.
18:18But there are about 12,000 cases of
18:21pediatric cancer in the United States.
18:23Deaths from pediatric cancer in
18:25the United States every year,
18:26which each one is a horrible tragedy.
18:29But there's 600,000 deaths from adult cancer,
18:31so you have to look at that.
18:34As a proportion of
18:36the so you you knew you know the
18:39fundamentals of the field and immunology,
18:42and then you found yourself in the 80s
18:45and 90s reporting on the AIDS crisis.
18:48So how what was that like and how did
18:51you interact with the communities on the
18:54cyantific and the policy and the well?
18:57I was one of the first people there and
19:01that was so is very
19:04welcomed because they were.
19:06Languishing in lack of adversity
19:08and the lack of publicity was
19:10at the beginning was not just
19:12because of the Ronald Reagan,
19:14famously not saying the
19:16word aids for many years,
19:18and the government not being
19:20interested in disease.
19:21It very quickly was seem to
19:23be just affecting stigmatized
19:25groups and then poor countries,
19:27mostly in Sub Saharan Africa.
19:29But throughout the world there was
19:31also a lot of resistance in the gay
19:34community to talking about it at
19:37first because they didn't want it.
19:39They thought it would bring on more stigma,
19:43but it only been since the stone
19:46Stonewall riots in 1969 that there had
19:49been a gay liberation movement an in.
19:5219 was very recently I have
19:54to look this up with Lawrence
19:56versus Texas was in the 1980s,
19:57which is a Supreme Court case that said that.
20:00Anti sodomy laws were unconstitutional.
20:02I think was
20:03more recent than that. Yeah is
20:05very very recent.
20:06Yeah so a lot of you know a lot of
20:09states homosexuality was illegal right?
20:11And so they didn't want people
20:13coming in and asking them about it.
20:15So it was. It was, uh,
20:18I mean I quickly made friends
20:21and Anne was able to.
20:23Do and I mean my my greatest regret
20:25is I didn't do more about HIV aids
20:28even though I got a lot of credit
20:30for what I did do because I also
20:32at the same time was covering the
20:34space Shuttle artificial hearts.
20:38Rollins of Cancer and you know there was
20:40there was constantly constant stories
20:41and you just mentioned BF Skinner,
20:43which I'd completely forgotten about.
20:45Yeah, that was also during the
20:46day when he was just starting
20:48up. He was just just the breath
20:50of the stories that you covered.
20:52Like all of the big topics,
20:53all the big topics.
20:55You were there, right?
20:57I was enormously blessed by that
21:00because of that I've had this huge
21:02amount of you to wake up in the
21:04morning and always do something
21:06that you can think is interesting.
21:08For the most part.
21:09Obviously it doesn't always
21:11work out well, so how does
21:13that work practically for
21:14you? Well, a lot of those.
21:16A lot of the reporting was based on
21:18what was coming out in the journals.
21:21Is journals probably too large in extent
21:23and I think see now the major publications
21:26are backing off from just covering.
21:28You know what's new in Journal or JAMA or.
21:32Science or nature disk.
21:35The size is important.
21:38The but will you know if people know this?
21:43Press releases are given up in an
21:45embargoed fashion a few days in advance
21:48so that scientists can excuse me so
21:50the reporters can get a chance to get
21:52up to speed on the story before they
21:54have to write it or broadcast it.
21:56But that also has the effect
21:58of at 2:00 PM on Thursday.
22:00If a story, say in science,
22:02it'll come out on every broadcast
22:04and print medium,
22:04and as a result it looks like it's news.
22:07But of course anybody in the field
22:09will have heard about this is a
22:11conference and talking like sponsor,
22:13yeah, but
22:13it's been going on for a long
22:16time, but this is when it
22:17becomes official. News.
22:19So how do you? How do you manage that?
22:23So I just want to return to the AIDS crisis.
22:26So, so here you're you're reading
22:29reports of the death toll rising,
22:31or maybe giving those reports yourself,
22:33sure, and how? How do you know?
22:37Where to go after that?
22:39Like how do you find?
22:40How do you find groups to speak with?
22:43How do you select what scientists to go and
22:45speak with? Well, it was.
22:47It was pretty obvious that there were
22:49there weren't that many scientists in the.
22:52In the field, who really cared about
22:55it so he wasn't hard or doctors
22:58under the one of you in the building
23:01where we're doing this podcast?
23:04As I just saw Jerry Friedlander,
23:06who is a hero of HIV, AIDS,
23:09and I started interviewing him in the 1980s.
23:12He was in the Bronx when there
23:15was this horrible epidemic among
23:17Ivy drug users and their spouses,
23:20an children, an he since done
23:22marvelous work in South Africa with.
23:25HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis,
23:26and he continues.
23:27I mean, she's here today.
23:29Usually he's in South Africa,
23:31so he was here and they're like, yeah,
23:34they just signed who just saw a
23:38few minutes ago? Turnovers. Yeah,
23:42so you're going all over the US all over
23:45the world warning world.
23:47Yeah, I was sure I would.
23:49NBC was very good about that.
23:51Sending me to Africa and going at the
23:54beginning going to Haiti 1st and then
23:56Africa was very tough because they
23:59everybody didn't want to be blamed
24:01for this disease and they it was.
24:04It was highly stigmatized as well.
24:06What do you mean like the
24:08government or anything?
24:09The government certainly ANAN,
24:11but finally it would. In our first.
24:15What when I first went to Haiti?
24:17Which you know this thing came up where.
24:22Doctors were seeing people mostly in
24:25New York and in Miami, who were Haitians?
24:28What originally was?
24:29It was gaming and drug users an.
24:34And there was no,
24:35they didn't have any risk factors.
24:37Nobody knew that there was a massive
24:40epidemic going in Haiti at the time,
24:42but I went to Haiti and was
24:44followed around by the secret
24:45police and nobody would talk to me.
24:48But of course I could talk to
24:50Haitian doctors in the United States.
24:52But there was enormous discrimination
24:53against station.
24:54So I did a piece in 1983 where
24:56we had Haitian saying that they
24:58were fired just because they were
25:00Haitians and families were afraid
25:02that they would get AIDS from.
25:04They were fired in the US because reasons.
25:09Well, so that's an aspect of
25:11medicine that we're only starting
25:13as physicians to talk about.
25:15You know, the stigma and the social factors.
25:18Like in psychiatry we have this
25:20biopsychosocial model where for
25:22every patient we have to try to
25:24consider the social situation.
25:25And so you were reporting on a lot of this
25:29in from a medical perspective, right?
25:31'cause this is what it was,
25:34a medical, introspective and one of
25:36the things I went to San Francisco
25:40a lot to do the reporting an.
25:43And I wasn't the only Reporter who
25:45did that for the domestic reporting
25:47on the emerging azik epidemic.
25:49And the reason was San Francisco
25:52had a large gay community of young
25:54men who had recently come out,
25:57and they were very politically powerful.
25:59There was, they had 70,000 registered
26:01voters in a city of 600,000,
26:03so they were a considerable political force.
26:06And as a result,
26:08they weren't as afraid an to
26:10be open and talk.
26:12And then San Francisco General
26:14opened its dedicated AIDS units,
26:16the inpatient and outpatient in 1983.
26:18And so we go even go in there.
26:22If I there were big institutions in New York,
26:26want some of which refused to
26:28treat people with HIV AIDS,
26:30which then you can argue about all the
26:34ethics of that others like Bellevue,
26:36which were just completely overrun the.
26:41People who did their residencies,
26:43especially in internal medicine,
26:44but it almost anything and in the
26:4780s through the discovery of the good
26:50drugs in the mid 90s at Bellevue,
26:52which is a great residency,
26:54much sought after.
26:57So almost nothing but AIDS,
26:59so they were doing things like treating
27:01these rare opportunistic infections
27:02which in most situations you would
27:04never see an American medical practice.
27:06And as a whole they treated well.
27:09How did I let me finish on something?
27:12So a lot of these hospitals and I would
27:15not let camera crews in because they
27:17did not want the ones that did treat it.
27:20People with aids?
27:21They didn't.
27:22They wouldn't let you in there because
27:24they didn't want their other patients
27:27to know that they were raised.
27:29And in the war, oh.
27:31So they didn't.
27:32We couldn't take a TV crew in
27:34just most hospitals.
27:36So you couldn't show people
27:38with the situation was
27:39like yeah, but you couldn't.
27:40San Francisco and I did sometimes
27:42in New York we there were certain
27:44places like Albert Einstein was much
27:46more open about it than other places,
27:48but most most places would not
27:50let it TV anywhere near or
27:52whether people talk about it.
27:53Talk about it.
27:54I mean they would show up at conferences
27:56and you could interview them there,
27:58but not in the context of their hospital.
28:02So I when I rotated through an
28:05infectious disease, units just as
28:07part of my medical internship,
28:09some of my attendings were either Chinese
28:12or already attendings during that period
28:14and asking them questions about this crisis.
28:17And you know how the public dealt with it,
28:21how the government of the FDA
28:23dealt with it on the NHS with it?
28:27It's a very emotionally charged
28:29still even you know, 35 years later.
28:33Situation, so I'm curious how.
28:36How you navigated those emotions
28:38for yourself, like how you managed
28:41reporting on something so emotionally
28:43provocative and well, it was.
28:45It was an
28:46after a while. My biggest fight with
28:49this was to get stories on the air,
28:52because when it became there
28:54were these big periods in the
28:57history of the AIDS epidemic.
28:59HIV AIDS epidemic.
29:00One is when Rock Hudson got sick and
29:04suddenly this gorgeous leading man.
29:07Why did so? Nobody knew he was gay and
29:09Magic Johnson in 1991 and other celebrities.
29:12So these you can see big spikes and
29:15interest in a disease at those times.
29:17But for the most part,
29:19especially especially before Rock Hudson,
29:20it was there wasn't as much interest
29:23in it as I would have liked.
29:25I would keep coming back and trying to
29:28do stories and producers would say no,
29:30you know, go do a story on breast
29:33cancer or go do a story about.
29:36Chronic fatigue syndrome or something like
29:38that? Kind of critique central enough, right?
29:42What was their logic? Just they wanted
29:45more diverse. Well, they want people
29:47to watch the TV and the man putting on
29:50pictures of men who have sex with men or.
29:55People who inject drugs does
29:57not attract the audience that
29:58the television network wants.
30:01Interesting, well at the same time though,
30:04the presence of publicity.
30:07And and you know,
30:08obviously I'm talking as someone
30:09who wasn't there and you know,
30:11I'm obviously not a scholar of this moment,
30:13but. Having the publicity allowed the
30:16science to catch up to the epidemic
30:19and allowed these politically active
30:21groups to be able to help sculpt policy.
30:24And so it was
30:25a great article. By Alan Brandt who's
30:30a historian of medicine at Harvard.
30:32It was in the New England Journal of Medicine
30:35called How Aids created Global Health,
30:38and I highly recommend that
30:40you or your listeners check out
30:43that that article because.
30:46Many things that we take for granted today,
30:48such as patient activism,
30:50an the need to think about other
30:52people in a cooperative way and not.
30:57Not necessarily a condescending way which
30:59a lot of international health before the
31:02HIV epidemic was very condescending.
31:04You know we are donors would
31:06give with what they would give
31:08and it was preceded by a period.
31:11There was even worse which was
31:13Tropical Medicine where we would.
31:15You're protecting our own people
31:17or our troops or whatever.
31:19So that has to do with the
31:21history of public health. But the.
31:25AIDS made everything different.
31:26Was very clear that there
31:28was this massive epidemic,
31:29an one of the.
31:31And it it's and there's a lot of
31:34fear right now that there's going
31:37to be a second wave of of because
31:41there's 23.3 million people on
31:43antiretroviral drugs in the world
31:45was an astounding achievement,
31:47and the.
31:50If and Trump has reauthorized the
31:52Trump administration is reauthorized,
31:54PEPFAR, which is the major
31:56contributor for those bills.
31:57There are other donors as well,
32:00but the biggest chunk of that
32:02comes from the US government,
32:04and he proposes cutting into
32:06budget for it every year.
32:08An you people here in the Yale
32:10School of Public Health and others
32:12have done calculations you can do
32:14just very cold calculations for
32:16every $1,000,000 that gets cut back.
32:19How many million people are going to die?
32:22Because there?
32:23There's no cure,
32:24and as a result there's all these
32:26people that are going to die
32:27if they don't get their drugs.
32:30So that's the intersection of
32:31advocacy and policy. Then write an
32:33in that that came about them into.
32:36Don't forget the. Larry Kramer,
32:38who I become I became very close
32:40to the famous AIDS activist who
32:43started the gay men's health crisis,
32:45first as a support group in
32:471981 and he started out.
32:50Screaming and yelling at there was this
32:52horrible thing going on and he was.
32:54He had enormous pushback from other members
32:57of the gay community that he was approved.
32:59He wanted to close down the bath
33:02houses that places where men went
33:04to have ****** and that was a huge
33:06part of the early years was fight
33:09within the gay community over whether
33:11to close down the bath houses and
33:13Kramer then got tired of the just the
33:17advocacy and he started acting up.
33:20An act up accomplished a lot of
33:22called attention to a lot of things,
33:25but then act up spun off yet another group
33:27called the Treatment Action Coalition,
33:30which exists to this day and
33:32as marvelous work,
33:33because what they did was they learn
33:35they became as knowledgeable about
33:37the disease as many of the scientists,
33:39so they thought and it was a big,
33:42big fight to get a seat at the
33:45table on FDA and NIH review panels.
33:48And but they got it.
33:50And it made a big difference,
33:52and now it's standard procedure.
33:53This consumer representatives and
33:55all those things. But it didn't.
33:57It wasn't always that way.
33:58And then the even people who were
34:00working full time on the problem at the
34:03NIH were disgusted at the idea none.
34:05Now that they were homophobic,
34:07but that non scientists would
34:09come into the room.
34:10But if you talk to some of these non
34:13scientists they actually had this,
34:14you know there's.
34:17Cat's encyclopedic knowledge.
34:18That's
34:19so I'm turning around my head
34:21around this as as you know,
34:23someone that knows a little
34:25bit about the science but very
34:28little about the you know,
34:30the the advocacy component,
34:31and so these people have got together
34:34and act up an they engaged media.
34:37They staged protests, Anaza results.
34:39They were able to curb the public opinion,
34:42which then also changed the way
34:44science functions, right?
34:46And there were.
34:47Yes, because one of the big questions.
34:51Which goes back to what I was.
34:54I had mentioned Mary Lasker, Mary Lasker's,
34:56and the 1971 War on Cancer was
34:59based on the notion that we don't.
35:01We can't just sit around
35:03and wait for basic research.
35:05We have to have targeted research and
35:07that's huge policy argument about
35:09where it where does work come from.
35:12But but.
35:14At some point you have to say that we
35:16have this massive public health problem.
35:19We have to just worry about
35:21this and think about things that
35:23will make a difference in this.
35:25Anne Marie lost,
35:26we wanted to do that with cancer and
35:29it turned out it was way too early.
35:31Nobody even when in 1971 nobody
35:33even knew
35:34what caused cancer. I mean it was
35:37not. Uncle genes were not discovered.
35:39They weren't discovered until 1976 in
35:41chickens and then in 1981 and human beings.
35:43So that was a lot of.
35:46Time passed and everybody the money
35:48it was was money and it did support
35:51basic research that led to those
35:53discoveries which are just now
35:55starting to lead to drugs and well
35:57the precision medicine you know.
35:59Oncology is the poster child of precision
36:01medicine nowadays right? Also the actual
36:03numbers of people who get help or
36:05are much lower than you would think
36:08about because one of the difficulties
36:10about doing a story about something
36:12like a new immunotherapy for cancer
36:15is you find somebody who was.
36:17Almost dead yesterday and is now
36:19is running the marathon and yeah,
36:21but it turns out that only 12% of
36:24people who get immunotherapy's
36:26overall show any kind of response
36:28that I'm talking about not talking
36:30about surviving for years.
36:32I'm just any kind of response,
36:34let alone people who were.
36:38What you would call a cure it
36:40if you have go for several years
36:42without recurrence? Well, so
36:43how do you view so one of the
36:46things I've observed is that.
36:49More specifically in in psychiatry,
36:50my field every five to 10 years.
36:53Someone writes this paper that
36:55we are about to enter the
36:57Golden age of psychiatry, right?
36:59See a lot of Golden Age is
37:01a lot of goals, and
37:03then you see it in every field of medicine
37:06is a world where about we're about there,
37:09I mean, and it's absolutely fascinating.
37:12About how long things can take Francis
37:15Collins, who's now the director of
37:18the National Institutes of Health?
37:21As head of the Human Genome Project
37:23discovered, the gene for cystic
37:25fibrosis in I have to look it up.
37:27I don't have it.
37:29I thought I had, but it was,
37:31I think in the 1980s,
37:33before the Genome project.
37:34Yeah before long because yeah,
37:36in the days when it took forever,
37:38but it was just this last week
37:40that the FDA approved a gene
37:42based drug for cystic fibrosis.
37:44That seems to be truly effective.
37:46Oh, I
37:47hadn't heard of that.
37:50King, about decades between you and it
37:52looks so exciting when you and it's true,
37:55it was exciting to know that there
37:57was this gene. But at the time,
37:59kids with cystic fibrosis were
38:01living there be 6 or 7 you know.
38:03Now you have 40 and 50 year olds and
38:05it looks like they may soon have a
38:08completely normal life expectancy. So
38:10so this perennial question of the Golden Age.
38:13This is something that really
38:14fascinates me and I spend time
38:17agonizing over because a lot of it is,
38:19you know, science is based on this.
38:21Idea of of grants right?
38:22If you want to be an academic scientist,
38:24you write a grant for five years, right?
38:26And you say I'm going to do this.
38:28That and the other an at the
38:29end of five years, you know.
38:32Reflective scientists will be like did
38:35I actually accomplish those things and
38:37something that you know in your book
38:39is how after there is this increased
38:42funding for breast cancer or the NCI,
38:44the National Cancer Institute had
38:46their budget tripled or doubled.
38:48His order order of magnitude all of a sudden.
38:51All these scientists who were basic
38:54scientists began to be interested
38:55in a few sentences.
38:57At the end of their granite
38:59studying cancer right right?
39:01And
39:01you can do it, yeah?
39:03Is pretty easy as you know,
39:05as a scientist that to write those words in,
39:09because almost any basic science
39:11can be said to be relevant to the
39:14cancer problem because the cancer
39:16problem is how cells work, right?
39:18Yes, how does the body where? How does the
39:22body work and therefore you can
39:24make it an it's interesting,
39:26the immuno therapy stuff came
39:28from 2 lines of research.
39:30One was just really basic
39:33research immunology and mice.
39:35By James Allison.
39:36When when he was at Berkeley,
39:38now he's at MD Anderson an the
39:41the other came from a discovery.
39:45That was made very, very applied.
39:47An HIV discovery that when the HIV
39:50attacks the type of word but white
39:53blood cells called CD four cells.
39:55It doesn't just attach to
39:5711 protein on the surface,
39:59it attached.
40:00To a coreceptor an there was a
40:04study of sex workers female sex
40:07workers in Nairobi which found that.
40:12A very small percentage less
40:14than one by far of them,
40:16had unprotected sex with thousands
40:18of men who were infected and it
40:21never got the diseases themselves.
40:22And it turned out that they had
40:25a defect in this coreceptor Ann.
40:27This is the Co receptor that makes up
40:30what the basis for immunotherapy for cancer.
40:33Now we have these two 2
40:35lines of research that say
40:37you never know, right?
40:38Yeah, exactly unknown unknown.
40:40Yeah you were working
40:41with mice in a lab about.
40:44Immunology is is one thing and but also
40:47studying Kenyan sex workers is another.
40:49Another thing is why is he why
40:51somebody bothering to do this?
40:53Well it turns out that you know
40:55in the world one human being,
40:57the Berlin patient has been cured
40:59of HIV and it was because he
41:01got a transplant from somebody
41:03who had this defective receptor
41:05as a treatment for leukemia.
41:07So he is now cured of HIV.
41:10Kind of incidentally yeah I saw
41:12that but unfortunately it's
41:13not something you want to.
41:15Do is routinely, for you know,
41:17the 35 million people in the
41:19world who are moving with
41:21HIV, but my head well.
41:23So yes, I I fully.
41:25I fully accept that.
41:27You know serendipity is
41:28a large part of science.
41:30And embracing these serendipitous
41:32discoveries often leads to.
41:35Wonderful things like the unknown unknown.
41:37So yeah, there's a lot of potential there.
41:41However, one of the things that
41:43makes me anxious is the selling of
41:46science in a way that isn't completely
41:49driven by the science itself.
41:51O for example,
41:53the the idea of selling your work is
41:56being curated for a specific disease
41:58when it's not directly related.
42:01You know there is some salesmanship
42:04in grantsmanship.
42:05And you know, in order to get funded,
42:07you have to get people excited.
42:09However, this Golden age question.
42:15Sorry, go ahead
42:16and now the goal it well.
42:18One of the things that happens if you talk
42:21about there are lobbyists in Washington
42:22who work on behalf of organizations
42:24like the American Association for the
42:27Advancement of Science or the American
42:29Association of Universities. Anne.
42:32The way that they have ways of doing it,
42:35which is they tie it all it gets
42:38tide up with other social service
42:40programs and as a result it lifts the
42:43tide and then then then scientists.
42:46Add places like the NIH or the National
42:49Science Foundation can make the decision
42:51about what where the money should go,
42:54and it doesn't just go to silly
42:57projects that are designed to try to
43:00cure diseases kind of offbeat way,
43:02but a lot of stuff.
43:06As you know, does get published.
43:08It never gets replicated,
43:09replicated or reproduced or refer to
43:11and just goes off in the deep end,
43:14and there's a lot of concern about that
43:17and exactly how you steer this gigantic
43:19ship and the scientific enterprise is
43:22just growing so rapidly it if you look
43:24at the charts of the number of journals,
43:27the number of people working in
43:29science and everything else.
43:30So any argument that we're in an age
43:33that's not a Golden age where we are.
43:36Where the public doesn't support size.
43:37I don't buy into that,
43:38only we have we
43:39have. So you think
43:40this is the Golden age thing?
43:42Yeah, we're definitely the
43:43goal of the things that.
43:45I hear about that are going on on this
43:47campus and others and other institutes
43:50around the country are just astounding
43:52because the tools are getting so much better.
43:55The Genome Project is the obvious one.
43:57You know. It used to take months and months.
44:00I mean I remember. The.
44:05There aren't very many single.
44:07Based as you know, the single gene disease
44:11is caused by a defect in one gene or mute.
44:14An alteration in one gene,
44:16but the first one that we discovered
44:19was Huntington's disease,
44:20which was in 1984.
44:23And it took them until 1994 to
44:25actually sequence that gene because
44:27the technology was so crude.
44:29Now. Now if somebody knew
44:30the location of that gene,
44:32they could hear it, Yale,
44:33it would put it outside.
44:35They could do it in a much even faster way,
44:38but usually what they do is they put it
44:41outside their door in a bucket like you
44:43see outside of your doctors office for
44:45blood and urine samples is picked up.
44:48It's taken to a gene sequencing and they get
44:51it back in the morning on their computer.
44:53And they can compare it to every
44:56known gene sequence in every
44:58animal creature on Earth an.
45:01At best,
45:01pretty Golden age. Yeah,
45:02that's pretty Golden age and and
45:04what's happening now is one
45:06of the biggest problems is
45:07there's so much data coming in.
45:09How do you deal with all the data?
45:11There's so much information? Well,
45:12what are your thoughts on neuroscience then?
45:14Like how do you view that?
45:16Our understanding of the brain in relation
45:18to these? Otherwise I think we have a
45:21long way to go and understanding science.
45:23What makes. It is very interesting if you.
45:27Think about evolution and Richard Dawkins
45:31who's one of my favorite writers of
45:35all these brilliant actually written.
45:38He but. And he he gets pounced on
45:41all the time by the religious right,
45:44because of he thinks that religion is a
45:47meme term that he invented, but it's.
45:50But it's a meme is a conscious thing.
45:53It's not a gene and he and he
45:55constantly says that we've developed a
45:57consciousness we because we have a brain.
46:00It came from evolution.
46:02But we don't understand it.
46:03We don't have the mechanism
46:05to understand our own brains.
46:07And as an example of why everything is
46:09not driven by Darwinian natural selection,
46:12he says, well, we wouldn't have.
46:15Option one practice contraception
46:16if we wanted to just increase our
46:19our genes in the world.
46:20Well so so I think his
46:22arguments pretty sound though.
46:23So like why would we suppose that our
46:26brains evolved to understand the brain?
46:28No, I don't think we have the
46:30capacity to do that. So then.
46:32So then what direction like in terms of
46:34the Golden age of neuroscience then.
46:36So so there have been many stories
46:38purporting that this decade of the brain,
46:41for example, right like you know,
46:43we're going to devote a lot of money to this,
46:46like we did with the.
46:47Human genome and in 10 years will
46:50shake her hand and what happened?
46:52No, not much right.
46:53There was a decade
46:54of the brain. Sounds like a good idea
46:57and I'm sure they pay for decent science.
47:00I'm not up on the literature
47:02on that. I don't know what to tell
47:04ya to say that that we learned.
47:07You know nothing is obviously false.
47:09I mean we know wealth of information about
47:11the brain, like how neurons function,
47:13how they organized you, know sub circuits
47:16and circuits and networks and systems.
47:18Throughout the brain, but are we able to
47:21bring that to the level of healthcare?
47:24Not quite yet right?
47:25And so that's the question then,
47:28is like something that I've been musing over.
47:31Is all of these movements.
47:33I hope that I don't mean that in a
47:37derogatory way to say like the AIDS.
47:39Advocates were like a movement, but I don't.
47:42I don't know another word to
47:45describe that like that movement.
47:47The cancer movement,
47:48specifically the breast cancer movement.
47:50These people were able to create a
47:53lot of enthusiasm which then trickled
47:56into the scientific enterprise
47:58in the form of funding,
48:01which then allows treatments to
48:03eventually be brought to market.
48:06Which one is lucky?
48:08I mean,
48:08there's feel like,
48:10yeah, but it also allows the
48:13scientific understanding.
48:14Sometimes that doesn't wait to treatments.
48:18And it's not a bad thing.
48:19I mean, and there still is support
48:22despite everything else for the.
48:23Like the wonderful things that say,
48:27Carl Zimmer writes about about the
48:30interaction of a lichen and fungus and
48:33sure or the which is terrifying. By the
48:36way they are. Or or or
48:40does this interest that we all have in in
48:42the origin of human population migrations?
48:45That's not going to. That probably is
48:47not going to tell us anything that's
48:49going to be useful in the clinic,
48:51but I think it should be supported not
48:53just because I like to read about it,
48:56but I think, you know,
48:57tells us more about who
48:59we are and it's absolutely
49:00fascinating. So any knowledge
49:01is good knowledge, then yeah, well,
49:03any yeah? Any knowledge that is not
49:05used for destructive purposes as good
49:07knowledge? Napalm? It's not
49:08good. No, I don't think.
49:10I don't think Napalm is good
49:12under any circumstances,
49:13and it goes for a lot of other other things.
49:16But if you're thinking about.
49:19The scientific enterprise.
49:22Yeah, I get back to these Pew surveys.
49:24Science has never been held in higher regard.
49:27Let me people there are these awful
49:30things that are going on like.
49:33Cuts in environmental regulations
49:35that are based on pseudoscience that,
49:37but a lot of that is a political decision.
49:40Are we willing to be like India and
49:42China and breed really horrible air so
49:45that some people can make more profits?
49:48Or are we?
49:50Those are political ideas and the
49:53other the other thing that keeps
49:56coming that I keep thinking about is.
49:58This idea of the.
50:01Global warming and climate change are so.
50:05Threatening that are we wasting our time
50:07thinking about almost anything else?
50:09And there are people that make that argument.
50:12Jonathan Franzen had a very good piece.
50:14And then in The New Yorker a
50:17few months ago about that,
50:19that it's so hopeless that.
50:21So we we we go on as if our children our
50:24grandchildren are going to have decent lives.
50:26Whenever I was talking about
50:27the financial aspects of my
50:29generation versus your generation,
50:30but think about what it could be
50:32like for our kids and our grandkids.
50:34If if the world really goes to
50:36hell in the way it seems to be in
50:39a lot of people think it will be
50:41because of reinforcing.
50:43Feedbacks that are just getting worse and
50:45worse and nobody is doing anything about
50:48it at any kind of scale that it could.
50:51Matter and so maybe you know you
50:53thinking about the brain or me talking
50:55about breast cancer activism for HIV,
50:58AIDS, or even trying to illuminate.
51:00And it's horrible.
51:01Probably you know, tuberculosis or HIV,
51:03aids and all these other terrible
51:05global health problems.
51:06But all that could be meaningless
51:08in a big hurry if if climate change
51:11gets so bad that there's no food
51:14and there's a lack of water and all
51:16that, well, so so this is again an area that.
51:20You know you see the science, right?
51:23The science is fairly clear and robust.
51:25I mean, there are these models
51:27that have been known for decades,
51:29and there are advocacy groups
51:31like there's a movement.
51:32You know that it's getting
51:34more popular with young
51:36people, which is good. Which is good. But
51:38so, like when, how do you
51:40view a critical mass forming?
51:42So at what point? I don't know. This
51:45is not something that I've been involved in.
51:48Sometimes I feel like I should be.
51:51You know involved in it and you
51:53see things like Jane Fonda getting
51:55arrested every Friday along with
51:57a bunch of other celebrities.
52:00Now on the steps of the Capitol.
52:02Maybe that will call attention to it,
52:05but it's very hard to wrap your
52:07head around how bad it is an
52:10particularly because you've got just
52:12become a religion to be against it.
52:14For certain political parties.
52:16So people are much more.
52:20Aligned to disbelieve it even,
52:21even though the evidence is stronger.
52:23And also it's happening over a time
52:26frame that we don't quite understand.
52:28Have a new treatment for cystic
52:30fibrosis or cancer comes along.
52:32Yeah yesterday it wasn't here today
52:34is here and we suddenly see it.
52:36This is given
52:37to patients better and in some way. But this
52:40doesn't work that way. Anne.
52:44It could be just awful an I I don't
52:46know if there are people here an
52:48elsewhere here yell and elsewhere who
52:51work at the idea of communicating this.
52:53You know, how do you tell people
52:55this is such a serious problem
52:57that we have to worry about it?
52:59I remember even a few one of
53:01the few times we were talking
53:03bout good reactions to stories.
53:05I did it with the one time
53:07I got a lot of hate Mail.
53:10And in those days it was just Mail.
53:12It was an email or social
53:14media when I did a story about.
53:16Global warming,
53:17one of the first stories when
53:19I was starting to become more
53:21public issue what year is that?
53:23Oh, is in the 80s eighties.
53:25Brian Johansson came out and but
53:27it didn't phase and people can't.
53:29You know, then,
53:29when it's really hot on the East
53:31Coast and everybody in Washington,
53:33New York's miserable and or
53:35there's a power outage.
53:36Or there's a big hurricane.
53:38Now people are starting to
53:39accept the severe weather.
53:41Is is part of global climate change and
53:43that wasn't accepted for a long time.
53:46Well, so so this is.
53:48One of my editors at Scientific
53:50American, Mike Lemonick,
53:51who had interviewed for this podcast.
53:54He and I had a discussion
53:56about the impact of science
53:58journalism on science policy,
54:01and so I'm curious if you feel
54:03like your journalism in AIDS and
54:06cancer treatments and you covered
54:08Alzheimer's and Human Genome project,
54:10do you feel like that has had an
54:13affect in sculpting policy? I
54:16think not mine necessarily,
54:18but overall it does.
54:20I think that awareness does
54:21help people appreciate where
54:23their tax dollars are going,
54:25but there and that's been part of perhaps
54:28the reason that there was not a lot of.
54:31Objection to it science is
54:33always done pretty well.
54:35I'd get has its ups and downs
54:37and you mentioned before the
54:39when the NIH doubled its budget,
54:42which was a huge mistake that
54:44was made during the Clinton Bill
54:46Clinton administration, the.
54:50They doubled the budget,
54:51but then they didn't fall through,
54:53so there's all these graduate students
54:56and postdocs who suddenly given fell
54:58off a Cliff like doubling the
55:00enrollment in medical school without
55:02doubling residency right exactly.
55:03Yeah, it was a bad idea, yeah?
55:06But then again, there's a big tendency to.
55:09If somebody puts money on the
55:11table to take it and not say
55:14we're not going to take that.
55:16But but those stories are satisfying.
55:18I enjoy reading about.
55:20Science or and I enjoy just like I
55:23enjoy a good play or a movie that
55:25has nothing to do with science.
55:28It's part of the human experience
55:29and I think that it makes people feel
55:32satisfied to get good information.
55:34Well, you certainly made
55:36thousands of millions of people satisfied.
55:38Flickering through the years and I guess
55:41we're actually running a little low on time.
55:43I don't want you to be late
55:46for your new class, OK?
55:49But we are OK. We are we OK?
55:51Yeah, I think we have 5 minutes 5 minutes.
55:54OK, I use magic that out about time,
55:57but you know, just in the last
55:59five minutes here I'm like what?
56:01Where do you see science
56:03journalism an going in the future?
56:05I because I have this sense that science
56:07is becoming more and more complex and
56:09to be able to report about science,
56:12you're going to have to become
56:13more and more sophisticated.
56:15Like for example, you you had a,
56:17you know, a whole leg and not just a shoe.
56:20Because you had a lot of scientific
56:22training and so that gave you a springboard
56:25into the world of science journalism.
56:28So how do you feel the next generation
56:30of science journalists are going
56:32to feel very optimistic about it?
56:34Because like the stuff that you do in
56:37Scientific American and all the good
56:39stuff that's in National Geographic sites,
56:41and there, there is an enormous
56:43amount of good information out there.
56:45And there are certain percentage
56:47of people who seek it.
56:49The big problems are that a lot of
56:51stuff gets trivialized, particularly.
56:53Nutritional Epidemiology, you know,
56:54I can promise you that they'll in
56:57February there will be stories
56:58that just before Valentine's Day
57:00that chocolate is good for you.
57:03Yeah this and wanted by Hershey.
57:05Sponsored by you know somebody will
57:07do is to study of 17 people and find
57:10out that there's an antioxidant.
57:12Chocolate of course you have to eat so
57:15much of the chocolate you gain 10 pounds.
57:19But the and those things are constant.
57:27Uh, with evergreens,
57:29they think they're constantly showing
57:31up on the morning talk shows like
57:33the Today Show and Good Morning
57:36America and the CBS Morning show.
57:38The people are all whole another.
57:40John Oliver did a great spot on this on.
57:45John Oliver did a very good spot
57:48about science, journalism and.
57:51It in the whole lot of stuff
57:53gets blown on it, blown up.
57:56Out of proportion.
57:57And it's not just.
58:01These small studies get a lot
58:03of attention because they come
58:05to a result that people want
58:06to hear or it scares people or
58:08whatever it takes to.
58:09I love the wine study.
58:11Yeah, one drink two to three
58:13glasses of wine. Your heart.
58:14Well yeah, right and under the
58:16guise Sinclair it at Harvard,
58:17David Sinclair has been fortunate
58:19company to try supposedly distills
58:21the antioxidant from red wine into a
58:22pill that prevents you from aging.
58:24So why would you ever want to take the
58:27pill? And you can just drink the wine?
58:29Yeah, exactly exactly. You have to drink.
58:31Case of it together, but alright here.
58:33Let's say in an afternoon. But
58:37but the as I clear that that's going to work.
58:40The problem is that that part of the
58:42scientific process is not as getting better.
58:45Major publications like the New
58:47York Times and Washington Post,
58:49and I think to a certain extent
58:51the networks in their coverage
58:53have done less of that dude.
58:55Taking small studies and they can
58:57go for a whole lot of reasons,
58:59go either way and making
59:01a big deal out of it.
59:06But there is a lot of lack of
59:08understanding of the need for.
59:12This consistent beta the data coming to
59:14the same conclusion before you make it
59:16recommendation and a lot of things changed.
59:19I mean it was a really big deal in the
59:211990s when the Women's Health Initiative
59:23showed that hormone replacement
59:25therapy was not was more harmful than
59:28beneficial and millions of women
59:29there went off it in an afternoon and
59:31suffered severe consequences like hot
59:33flashes and feeling really terrible.
59:35But there have been all these small
59:38studies and when I was guilty of doing,
59:40going along with some of these
59:43small studies that said.
59:44It enhanced your memory at made,
59:46made a woman's skin better and
59:49all kinds of stuff.
59:50And it turned out it when somebody actually
59:53did the giant randomized control trial.
59:55It wasn't the case.
59:57Well, maybe then part of the you know,
60:00science. Education that science
01:00:02journalists give should be more
01:00:04focused on the process of science.
01:00:06Rather, the process of
01:00:07science before you knowing the
01:00:09process of science before you report
01:00:11it is very important and that there
01:00:13are organizations like Annenberg
01:00:15Foundation supports a lot of of
01:00:17it's called there's a journalist.
01:00:19Tip Sheet is not just about science,
01:00:21but it tells you how to.
01:00:24How to approach this subject and
01:00:26to think about it and frame it.
01:00:28And you might want to talk to.
01:00:31Look at these resources and there is
01:00:33the AAA S the American associated with
01:00:35advancement of science has a whole
01:00:37lot of resources for journalists,
01:00:39so because a lot of mainstream publications
01:00:41have cut back on their science reporting,
01:00:44so you don't have people who do it day
01:00:46in and day out who know the process.
01:00:49So that's why you get the
01:00:51somebody from USA TODAY.
01:00:52Calling somebody out, asking stupid
01:00:54questions because they they don't have.
01:00:56They don't have background.
01:00:57They used to have a lot.
01:00:59USA TODAY as an example.
01:01:01They used to have a big size step.
01:01:04And if they laid off almost all an.
01:01:09So there, but for people who want
01:01:12good information is out there.
01:01:14I think that there's not a danger that.
01:01:17An when things happen that scare
01:01:20public health people enough,
01:01:23the.
01:01:25Like vaccine hesitancy,
01:01:26there is a growing movement to
01:01:28handle it correctly.
01:01:29It hasn't worked with edit
01:01:31global warming yet,
01:01:32but I think is young people get
01:01:35more interested in adults.
01:01:36It is more of a defining
01:01:38issue than they have when I
01:01:41certainly hope so, especially
01:01:42for creating great grandchildren.
01:01:44I don't think it's going
01:01:45to be great. I think as
01:01:48we grandchildren,
01:01:49grandchildren they're going to
01:01:51really have to look at these.
01:01:53120 degree Fahrenheit days.
01:01:55There are occurring out regularly in
01:01:58Bombay and these water tables going
01:02:00down all over the world and crop
01:02:03shifting and things like Dengue a
01:02:05moving North in a big hurry because
01:02:08of mosquitoes are moving or it's
01:02:10those are all that matters and well,
01:02:13maybe we should be re channel
01:02:15their energy into global warming.
01:02:17May be very helpful thing.
01:02:19Well thank you so much for coming.
01:02:22Yeah, I've really enjoyed speaking with
01:02:35Hope you enjoyed that episode.
01:02:37Thanks again to Bob for being on the podcast.
01:02:40You can find Bob on Twitter at Robert
01:02:42Buzzell and that's at Robert Bazell.
01:02:44You can also find him at his adjunct
01:02:47faculty profile page at yale.edu.
01:02:49You could also purchase this book her too,
01:02:51at your favorite bookseller.
01:02:53Pretty sure I picked up a copy on
01:02:55Amazon.com and it arrived in two days.
01:02:58It was awesome.
01:02:59Thanks to the Yale School of
01:03:01Medicine for sponsoring the podcast,
01:03:03and especially to Adrian Bottom
01:03:05Burger for producing this podcast
01:03:07and Ryan McEvoy for sound editing.
01:03:09Special thanks to you for listening again.
01:03:11My name is Daniel Barron
01:03:12and I've been your host.
01:03:13An will see you next time on science at all.