Experience as a White House Fellow

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00:00:08.14 Dan Fletcher - "Being a White House Fellow"
00:00:15.21 Hi, my name is Dan Fletcher, and I'm a professor of bioengineering and biophysics at UC Berkeley,
00:00:19.22 and my lab works on the cytoskeleton.
00:00:21.16 We're interested in how forces sculpt cellular organization and behavior.
00:00:26.13 But, a little over a year ago, I wasn't doing that.
00:00:29.22 I was taking some time to work at the White House.
00:00:33.12 Very different experience from working in the lab.
00:00:36.12 I went to Washington, DC out of an interest in understanding
00:00:40.03 why the taxpayers are paying us to do research,
00:00:43.03 how public policy makers are using the information that we are generating,
00:00:48.06 and what is there that we can do to improve that process.
00:00:52.19 It turned out to be a tremendous experience.
00:00:55.28 I thoroughly enjoyed the time there, but it's great to be back and in a research lab.
00:01:02.20 Part of the reason that I enjoyed it is that it exposed me to very different people
00:01:06.19 and very different experiences than I have during my normal career.
00:01:11.01 Most of us haven't really been outside of academia, if you've been in academia.
00:01:16.14 As a result, you don't really get a chance to understand
00:01:20.05 some of what motivates different parts of the country,
00:01:23.21 and so this was a chance to get a little bit of a perspective on that broad set of people.
00:01:28.01 So I wanted to talk about a few of the experiences that I had in DC,
00:01:34.08 but also try and identify a few thoughts on how to be effective in communicating research ideas,
00:01:42.01 which is a central role for scientists in Washington, DC.
00:01:45.21 So, Washington, DC is a whole new world. Very different from Berkeley, where I live
00:01:51.26 and very different from most academic environments.
00:01:55.02 It's a very formal place. I had to wear a suit and tie every day.
00:01:59.04 I had to go to meetings on time. It was a very unique experience.
00:02:06.14 I was even told to get a haircut, and that was by Karl Rove, and I didn't get a haircut.
00:02:14.13 But it taught you lots of things about how people organize
00:02:19.17 and how people decide what policies are worthwhile.
00:02:25.10 There's not an experiment you can do to decide that policy.
00:02:27.25 It comes from conversations, from interactions.
00:02:30.07 And that's why cocktail parties in Washington, DC are so important.
00:02:33.25 They're like our conferences. There's no poster exhibit,
00:02:37.16 but there is a chance to exchange information.
00:02:40.03 So, what does a scientist do in Washington, DC?
00:02:44.18 Well, my goal in part was to be a link to active research labs
00:02:50.05 that are producing this information that taxpayers are paying for.
00:02:54.05 And to provide some insight on how that process works
00:02:58.16 and hopefully some specific knowledge that would be useful in policy decisions.
00:03:04.17 I came to Washington, DC as part of a program called the White House Fellows Program,
00:03:09.00 and it's a program that's been around since about 1965,
00:03:12.27 and it brings early career professionals from a wide variety
00:03:16.12 of disciplines to Washington, DC for an experience there.
00:03:20.18 My class of fellows was a group of 14 people and a fantastic and varied group of people,
00:03:29.29 including doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, and people from the military.
00:03:34.14 A fabulous experience and a wonderful group of people.
00:03:38.15 So, about half of my time in Washington, DC
00:03:41.13 was spent working with this group of people,
00:03:43.24 and we met with over a hundred different speakers over the course of the time there,
00:03:49.03 including the President, the Vice President,
00:03:53.07 various cabinet secretaries, and other influential people,
00:03:58.14 such as columnists and activists.
00:04:02.27 In those meetings, we got a chance to discuss a wide variety of issues,
00:04:07.07 and it was a very educational process.
00:04:10.15 The other half of my time was spent at the
00:04:12.20 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
00:04:14.03 working together with the science advisor
00:04:17.06 as well as a variety of other people in that office.
00:04:20.18 We worked on issues that ranged from life sciences to biosecurity to health technology.
00:04:27.12 Each day, more issues would be coming in,
00:04:29.29 or you would be trying to push other topics forward,
00:04:33.20 and many of the decisions that needed to be made were, "What do we do next?"
00:04:37.19 "What is the right role for the government in a particular topic?"
00:04:41.21 whether it's stem cell research or the requirement
00:04:45.07 for certain health information to be made available.
00:04:47.29 One thing I observed right away was that
00:04:50.29 Washington, DC is a very busy placeâ€”a very fast paced environment.
00:04:55.26 There's not a lot of time for contemplation.
00:04:57.20 Things happen very quickly and people work very hard,
00:05:00.13 so I have a great deal of respect for the
00:05:02.20 civil servants that form the core of the government.
00:05:05.15 In this process that is so fast paced, what is the role for science?
00:05:11.28 It was really exciting to see that everywhere I went
00:05:18.19 and among the people I talked with, science is something that is broadly supported.
00:05:22.17 Democrats, Republicans, the White House, the Congress.
00:05:26.20 Science is seen as a real key to addressing national problems and national priorities.
00:05:32.13 And so that was wonderful to see.
00:05:34.15 What was less clear was how the information
00:05:36.28 that we're producing is getting into these environments.
00:05:40.19 It's to some extent through advisory councils,
00:05:43.21 to some extent through news stories,
00:05:45.11 but there weren't direct routes to figure out
00:05:48.27 what does the future look like, and that was surprising to me.
00:05:53.26 It was also surprising and maybe a little disheartening
00:05:58.02 to realize that science is not the answer.
00:06:00.00 That is, science doesn't address a policy issue completely.
00:06:05.20 It provides a lot of the background information,
00:06:07.16 but at some point, someone has to be a decision maker.
00:06:11.04 Someone has to say, "This is how we're going to do it... Not this way."
00:06:14.21 And many times, that's a value judgment. That's not a scientific judgment.
00:06:19.01 And as a result, science is playing a role up to a point,
00:06:23.03 and after that it's a balancing of various interests,
00:06:27.11 and balancing those interests is a great challenge of any system of government.
00:06:32.21 Getting a perspective on where science plays a role
00:06:35.26 was a very rewarding part of this experience.
00:06:39.13 So, this brings me to the main point, and that is,
00:06:44.27 "How can we as scientists be effective in Washington, DC?"
00:06:49.01 What is our role?
00:06:50.06 I think there are five things that we can do.
00:06:52.29 One is that we need to play a role in synthesizing ideas.
00:06:56.23 We are all experts in specific areas, but those specific areas
00:07:01.15 and that particular topic is only going to part of a solution.
00:07:06.20 So if we can play a role in synthesizing
00:07:09.09 what we do together with what other people do,
00:07:12.02 to come up with solutions, that's going to be
00:07:14.24 much more effective than just describing the work that we're doing individually.
00:07:19.15 So, being able to synthesizeâ€”being a little broadâ€”
00:07:22.13 is very important in being effective in Washington, DC.
00:07:25.21 Second is recognizing the diversity of interests.
00:07:30.00 People come to Washington, DC with lots of different pulls on them.
00:07:34.16 And understanding who's in favor of an idea,
00:07:37.14 who's against an idea is a critical part of moving a topic forward.
00:07:42.10 Third, something I didn't realize until a few months into this program,
00:07:47.06 was that famous people are just people.
00:07:49.22 Even if you're sitting in the Oval Office or having lunch with Colin Powell, these are people.
00:07:55.28 They've done amazing things, but they benefit
00:07:59.06 from the same sort of hard questions, the same sort of critical assessment that we do
00:08:04.28 in improving ourselves and our work.
00:08:07.25 And so, I think that's an important thing to remember
00:08:11.20 when you're interacting with government officials
00:08:13.09 is they adhere to the same rules of logic that we do.
00:08:17.04 Fourth is come with solutions, not just with problems.
00:08:23.19 The most effective way to make progress in Washington, DC is to have a solution.
00:08:26.24 And if you simply point out a problem with the way
00:08:30.16 funding is done, or the lack of funding in a particular area,
00:08:33.29 that's not a solution. There are lots of problems the government deals with.
00:08:37.26 It's much more exciting and much more productive
00:08:39.27 to come with a solutionâ€”how to move forward on that topic.
00:08:43.10 And lastly, maybe most importantly, is that we
00:08:48.03 as scientists have a perspective on where our fields are going,
00:08:52.11 and that's the vision we need to share with the policymakers in Washington, DC.
00:08:58.11 We have ideas, we have a perspective that
00:09:01.19 they aren't going to have the time or the ability to have,
00:09:04.29 and we need to come up with ways of sharing that perspective.
00:09:08.05 A quote I like that relates to this is one piece of advice
00:09:12.24 given to Wayne Gretzky, the ice hockey player
00:09:15.26 when he was told to not skate to where the puck is, but to where the puck is going to be.
00:09:22.08 I think that's the big challenge in governmentâ€”
00:09:24.27 devising policies that are going to be appropriate
00:09:30.28 for where the world's going to be in 10 or 20 years.
00:09:35.27 And we're the ones that have an idea where science is going to be in that amount of time.
00:09:40.04 So, we need to play a role in conveying that idea.
00:09:42.22 It was a wonderful experience to be in DC,
00:09:45.28 but I'm wonderfully happy to be back in Berkeley, back in lab,
00:09:50.10 and enjoying the West Coast.
00:09:57.22 See more at ibiomagazine.org.
00:09:59.14 See scientific lectures at ibioseminars.org.

This Talk

Speaker: Daniel Fletcher

Audience:

Student
Researcher

Recorded: December 2010

Talk Overview

Dr. Fletcher describes his experience of spending a year in Washington D.C. as a White House Fellow. He discusses the role of science in policymaking and addresses the question of how scientists can be effective in influencing decisions in government.

Speaker Bio

Daniel Fletcher

Dan Fletcher is a Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His lab develops new instruments to study the cytoskeleton and its role in cell movement and shape change. Dr. Fletcher was a White House Fellow during the Bush to Obama transition. Continue Reading