Conversations in Science with Dan Rather and Shirley Tilghman: The Future of Science Training • iBiology

00:00:06.26 TILGHMAN: So, this is the Carl Icahn Laboratory,
00:00:09.18 and it is the home for the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.
00:00:13.27 RATHER: Integrative genomics -- what is that?
00:00:16.12 TILGHMAN: So, integrative genomics is a brand new field of molecular biology
00:00:20.24 that was created because of the Human Genome Project.
00:00:24.27 So, we sequenced the human genome,
00:00:28.11 three billion bases of DNA,
00:00:31.04 but we had no way to understand what those bases were telling us.
00:00:35.10 TILGHMAN: When I look back and think about what I'm most happy about
00:00:39.19 really are the young, and now middle-aged, scientists
00:00:43.29 who have gone on to very successful careers in science.
00:00:48.03 I think for anybody who combines research and teaching,
00:00:53.03 our greatest product are our students.
00:00:55.22 RATHER: How and why did you first get fixed on science?
00:00:59.08 TILGHMAN: You know, I think it goes all the way back to extremely early childhood,
00:01:03.16 when I loved numbers.
00:01:05.17 I loved puzzles of all kinds.
00:01:09.03 But particularly, mathematical puzzles.
00:01:11.03 And I think it was just loving playing with numbers.
00:01:14.27 RATHER: And what made you?
00:01:17.01 What made your name in science?
00:01:18.28 TILGHMAN: I think it was a set of experiments that I did
00:01:22.25 as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health
00:01:25.28 in Bethesda, Maryland.
00:01:28.09 This was at the very early days of recombinant DNA.
00:01:34.11 This huge breakthrough,
00:01:36.16 this ability to reach into a genome and pull out a single gene,
00:01:40.26 and then study its structure,
00:01:43.18 was suddenly possible.
00:01:45.09 And I was in a laboratory of a man named Philip Leder,
00:01:48.11 one of the country's great, great scientists,
00:01:51.10 who had given me the project of doing this for the very first time.
00:01:56.07 And after a lot of stumbles, and a lot of blind alleys,
00:01:59.24 we were able to isolate a gene,
00:02:03.14 and for the very first time, see how a gene is organized and structured.
00:02:08.24 And if it had been as we had predicted,
00:02:14.20 based on what we knew,
00:02:16.29 it would have been a wonderful thing.
00:02:19.00 But it wouldn't have been as exciting
00:02:22.11 as what we discovered when we looked at this gene,
00:02:25.11 which was that it was organized completely differently
00:02:28.13 than what we thought.
00:02:30.14 And it... it was one of those, you know,
00:02:33.08 earth-shattering moments, where you realize, once again,
00:02:36.22 Mother Nature had thrown you a curveball,
00:02:40.02 and had done something that took us
00:02:43.07 years and years to really understand.
00:02:45.21 RATHER: Well, from that -- and it hasn't been that long ago --
00:02:48.28 we now have this wonderful -- and to me, mysterious --
00:02:54.18 world of synthetic biology.
00:02:56.00 TILGHMAN: Yes. And I think it's really an exciting opportunity
00:02:59.13 to put biology to work for the good of mankind.
00:03:03.14 You know, scientists are now trying to
00:03:06.14 engineer bacteria so that they will be able to
00:03:09.17 very effectively eat oil spills.
00:03:12.17 So, can you imagine what it would have meant in the Gulf,
00:03:15.25 if we had been able to just sprinkle some bacteria
00:03:18.05 onto that horrible oil spill, that BP oil spill,
00:03:22.20 and have that oil disappear within a matter of days?
00:03:27.00 Normal bacteria don't do that, of course.
00:03:29.04 But we now think that there may be
00:03:32.02 ways of engineering bacteria so that they are able to do it.
00:03:35.23 There are ways of describing that that sound
00:03:39.27 a little Brave New World-y,
00:03:41.19 but I think the scientists who are really working on it
00:03:44.04 are trying to mobilize biological systems
00:03:49.02 for the betterment of mankind.
00:03:51.11 RATHER: But the flip side of that is, in the hands of a terrorist,
00:03:55.18 it has that potential as well,
00:03:58.15 when you can create what only nature previously created.
00:04:02.12 TILGHMAN: I think that's right.
00:04:04.26 But I don't think that there is anything new about that risk.
00:04:09.25 There were many periods in the 20th century
00:04:13.11 where a scientific discovery could have been used,
00:04:16.20 and in some cases was used,
00:04:19.02 for destruction.
00:04:21.13 The atomic bomb is obviously the best example of that.
00:04:24.24 But in the hands of wise, you know, policymakers,
00:04:29.12 the power of that science can be directed toward good,
00:04:33.08 in the case of nuclear energy.
00:04:35.26 So, I think what you're saying is absolutely true about synthetic biology.
00:04:40.25 But I think that's always going to be true
00:04:43.12 with a scientific discovery.
00:04:48.18 RATHER: And this building was built when?
00:04:50.28 TILGHMAN: This was built in 2003.
00:04:54.27 And it doesn't just have molecular biologists in it.
00:04:57.17 It has computer scientists.
00:04:59.13 It has chemical engineers.
00:05:00.26 It has physicists.
00:05:02.18 It has biophysicists.
00:05:05.00 And the whole purpose of creating this building
00:05:07.16 was to bring all of these disciplines together,
00:05:10.09 because the new biology is a very different kettle of fish
00:05:14.27 than the old biology.
00:05:16.17 And it needs interactions with all of these other disciplines.
00:05:20.02 RATHER: And the biggest difference between biology today
00:05:22.20 and the old biology, as you called it, is...?
00:05:25.21 TILGHMAN: Big data. RATHER: Big data.
00:05:28.03 TILGHMAN: Big data. So, what the genome...
00:05:30.19 RATHER: It sounds like a mafia boss or something.
00:05:33.01 TILGHMAN: I know it sounds slightly daunting.
00:05:36.00 But it... it's sort of this change where we can create more data
00:05:40.01 than we can actually analyze at any given time.
00:05:43.01 And so a lot of what goes on in this building is both generating the data,
00:05:48.22 but then we have a whole nother group of people
00:05:51.04 who are trying to figure out better ways
00:05:53.03 to extract new knowledge out of the data.
00:05:56.19 It's a sea change in biology.
00:05:59.16 RATHER: One question about big data.
00:06:01.26 Is this a fuel for employment of people who study science?
00:06:05.19 TILGHMAN: Yes. And probably the biggest growth industry
00:06:09.01 right now in biology, the biggest growth field,
00:06:13.18 are individuals who have really deep quantitative skills.
00:06:17.29 So, computer scientists, physicists,
00:06:20.27 who can bring their tool kits,
00:06:23.08 which they learn in graduate school,
00:06:25.14 to bear on biological problems.
00:06:36.27 RATHER: It's popularly believed in many parts of the country
00:06:40.11 that we're producing all kinds of first-rate scientists
00:06:44.18 who are gonna be set up for life in a pretty good job.
00:06:48.05 What's wrong with that picture.
00:06:50.00 TILGHMAN: That picture is... is... I would say, very field-specific.
00:06:56.00 That picture is absolutely true in areas
00:06:58.27 like computer science and electrical engineering.
00:07:01.19 There's no question. Those are really growth industries.
00:07:05.23 If you look at my own field,
00:07:08.20 which is biomedical science,
00:07:10.23 the picture is much more... cloudy, I would say.
00:07:15.24 RATHER: Well, does or does not the United States have a shortage of scientists?
00:07:20.18 TILGHMAN: In biomedical science, I think the answer is clearly no.
00:07:26.02 We do not have a shortage.
00:07:28.28 And in fact, I think you could make a pretty compelling argument right now
00:07:32.29 that we are training more than we need
00:07:36.27 to do the kinds of jobs that we're training them to do.
00:07:40.21 And so I think one of the big debates in the field right now
00:07:44.08 is whether we need to be changing
00:07:48.15 the nature of our graduate education and biomedical science
00:07:52.06 so that we are better preparing those students
00:07:55.06 for the real jobs that are out there for PhDs.
00:07:59.07 RATHER: In what other areas of science have we perhaps produced too many PhDs?
00:08:05.00 Physics? Chemistry?
00:08:06.27 TILGHMAN: You know, I'm a great admirer of the physics community itself.
00:08:12.01 And probably 20 years ago, the physics community
00:08:15.13 took a look at the career prospects of its PhD graduates
00:08:20.09 and saw, I think correctly,
00:08:22.27 that they were beginning to overproduce PhDs in physics.
00:08:26.21 What the community did together
00:08:29.20 is it exercised a little birth control.
00:08:31.29 And so it actually reduced
00:08:34.12 the number of students it was producing.
00:08:36.07 And as a consequence,
00:08:37.29 I think there is a reasonable steady-state
00:08:40.25 that now exists in physics.
00:08:42.23 And I think it's very healthy for the field.
00:08:45.08 And I think it's something that biomedical science,
00:08:47.15 which has not been able to exercise birth control... ironically,
00:08:51.08 given that it should understand birth control.
00:08:54.17 If you look at chemistry... chemistry has been at steady-state
00:08:58.09 for at least twenty years.
00:09:01.22 And by that it means that it is producing
00:09:05.06 roughly the same number of PhDs every year.
00:09:08.08 And the evidence that those PhDs
00:09:10.26 are finding good, productive jobs,
00:09:12.24 jobs that take advantage of their education,
00:09:16.00 is good.
00:09:17.29 They are producing roughly the right number of PhDs
00:09:21.11 for what the economy can absorb.
00:09:24.17 RATHER: I thought biomedicine, biotech,
00:09:28.08 was going to be the boom industry of the 21st century?
00:09:32.04 TILGHMAN: And to a certain extent I think that it has proven to be the case.
00:09:38.02 Its success over the last 50-60 years
00:09:41.01 has just been extraordinary.
00:09:42.28 You know, 25 years ago, would we have believed that
00:09:45.12 HIV is now a chronic disease?
00:09:47.28 You know, a disease that can be managed?
00:09:50.07 And you know, this came out of just this very, very successful enterprise.
00:09:56.03 But -- and there's an important but here --
00:09:59.14 every year, the expectation is that there will be more money,
00:10:03.19 that there will be more jobs,
00:10:05.26 that there will be more students produced.
00:10:08.14 You cannot continue that indefinitely.
00:10:11.25 And at some point, you're going to have to be
00:10:14.26 something approximating steady-state,
00:10:17.09 as opposed to continuous growth.
00:10:19.28 So, what are the drivers here?
00:10:23.16 One is the pharmaceutical industry.
00:10:26.15 And the pharmaceutical industry is going through
00:10:29.12 a very difficult patch right now,
00:10:31.16 where it is pulling back from doing in-house research.
00:10:36.02 Biotech, which are, you know,
00:10:38.22 those feisty little startups that, you know,
00:10:41.00 start with a great idea,
00:10:43.12 are still being created every day out of the great research universities.
00:10:47.29 Thank heaven, because that's the translation of research
00:10:52.23 that is so important, I think, for the future.
00:10:57.22 But those sort of exist for a while,
00:11:00.28 and more often than not, they get bought up by the pharmaceutical industry,
00:11:05.13 which is using them as their research arm.
00:11:09.29 RATHER: Let me make sure I understand this.
00:11:12.11 We are dedicated, and have been for a while...
00:11:15.08 money from the people of the United States, federal money,
00:11:18.27 to finance first-class university research.
00:11:23.24 And that research is the dynamo that creates new products,
00:11:30.18 new breakthroughs,
00:11:33.03 that the pharmaceutical companies and others use.
00:11:36.29 TILGHMAN: Correct, exactly correct.
00:11:39.17 RATHER: Now, is anything wrong with that picture?
00:11:41.28 TILGHMAN: No. I think the picture is... is a...
00:11:46.00 is the right picture.
00:11:48.11 But it's really critical that we understand
00:11:51.09 that the role of the universities is to do
00:11:54.12 the groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting kind of work
00:11:58.09 that then can be translated,
00:12:01.20 often through these little start-up biotech companies,
00:12:05.04 to the pharmaceutical companies.
00:12:06.26 So absolutely, that is the right model.
00:12:09.20 The question that you're interested in is,
00:12:12.15 how big should that enterprise be?
00:12:17.08 And how many well-trained, brilliant scientists
00:12:22.09 do we need to feed that ecosystem?
00:12:26.11 And the worry, I think, right now in biomedical science
00:12:29.16 is that we are training too many scientists
00:12:33.10 that can be absorbed by this ecosystem.
00:12:37.28 RATHER: Well, to a skeptical viewer at home...
00:12:40.25 they might way, well, it can't be that if you graduate with a PhD in science
00:12:46.07 that you will have a hard time finding a job.
00:12:49.07 TILGHMAN: You will not have difficulty finding a job.
00:12:51.20 I think the question that I would ask as a taxpayer is,
00:12:55.17 is the work you're going to do in that job
00:12:58.18 a payback for the federal investment
00:13:02.14 in your very lengthy training?
00:13:06.22 Because one of the symptoms
00:13:10.25 of the pathology in the system right now
00:13:13.10 is the length of training
00:13:16.21 that it takes to get from
00:13:20.00 a beginning graduate student
00:13:22.11 to someone who has what we would think of as
00:13:24.22 a real job in the real economy.
00:13:27.03 And that number has been growing and growing and growing.
00:13:31.15 And it's strictly market-determined.
00:13:35.18 In other words, as it gets harder and harder
00:13:38.07 to find one of those jobs,
00:13:40.16 you stay in training positions longer and longer and longer.
00:13:44.22 And I refer to this phenomenon as circling LaGuardia.
00:13:48.21 And they're waiting for their turn to land.
00:13:51.10 And in this case,
00:13:54.02 the landing is getting a position either in, you know,
00:13:58.04 academia or getting a position in industry or government.
00:14:02.12 But if you add up all of those jobs,
00:14:05.02 those jobs are smaller in number,
00:14:10.07 in terms of turnover,
00:14:12.16 than the number of PhDs we're producing.
00:14:14.21 And so you have individuals who are
00:14:17.02 37, 38, 39 years old,
00:14:19.24 arguably in the prime of their productive lives,
00:14:24.13 earning less than the median income of the United States, with a PhD,
00:14:30.12 and with years and years of post-PhD training.
00:14:34.17 RATHER: And a PhD in science, now.
00:14:36.21 TILGHMAN: A PhD in science.
00:14:39.00 RATHER: Not some would call the soft studies.
00:14:41.24 TILGHMAN: Ab... ab... you know, I get into trouble if I use words like that
00:14:45.02 at a university, so I'm going to avoid that one. But... yeah...
00:14:47.27 RATHER: I would understand.
00:14:51.09 Well, you've described the system very well.
00:14:53.07 In this system, who loses in the system?
00:14:55.04 TILGHMAN: You know, I think the system loses.
00:14:57.18 I'm worried because I've spent years trying to talk
00:15:01.03 the best Princeton undergraduates
00:15:03.13 into thinking about going into science,
00:15:05.24 and into going to graduate school.
00:15:09.19 And what I've seen over the last 25 years since I've been here
00:15:12.12 is that that conversation is getting tougher and tougher and tougher.
00:15:17.02 Because these are smart young men and women.
00:15:20.15 And they take a look at circling LaGuardia.
00:15:24.09 And they say,
00:15:26.12 do I really want to be 38, 39 years old,
00:15:30.23 still in this training position,
00:15:35.03 earning a wage that will make it very difficult
00:15:38.18 for me to, you know,
00:15:40.26 begin a middle-class life?
00:15:43.08 I'm going to medical school, thank you very much.
00:15:45.25 Or I'm going off to Wall Street.
00:15:47.29 Or I'm gonna go do something else.
00:15:50.13 And if we're not attracting those students into biomedical science
00:15:57.05 -- and those are the students
00:15:59.07 who were going into biomedical science in my generation --
00:16:01.13 I think the enterprise itself is going to suffer in the long term.
00:16:05.06 RATHER: And what happens to the country?
00:16:07.15 What happens to our world leadership in science?
00:16:10.06 TILGHMAN: I think that we are at risk.
00:16:12.24 Because all you have to do is look at
00:16:16.00 what is happening in the rest of the world.
00:16:18.20 And I think particularly in Asia, but not exclusively in Asia.
00:16:23.22 There, the best and the brightest are going into science.
00:16:27.06 And are seeing careers in science
00:16:30.10 as one of the, you know,
00:16:32.23 real mechanisms for social mobility in those countries.
00:16:37.28 And I think that the center of gravity of...
00:16:42.25 sort of, scientific innovation, creativity...
00:16:46.25 is going to move offshore
00:16:50.09 if we are not paying close attention to this question.
00:16:55.00 So, here you have individuals
00:16:57.15 who have dedicated their life to discovery,
00:17:00.05 to doing as good science as they want to do..
00:17:03.16 believe me, they are not doing it for the money.
00:17:06.00 They are doing it because they love it.
00:17:08.19 And they are seeing their funding being threatened,
00:17:14.18 and beginning to decline.
00:17:17.01 And so, of course,
00:17:18.22 they are loath to give up an aspect of the system
00:17:23.06 that has helped them do this great science,
00:17:26.12 that frankly I think is beginning to be
00:17:30.29 exploitative of these young scientists that we're training.
00:17:37.08 RATHER: Now, in 1998,
00:17:40.07 you led this national panel looking at this problem.
00:17:42.27 And last year you chaired another study panel for NIH.
00:17:48.08 What did you find in those studies
00:17:50.15 that made you so concerned?
00:17:52.24 TILGHMAN: The studies were remarkably consistent with one another.
00:17:55.22 I would say the big difference between them
00:17:58.15 was simply that in the 12 or 13 years between the two studies
00:18:02.14 the problem had become more severe,
00:18:05.08 and more exacerbated.
00:18:07.16 So, I think what we found is that,
00:18:10.15 although there is very low unemployment among PhDs in biomedical science,
00:18:18.21 the number who are in positions now
00:18:21.21 who are not taking any advantage of the education
00:18:24.26 that the taxpayer paid for
00:18:27.07 is growing, and it's growing rapidly.
00:18:29.12 RATHER: Well... and... you made the studies, twice.
00:18:33.26 What has what NIH done?
00:18:36.10 TILGHMAN: Francis Collins, who is the Director of the National Institutes of Health,
00:18:39.10 has taken our recommendations, I think, very seriously,
00:18:43.18 including increasing the stipends for postdoctoral fellows
00:18:47.05 who are supported by federal dollars.
00:18:50.01 So that... they will become more expensive,
00:18:55.11 but it will also mean that they are being compensated,
00:18:58.01 not yet where I think fairness would suggest
00:19:02.18 they should be compensated,
00:19:04.14 but at least better than they have been in the past.
00:19:08.29 Another really important recommendation that I think came out of our committee
00:19:13.09 was to begin to think about the career,
00:19:17.13 the training path,
00:19:19.19 as a leaky pipeline,
00:19:22.14 in the sense that instead of having every single graduate student
00:19:25.25 do 5 or 6 years of PhD,
00:19:28.01 then another 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 years of a postdoc...
00:19:33.13 begin sort of creating off-ramps.
00:19:38.04 Not off-ramps that are unsuccessful,
00:19:40.17 off-ramps that are actually successful.
00:19:43.25 So, encouraging recent PhDs to think about things to do
00:19:48.20 other than to go on and be a postdoc,
00:19:51.03 to think about science journalism.
00:19:53.20 It's not gonna be a big pool, as you know.
00:19:56.02 We don't have many good science journalists left in this country.
00:20:00.10 But boy, could we use some, right?
00:20:03.24 RATHER: Exactly.
00:20:06.05 TILGHMAN: Yeah. And sort of creating training opportunities
00:20:08.28 for these well-trained scientists
00:20:11.11 to use their science,
00:20:14.04 but for things other than to continue down that path
00:20:16.26 toward the smaller and smaller number of jobs
00:20:20.03 that are at the end of that path.
00:20:21.24 RATHER: To that person who might be saying,
00:20:24.01 well, this is all mildly interesting,
00:20:26.22 but I don't see how it affects me.
00:20:29.10 I don't see how it affects my future.
00:20:31.15 TILGHMAN: Here's how I think it affects your future.
00:20:33.26 If you looked at
00:20:38.20 where did the growth in the American economy
00:20:41.19 that characterized the second half of the 20th century...
00:20:44.18 where did that growth come from?
00:20:47.04 You know, estimates are anywhere from 50-70% of the growth in the American economy
00:20:52.22 in the second half of the 20th century
00:20:55.21 came from investments in science and engineering.
00:20:59.25 And so if you think about, you know,
00:21:04.06 the great companies that have been created,
00:21:06.17 that have led to, you know, an expansion of the workforce,
00:21:11.19 those started with federal investments in science.
00:21:16.24 And I think that that is a model that
00:21:21.00 we give up at our peril.
00:21:23.21 You know, as challenging as the health problems
00:21:26.24 have been in the last century
00:21:30.02 -- you know, infectious disease,
00:21:33.13 you know, where vaccines and antibiotics
00:21:36.04 have really changed the whole landscape of infectious disease --
00:21:40.15 we're gonna have some pretty big ones in the 21st century,
00:21:43.13 including the consequence of being a much older population.
00:21:49.12 And the issues are deep and profound
00:21:53.01 and are going to have big economic impacts.
00:21:55.14 And I think our biomedical enterprise
00:21:58.26 is as well-positioned as any
00:22:01.02 to begin to make the same impact on the 21st century
00:22:04.09 that it made on the 20th century.

This Talk

Speakers: Shirley Tilghman, Daniel Rather

Audience:

Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher

Recorded: March 2013

Talk Overview

How should we consider a journey through a career in science? How should we think of the future of science training? Few have given these kinds of questions more thought than Shirley Tilghman, a leading genetics researcher at Princeton University who also became president of that prestigious institution. In this far-reaching interview, Dr. Tilghman tells Dan Rather about her own path in science and how we need to rethink how we train and inspire budding scientists in a challenging career environment. This interview was filmed in 2013.

This video is a collaboration between the Lasker Foundation and iBiology.

Speaker Bio

Shirley Tilghman

Shirley Tilghman

Shirley Tilghman is the President Emerita and Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Dr. Tilghman is a strong visionary and leader in academic research and higher-level education. As President of Princeton University for 13 years (2001-2013), she implemented policies and initiatives that supported better training of Princeton students and increased diversity in the faculty… Continue Reading

Daniel Rather

Dan Rather

Dan Rather has a resume that reads like a history book. He has interviewed every American president since Eisenhower and personally covered almost every important global dateline of the last 60 years, from the Civil Rights Movement to Vietnam, to Watergate to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Rather helped pioneer the very idea that television… Continue Reading