Transcript of journalist and senior media executive Richard Sergay's interview with Elaine Howard Ecklund, James Mahan, Michael Galko, and Vicki Huff for the “Stories of Impact” series.
Watch the video version of the interview.
RS = Richard Sergay (interviewer)
EHE = Elaine Howard Ecklund (interviewee)
JM = James Mahan (interviewee)
KT = Michael Galko (interviewee)
VH = Vicki Huff (interviewee)
EHE: Elaine Howard Ecklund. I'm the Herbert S. Autry Chair in Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Rice University.
RS: The title of this project.
EHE: Religion Among Scientists and International Context Study. We call is RASIC for short.
RS: Is there religion among scientists?
EHE: There is. (LAUGH) So, we set out to find out the answer to that question.
RS: The question?
EHE: Is there religion among scientists and other kinds of associated questions? So, to what extent are they atheist, to what extent do they think there's a conflict between science and religion, even for those who are not religious, does religion ever come up in the scientific workplace? Basically religion and science are the two fundamental ways people know things about the world, and the fundamental ways that people think about truth in the world, and so we wondered if those representatives, scientists of one of those fundamental waves, science ever interfaced with the other fundamental way of religion.
RS: Why is this important?
EHE: So the reason science and religion are important really, is because science and religion are the two basic ways people know things about the world, they're also two fundamental institutions in the world, some would even say the two fundamental institutions in the world. So about 85% of the world's population is religious. And most of the rest of those who aren't religious consider themselves spiritual to some extent. The institution of science is a good deal smaller than the institution of religion. but I think it's obviously true to anyone listening to me that any nation that wants to grow in its economic infrastructure is trying to grow scientifically. It has an outsized impact, science that is, has an outsized impact on the world. And like it or not, science and religion tend to connect in the public imagination in almost every society. So, there are people trying to figure out how they collaborate, there are people in religion trying to withhold religion from science, people in science trying to hold science back from religion. and kind of everything in between. So we wanted to know in the most basic sense, if the people who are thought to be the most scientific would ever interface with religion, given the public imagination, there is the conception that scientists aren't religious, they don't have that much to do with religion, that they might be anti-religious and that perception is actually pretty pervasive. In a variety of societies. And this is what social scientists do, but we often look at you know, the big picture, public conceptions of things and we say oh, is that really right, and you know, let me kind of investigate further to find out if that's right.
RS: You did not look at religious leaders, the other way, correct?
EHE: That's correct for this study, the RASIC study we're talking about. I have looked at religious leaders and religious people in other studies and their understanding of science, yeah.
RS: The survey?
EHE: So, our survey was almost 77 questions long. So surveys that sound really long to me when I say that out loud. surveys have skip patterns, so not everyone was eligible to answer all those questions, but that's a darn long survey. We surveyed almost 22,000 scientists in all fields of biology and all fields of physics. From around the world. So, 8 different um nations and regions in the world, so we looked at the US, my home nation, we also looked at the UK and Italy and France. in the greater Europe region. We looked at Turkey and Taiwan and Hong Kong and India.
RS: Geographically from your survey?
EHE: So in terms of our findings geographically, let me tell you, first is a little bit about our expectations going into the study… We thought that or we knew from our previous research that scientists in the US tend to be a bit less religious than the public. We thought probably it's the case that scientists are less religious than any public in a particular nation, and we were surprised, for example, to find out in Taiwan and Hong Kong, that scientists tend to be a bit more religious than the general public in both of those national contexts. So, just in terms of religious traditions we also thought that scientists would probably mirror the public in the types of religious traditions that they have. And we've found that scientists in some national contexts tend to be religiously different from the general public. So, in the US for example, about 50% of scientists consider themselves religious, but they tend to practice different kinds of religious traditions. So, there is a greater representation of the non-Western traditions in science than there is in the public and things like that. That's how religious traditions are... We were also surprised if you asked me, sort of pinned me to the wall as a researcher and said, like Elaine, personally what did you find that was surprising, I would say I learned a lot about non-religion in this study. And the varieties of atheism among the scientist population. I'm a sociologist of religion by training and have recently done a lot of work in the sociology of science, but so I would have told you for sure, there are lots and lots of different ways of being a religious person. And in the science community, probably even more so. but if you had asked me before this study, are there many different types of ways of being atheist, I would have said, probably not, you just don't believe in God, that's a definition of being atheist. And so, very surprising to me that there are scientists for example in the US who consider themselves spiritual atheists, in the UK we found scientists who, one of my scientist respondents called himself a church-going atheist. We find scientists who are very attached to religious organizations and institutions for various kinds of reasons. We found atheist-scientists who want very much to collaborate with religious communities and religious people. especially in the US, the UK, and Turkey, where there are fairly large religious populations. and people in some of those national contexts think that scientists are against religion. So I think that's a useful finding from this research, that there is actually a population of scientists out there who, when there are common projects and ideas that might be had, so for example, using science to um increase justice in the world, so climate care, to there's certain forms of science that might be used for medical advancement, for decreasing um illness, increasing health, scientists often want very much to collaborate with religious communities. Not all scientists, but I think it's probably interesting to members of the public that any scientist would want this, and is a useful way in which this research starts to dispel I think some really entrenched stereotypes, that I know are out there from my previous studies. This allows us to kind of, not just listen to the loudest voices out there, about what scientists think, not just listen to the people who write the most, but get a really broad sense of what scientists in different national contexts might think about things.
RS: Geography, east, west vs. Asia...
EHE: So in the west scientists tend to be a bit less religious in a traditional sense than they do in the east. And that was, that was kind of interesting on the face of it. They also are the scientists in India, in Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and even in Turkey to some extent, tend to be less likely to think that science and religion have to be in conflict, and that's notable, because think about a nation like Turkey, which has experienced so much political unrest lately, our research is showing that some of the stereotypes about academics and scientists in particular, is not really very accurate. Scientists are about as Muslim as the rest of the population, they practice about as much as the rest of the population, they don't really tend to think that science and religion have to be in conflict, they can see creative ways that they can collaborate. And so, we actually use some of our findings to write an op-ed about this, because we felt morally compelled that we needed to dispel some of the stereotypes that are out there, with actual data. Usually, as a researcher, your research doesn't directly relate to the political situation, because the research is long-term and political situations crop up in more temporal ways. But this was one kind of instance where we thought gosh, we have data that does actually lend some light to this kind of situation.
RS: Why biologists and physicists?
EHE: Well, in a very practical way you can't study everyone. And biology and physics are two disciplines which are represented really around the world, in science, they're two basic science disciplines. They're also interesting disciplines because they are different in ways that may have an impact on religious identity. So, biology has a lot more women than physics does, pretty much around the world, women tend to be more religious than men. Biology is also a discipline which, especially in recent years, has had a lot of interaction with the public over issues of evolution, more recently over issues related to neuroscience that seem to have religious implications, issues related to human genetic reproductive technology, stem cell research, which seemed to have religious explanations. You get my point. So, there is this sense in which biologists may be kind of primed to think about religion and their interactions with religious publics in various nations. Historically, the religion and science relationship was all about physics and astronomy, and so, you have these two disciplines which are kind of uniquely poised to shed some potential light on the science and religion interface.
RS: Entrenched stereotypes.
EHE: So in previous research I've done on the public, in the US, the public in a sort of interesting way, a surprising way to me, pretty much thinks that scientists are like Richard Dawkins. This feels kind of funny to say out loud, because I think if you know scientists, then you quickly know that there's variation amongst scientists, like any professional group. but scientists who have a new atheist perspective, have written a lot and sometimes the public feels like when you know, you consume a lot of information written from a certain perspective, that this actually represents numbers of people. So, rather than their prolific writers but actually not such a large group of people, very few scientists have this particular kind of entrenched new atheist perspective.
RS: Dawkins perspective?
EHE: So, he from his book the God Delusion, is, provides a pretty forceful argument that religion and science are really deeply in conflict with one another, that religion and he sometimes extends that to religious people as well are really dangerous to science that it would be he goes so far in some of his writings, it's even dangerous to raise children religiously and it would be better not to and those kinds of things. And so, when and not just, I don't want to pick on Dawkins disproportionately, but there are a few others who are writing from this perspective as well. And when people write a lot, then that starts to feel like there are large numbers of people behind those ideals.
RS: You called him a new atheist. Because...
EHE: So, this is a self-description, and Dawkins and several of his compatriots who are writing from this perspective, think of themselves as having a new kind of social movement, which will really bring forth a new way of seeing society without religion. I'm laughing to call it new because it's been around awhile and the people who are arguing for it are actually old, not young, so it's hard to call this, I'm having a hard time defending the title myself. It's a self-descriptor, right, yeah...
RS: Any other surprises on geography?
EHE: It was really surprising to go, these different places. And so for example, we sent a team to India, and when you interview Indian scientists over the phone, they will say, you know, everyone's religious here, like almost to be Indian is to be Hindu. and almost an identical proportion of the general population in scientists are Hindu, it's the same proportion of people. And they'll say, and you ask them a question like, does religion come up in your scientific work, they're like no, no, we really keep these things separate. But when you go there, you see religion coming up everyplace, and if you kind of press scientists, they'll say well, our form of secularism is to really let religion in, you know, to not try to defend science from religion or keep a tight boundary, but to really if people want to do religious rituals, if religious minority group wants to do religious rituals in the scientific lab, let's facilitate that, there's this really neat example where there was an anthill and there were people who worked at a particular university, who were using the anthill as a religious site for part of the day, they were putting garland on it, I wish I had a picture to show our listeners. but they were putting garland on it and doing certain kinds of religious rituals which related to the anthill, and then other parts of the day, ecologists in the university had little cameras in the anthill and were using it for ecological experiments. And they sort of had it worked out, the timing that they would use the anthill for different kinds of things. I don't think this happens anywhere in the US, so there is a kind of difference in what secularity means and different national contexts and what it means in the minds of scientists and in their practices really. to see science and religion as together, or distinct from one another, and that's the beauty of doing a research study like we did, where you survey people, you collect this huge amount of quantitative information, you collect numbers, of things and proportions. And then you also follow up by interviewing people face-to-face like we're doing. You go places and you know, kind of get on the ground and see what's going on. And there's the beauty I think of really holding together those different kinds of methodologies. And you asked me about geographic differences, so... one is really this difference in how secularity is practiced in different national contexts. Second and related, there is a sense in these different nations where for some, and namely the US the UK and to some extent Turkey for different kinds of reasons, there is the sense that there is a conflict between religion and science, and scientists are responding to the idea that there might indeed be a conflict, at least for the public. In other national contexts, India is one of those contexts Hong Kong, Taiwan to a certain extent, scientists sometimes wondered why we were asking about science and religion at all, that there is not a sense where, that they think the public sees these things in conflict, or there has to be a conflict. Those cases became interesting because then we can see the variation in how these constructs hold together.
RS: Caution about religion in the scientific community?
EHE: Yes. In almost comic ways, so I agree that there is this sense in the public, that, and amongst scientists, that there is a disdain for talking about religion perhaps in university communities and particularly in science. So when we did our study, we would actually go to these universities, and this is a highly confidential study, so we said to the people that we interviewed for our study that we won't, you know, say that you participated in the study, we won't tell people who you are, and so we would do this kind of funny thing where we would you know, interview someone in their faculty office, and then we'd have an interview maybe the next hour with someone who's next door, and I would kind of you know, go around to a different way, come back and enter the buildings so they wouldn't see me walking in and out of both offices and so you know, they could keep that information confidential that they'd even been part of this study. And it was funny. One scientist that I interviewed said, I'm very religious. She actually had materials that she was preparing to teach a Sunday school class on her desk when I walked into her office. And she said but you must, I'm so glad that this information is being kept completely confidential because I wouldn't want anyone else in my department to know that I am personally religious, and she's very committed and very involved in her Episcopal Parish. So I did my thing you know, I went to the bathroom, I took little notes in the interview, then I went downstairs, out the building and walked back in another entrance so, to interview the person who literally was in the office next door to her. And this fellow's very sad situation, his wife was very, very ill, and he was sort of starting to kind of re-discover in the midst of his own suffering, his own religion of his childhood. And he said, I'm very close to people in my department and, but I'm absolutely certain that there's no one else in my department who I could talk to about this. I'm sure that no one else in my department is religious. I was bound as a researcher not to say, why don't we stand up and walk next door and knock on the door of the woman I just interviewed, but that does show you that there is this kind of secrecy at least in a US context for talking about these things. So, it's kind of a closeted faith almost. And so there is a sense where scientists don't really talk about this very much in the scientific workplace.
RS: What do you attribute that to?
EHE: There is the perception amongst some that they will be discriminated against, that they talk about their religious tradition, and this is interesting because we've found instances where scientists perceive discrimination amongst both majority Christian traditions, they, they're not necessarily more likely to talk about being religious than people from minority faiths, like Islam or Hinduism, and we've found also perceptions that those who will practice minority traditions as well, that there might be discrimination. Now we can't tell through the type of the data that we collect if there really is discrimination, if they were to say actively that they're religious or wear religious symbols. We don't have the kind of data, we're not sitting in faculty meeting discussions or anything that would allow us to say anything about that. But, we can tell from our data that there is a perception that you might be discriminated against and people, regardless of whether or not they're real, people often act on their perceptions, so they tend to keep things kind of quiet.
RS: No place for religion in science because it's divisive?
EHE: So, some of the scientists that we talked with, we interviewed just to go back so we surveyed 22,000 scientists for this study. And then we followed up with a sample of them for in-depth conversation where we, which we did over phone or Skype and in many cases actually traveled to them to do face-to-face interviews. And it was in the face-to-face interviews where they were likely to bring up a potential political divisiveness if, over, even discussing religion and science together, or allowing discussions of religion in the scientific workplace. The downside of that perspective is that if scientists don't talk about it, then they don't really have a language for such discussions, they don't get any training in how to talk about it well. And how to talk about science and religion in a way that might allow them to say, bring various perspectives to the table. A further cost of not talking about it, is that especially in the US, we have a general public that's much more religious particularly in certain traditions. So, much more likely to say, be members of the conservative protestant and evangelical tradition than scientists are. These people vote, they make policy decisions, they are part of education, they're part of school boards, they influence science. And so scientists who are trying very much to convince the public of the value of their work, have no way of talking about religion in a way that would be, you can think about it right away, a way that would be sensitive, that would be accommodating, that would be just able to even have an intelligent conversation about it. If you have no, no language for that, or you aren't trained in it, I think it actually kind of has a, kicks you in the butt a little bit. It actually becomes a cost for science, so there is an argument to be made, and scientists them-- I don't need to make this argument, the people I interviewed made this argument, they said gosh, wish we knew more about this, in order, this being science and religion, or even the religious public, so that we could address people, talk to them and in more intelligent and sensitive way.
RS: The fear of keeping religion at the door?
EHE: I think the fear is and this is not just my opinion I'm drawing now on what many of our respondents said, there is the fear that religion could perhaps taint science, so in the most absolute and abstract terms scientists see science as being a very different kind of knowledge framework than religion. So, I as a social scientist would see less instances where you know, religion is actually competing with science as a way of knowing about the natural world. So, let me backup and explain what I mean a little bit. So, we interviewed and surveyed a variety of scientists religiously. We surveyed and interviewed scientists who are quite committed, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus. Um none of them say that they're practicing a different kind of science than scientists who are atheists or completely non-religious. So, scientists themselves do not seem to be different in terms of the kind of science that they're practicing. So, I don't see a lot of evidence that religion is tainting scientific methods. Certainly there are isolated instances that scientists point to, where they start talking about something like creation science, but that's not, you know, getting a whole lot of traction in science journals, right. So, there is that kind of, but there is that very real fear, um in the minds of scientists when we interviewed them. There also is fear in the west in particular and I would say this came up especially in the US and the UK. There, it is cropping up a bit in Hong Kong and also in Turkey, of political action of, on the part of religious people against science. So trying to pull or stop certain kinds of research that seems to in the minds of people of faith, have moral implications, right. so I'm thinking of things like human embryonic stem cell research, thinking of things like certain kinds of human genetic reproductive technologies. Things that seem to have implications in the minds of people of faith, for who human beings are, who God is and God's role in the world. things that where, then scientific work tends to in the minds of people of faith, impinge on or enter into what is perceived as religious terrain.
RS: Science explains how but not why?
EHE: So when we interviewed people and surveyed them, this would come up when we ask scientists in their own words, to explain the limits of science. And scientists then would say, so the idea that you know, science is very good at explaining you know, how the natural world works, but not why it's there, or the purpose of it. And that scientists who thought that there was a limit to what science could explain, explain it in just that way, that science tells us, it just has excellent tools for telling us how the natural world works, but not why it's there or what it's for.
RS: A beauty and awe about science, inexplicable.
EHE: Yeah, I did find that scientists do have a sense of beauty and awe in scientific work. Not all scientists have it, so there is I don't have exact statistics on this, but there is a proportion of scientists that we came across in our interviews, who we are calling absolute materialists, they do not think that there's anything beyond science, they don't think that they could see beauty and awe in scientific work. Then there are scientists who think that science is great for what it does and you wouldn't find beauty in awe in science itself, but they find beauty and awe in something outside themselves, purpose and meaning, and something else that's not science. And then there are definitely scientists and I'm very interested in this latter group, which find a sense of almost a spiritual sensibility in science itself, so they see their scientific work, they're almost giddy, they see their scientific work as providing a kind of beauty and awe about the world that really for them, is almost a spiritual experience. I don't want to say that too lightly or in a way that sounds silly, but these are extremely intelligent thinking people, who are seeing something beyond themselves through scientific work itself, I think that's really fascinating.
RS: What will your work help us understand?
EHE: I think when you break down stereotypes that are in the imagination of the public, it can lead to much better conversation and collaboration which has all kinds of practical spinoffs. So, in one sense, I just want to know what's true, so if people are saying things about scientists that aren't true, then we want to try to correct that through research. So I think there's an inherent value in just correcting that, getting us a better understanding of how this social world works, i.e. science, scientists themselves, how they, how their social world works. And I think that's really neat in and of itself and to be valued. In terms of practical spinoffs, there are consequences if the public has stereotypes about who scientists are and what they do. So, certain kinds of stereotypes can prevent children from going into science, so it's been neat to do studies where I both study the public and study scientists themselves, so I know that certain kinds of communities in the US do not want to send children into science, because they're fearful of scientists as people. These are also communities which are not likely to know scientists, where scientists are pretty under-represented, so especially conservative religious communities, there just aren't a lot of scientists in those communities and so people just don't know, they just pay attention to popular accounts, because they don't know anyone. and I do think that if the public's imagination is challenged a little bit about how science are-- scientists, about who scientists are, there is the, the practical possibility of increasing support for science in the public. this kind of research too, also will I think enhance the scientific community itself. So, scientists have a mix about one another, and what research does is put everyone in a community in a kind of virtual conversation. So if we do a nice job, which we're trying really hard to do, of translating our research work, getting it into the hands of scientists, getting it into the hands of people who are religious it can help both people in the scientific community understand themselves better, and I think can lead to better research collaboration, potentially better, better public outreach, even a better work experience, right. I think about those two people I just explained a few minutes ago who desperately wanted to have a conversation partner about religion or in the same department, in offices next to one another, and are so silenced that they can't even talk to one another. I think that probably has an impact on their work experience in the scientific community. And there, and for the public, I think the consequences are pretty great that we need to increase understanding in the public. thinking about something like minority representation of-- in science, which is a really bit issue in the, that the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, big gun science funding bodies in the US at least, are very worried and I am as well, about this is a justice issue. communities especially black and Latino communities that are vastly underrepresented in science and technology careers, are overrepresented in, in certain kinds of religious traditions. And so if people in those traditions have stereotypes about who scientists are, I think we need to really dispel those stereotypes and to try to even use religion in some ways to kind of get people into science. We don't think about it that way but there is, there is that possibility I think through research studies like ours.
RS: Closeted what?
EHE: They had a closeted faith.
RS: Science and religion, is it ok to have a conversation in a lab?
EHE: So, in terms of the goals of the research, is one goal to try to actually increase conversation about religion in the scientific community, is that what you're asking? I do think that's one goal, I would say where it's needed, so scientists are in their labs to do scientific work, so I'm not arguing that they ought to be, you know, spending 30% of their time discussing religion. but I would argue that it seems like some of the stereotypes that scientists have about one another, and some of the stereotypes that the religious public has about scientists, are even holding back scientific work, right, and especially the communication of science with the public. Does that make sense? And so then research becomes important, and if they need to have a bit more conversation, or if a bit more conversation could be helpful then it could, then we might as well do it, then we might as well use our research to provide the kind of tools scientists might need to have more nuanced conversation. I think the people that scientists are most likely to respect are other scientists. So, if we loosen the hold of silence a little bit in the scientific community itself, I think it could have a whole lot of impact on the broader public. That would be my argument. I think this is especially true in the US and to some extent in the UK but you find it in other places as well. In Turkey there's a different kind of situation, where scientists are overly concerned about what they perceive as an overly religious political administration. And so scientists there are concerned about not being perceived as religious enough, which is a very different kind of situation than in the US, or the UK, or France, where everyone is secular but scientists are even more secular than the broader public. And so you do see differences in what, in the kinds of conversations that are needed in different, in different national contexts, and I'm hoping that if we do our job as researchers and we have smart data collection and smart analysis of that data, and thoughtful interpretation and dissemination, that we can you know, address adequately the kinds of conversations that need to be had in different national contexts.
RS: Humanity behind the science...
EHE: Maybe the way that we can get at it in terms of thinking about what this research could provide to the scientific community. So one would ask the question is, what does research on religion among scientists provide to the science community? And I think we can answer that question in part by thinking about the ways in which religion does come up in scientific work, even against the will of scientists. so you have some groups of scientists who are very committed to a kind of avid secularism, they don't want to talk about religion under any conditions, so I have met scientists through our research who if a student came into their office, one scientist told me, and started discussing religion, he said, I would tell that student to leave because we don't have discussions about religion in the scientific environment. [14:03:04.16] And that struck me as you know, as a sort of avid commitment to secularism I think is an accurate description of that. but even in those kinds of scientific workplaces, you have immigrants entering the scientific workplace in huge numbers. So in the US for example, depending on the university, nearly 20 to 40% of scientists who were born outside the US, are either internationals or immigrants. And they tend to represent religious traditions that are, they're coming from nations where, where there are religious traditions that they bring with them, their Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism for example, which are not represented in greater numbers in the US. So, scientists need to have a somewhat nuanced understanding of religion to even understand their own workplace and how to work well with other scientists. So that's one kind of way that it comes up and where it is a matter of understanding the whole person and of understanding their colleagues. Religion also comes up in very practical ways related to research ethics, so scientists do the work which has some kinds of work really impinge on beginning of life issues and end-of-life issues that have moral implications for most people. And for scientists themselves, scientists are in the social environment and they have moral kinds of struggles and quandaries that science itself is not equipped to deal with, and they need to they tell me, that they often need to be in conversation with religious people, with religious leaders, with ethicists, with other bodies of knowledge and work that does have tools for thinking about the implications of scientific work. And yet they feel like they can't access those resources, because you're just not supposed to talk about religion in science. And so, they are potentially holding back themselves from getting the kinds of resources that they need to deal with their own personal ethical conundrums, but also the kinds of ethical conversations that are happening in the broader society, so this is a way in which I would say both religion and ethics as bodies of knowledge can give back to science. And thirdly, scientists sometimes are dealing with the religious public, I mean the most obvious case is in the US, that most recently have to do with evolution, but are thrown into these sort of you know, like the chasm of conversation about science and religion so they're not having any conversation about it or tools to deal with religion and then all of a sudden there's a maelstrom around them of people talking about something like evolution and the religious implications of evolution and they just don't know how to respond. You know, saying I just hope it will go away, is not a thoughtful response, and especially if you want to continue to increase support for science in the broader public and so those are ways in which research like we're doing on, which is very descriptive, which we're going in, we're describing what scientists think about religion, but it can have some interesting spinoff implications that I think can be useful in a much broader way than the research itself.
RS: Other surprises?
EHE: So surprises of the research we started out the research in part to find out whether scientists think that there's a conflict between science and religion and in that, and I don't think that there has to be a conflict between science and religion, but I'll tell you that it's pretty widespread that the US public believes that scientists think there's a conflict between science and religion. So one of the low-hanging fruits of our study is that most scientists actually see these things as independent entities, they do not see them as having to be in conflict rather they see them as just describing different parts of the world Steven J. Gould, famous paleontologist you know, wrote about this famously as the idea of non-overlapping. The problem with that view is that religion still does come up in scientific work, it comes up when scientists meet colleagues who are religious, it comes up when the religious public brings religion into science through the political sphere you know, it comes up related to ethics, it comes up in myriad of ways, and so when scientists adopt kind of radical independence perspective, that these are different pieces of the world scientists are doing science and everything that happens in the institution of science, in university life, in laboratory, should only be about science, when it does come in then they don't have any language to talk about it, they don't have any training, they don't have any conversation of other kinds of tools. And so that's the problem practically with the independence perspective. It was still useful to find out that scientists have an independence perspective, because that's different from what the public thinks. And so that provides a kind of useful corrective where we can tell groups of religious people, scientists aren't all against you, you know. They're, and they aren't all against religion, they just think that these are different things. What was also surprising to us though, is that there is a strong minority of scientists who think that science and religion can collaborate. And we talked a few minutes ago about scientists seeing beauty and awe in their scientific work, some scientists see this as actually a religious experience, they also see the possibility that religion can even give things through their scient-- to their scientific work, that religion can provide ethical frameworks for doing scientific work well. so one scientist said to me that there's just this incredible pressure to publish one's work, we call it the publish or perish idea, and I feel that as a researcher. So scientists say there's this incredible pressure, and they said there can be so much pressure that you just want to go ahead and get your scientific work out there, you really want to cut corners with what you're doing. You're very motivated to just do whatever you can to get published, and he said, that being um this fellow is a very committed Catholic, that being a Catholic causes him to pause and to say, you know, who am I as a person, and is that really what this is about for me, this utilitarian sensibility, or is my scientific work my calling, my chance to make an impact on the world, in a way that is greater than myself, and he said that causes him to pause and to be more thoughtful about his work, and to not succumb to the institutional pressures that he faces to publish or perish. And so that's a very personal way that religion can provide a kind of moral framework. Other more public ways that scientists told us, this is all coming from the mouths of scientists themselves, scientists told us that you know, they thought a lot about ethical responsibility um of their work, and I remember you know, in India there is vast poverty as there is in all of the nations that we studied, but an Indian scientist told me that you know, or told one of our researchers that you know, she looks out her window and she literally sees children on the street who are dying of hunger. And she does work that requires very expensive technologies and she says to herself everyday, when I look outside the street and I see children dying, I had better be doing good scientific work that makes a difference with all the money that I'm spending. And so, and she said her faith gives her that kind of framework for looking at her work and looking at the world. And so, there are ways in which both the personal and public level religion can have an impact. I'm not necessarily advocating for scientists becoming religious people, but more I think that the, the really the goal of our work is to show all the ways in which they are and the ways in which they utilize religion and in the ways you know, sort of a truthful truthful description of who the scientific community really is religiously.
RS: In the US, are the majority non-religious?
EHE: So, it's not it's about half and half, but they are quite religiously different than the general public, so there is an over-representation of scientists who are committed to Judaism, so there is for lots of reasons, and there is an over-representation of scientists for minority faith traditions, so still not a huge proportion but more Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists and people of other faith traditions that are not Christian traditions that are in the general public, there's also an overrepresentation of Catholics in science, when compared to Protestants. There's an under, a pretty vast underrepresentation of evangelical protestants there are also more non-religious people in science and more atheists in science, than in the general public.
RS: Why does public perception matter?
EHE: Why does the public's perception of scientists matter? So, I'll go back to something I said before, which is that in one sense it matters inherently to correct things that are wrong, so I do think that when people hold ideas that are not right and research can tell us a way forward that's more accurate, that is inherently valuable. And if we're to look at things from a more practical standpoint, scientists need the public. So scientists need the public, and scientists need the public for funding, they need the public for policy, that supports scientific research, they need the public for a new people, for the scientific infrastructure, to keep supporting science you know, a society that doesn't support science is a society that doesn't really increase in technology and technological competition with the rest of the world. And so, there is that kind of symbiotic relationship that needs to happen um between the public and science and scientists in order for science itself to advance.
RS: Any other big surprises?
EHE: Statistically related to the conflict paradigm, so the idea that religion and science are in conflict the strong, the conflict paradigm is strongest in Turkey, France, the US and the UK, but it's still the minority perspective in all of those national contexts, that was actually quite surprising to me, I thought that it would be higher. So in Turkey 25% of scientists think that religion and science are in conflict, in France, 27%, I thought more would in France. In the US 29%, I thought more would in the US, and in the UK, 35%. It might be of interest to note that the dominant view in every nation and region that we surveyed is actually independence, so in France, a high of 63% Turkey 34%, when you start talking about the ability for science and religion to collaborate in Hong Kong, 24% of scientists think that they can collaborate. In India 29% think that they can collaborate, in Taiwan 21% and Turkey 32%.
RS: Religious scientists suffer discrimination in the workplace?
EHE: So do scientists who admit to faith suffer discrimination in the workplace that's hard to verify with methods like ours. So we did a survey and we did interviews where we actually went to the scientific workplaces and interviewed scientists themselves. I will tell you, that scientists perceive that they might be discriminated against. So, in Turkey, that is the case, in the US to some extent, in France to some extent, in National contexts where there is tension between religion and science, so you think about the US where there's a public conversation about tension between religion and science in the UK that's true to some extent, in Turkey that's definitely true. Um scientists in those kinds of context think that talking about religion might actually lead to discrimination in Taiwan for example, scientists seem to have no problem thinking that talking about religion will lead to discrimination, they don't think that. some because it's just not worth talking about, and some because you know, they think of Taiwan as being a context where you could talk about such things and it's fine.
RS: Religion in science workplace is less distinct
EHE: It doesn't seem to fall out that way, that's what I would have expected. So you asked in national context where church and state are less distinct than they are in the US where we have an official separation of church and state, is there say less tension between talking about science and religion, rather, in the scientific workplace, doesn't quite seem to fall out that way, it seems to be more about I have eight, I should say I have eight national contexts, not 800, right, so there's a little bit of a small numbers problem here. But so far it's seeming to fall out more in terms of what the public conversation is, so in the US there is a public conversation that's very much centered around this idea of conflict between science and religion. And so, it's as if scientists think that other scientists think like the public right, so for them to sort of admit publicly in the scientific workplace that they are personally religious they wonder if they'll risk the respect of their colleagues.
RS: Early conclusions?
EHE: In the biggest broad overview in early conclusions from our survey work, we're finding that not all scientists think that religion and science are in conflict, that a surprising number think that they're independent, or even have the ability to collaborate that through collaboration, scientists even see a possibility for a religious sensibility through scientific work itself, the idea of beauty and awe in science, there is also a surprise I think to both scholars and to the public, a sense of there being fewer atheist-scientists than some might have thought, though certainly there are atheist-scientists and for those who are atheists, there are varieties of atheism, where there's what I would call a religion-friendly atheism, where scientists interact with religious people, they're part of the religious institutions even though they're personally atheist. There is a spiritual atheism, there are other kinds of atheism, that I'm sure will come up as we continue to analyze these data. that there are possibilities in the minds of scientists for collaboration with different kinds of religious publics, and so I'm pretty excited that this work already, even though we're only about halfway through our data analysis of a very large project, you know, massive amount, number of survey data and interview data. Thousands and thousands of transcribed pages of interview data, so we're already finding some things which I think could raise the bar of conversation, in a way that could support scientists as people that we in any nation need to succeed in doing excellent work in order to support the lives of the people, in that nation and knowledge discovery itself, so I think our work could help scientists even be better scientists and I think could help the conversation um between the public and the scientists where it's most needed. Yeah, another point I did want to mention, I was just looking at some of my survey statistics, I was surprised that most of our scientists believe in God, many Gods, or a higher power. Now, there's various ways of viewing Gods. So we're not talking about the US Christian God, way of viewing God necessarily. But in Hong Kong, 54% of scientists have some form of theism, or monotheism, in India 78%, in Italy 57%, still Catholicism reigns supreme in Italy and among scientists as well, in Taiwan 74%, and in Turkey 85%. So, this image of the atheist-scientist is there but it's not a complete image. So I think that to me was just fascinating, I think I had that image as well when I went into the study. So, you're like the big picture of our findings even kind of challenged me as a researcher initially. I think there's things that we're discovering that are much deeper than that, it's kind of a thin notion of who scientists are.
RS: Sense in survey science could explain everything?
EHE: So we, so you ask-- you're asking if we got a sense from our survey and interview work that scientists themselves think science is all there is and it can explain everything. So we did this kind of cool thing with interviews, where we do what's called a forced answer, so I might say to you how would you respond to someone who says that science can explain everything. So, I force you to kind of argue with me and respond to me and I give you a hard claim, and that's exactly what we did. So, we said how would you respond if I told you that you know, science can explain everything. And scientists are divided on that. I would have thought that more scientists would be on the side of science explaining everything. but scientists are really divided. Some think that science has very very exact boundaries, and science really can explain only things that have to do with the functioning of the natural and biological worlds and that it can't explain everything, it can't explain anything to do with purpose, it can't explain anything to do with how we actually use science in the world. The norms of science, um how science is set up as a structure, the ethical implications of science, what we ought to do with science. All of those pieces of the world, science just says nothing about, and there definitely is another group of scientists, and we've found this in all of the nations that do think that science can explain everything, and they think that every scientist thinks that. So what's always kind of funny to me about this research is the stereotypes that scientists have about each other, without even knowing it. So, I think that's fun with research like ours, where we can, you know, put these groups into virtual conversation through the kind of writing that we do, where we like, oh you thought it was this way, it actually might be a little bit different. And we hope to in the second and third phases of this work even put them into real conversation with one another, where we hope to give them a kind of space to actually discuss these things in real time, if we're successful.
RS: Progress.
EHE: In the big sense I think progress is getting us as researchers or members of the public in whatever kind of situation they're in closer to what's really there to what's, what's true. And I think that moving closer to what's true has all kinds of practical sorts of spinoff and how we live our lives, as a researcher I'm interested in the kind of truths that can be found through the research tools that I use right, so I'm a sociologist and so I'm interested in understanding I'm getting a much clearer picture of what the social world looks like, and through the kinds of tools that we utilize to understand the social world.
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JM: I'm James D. Mahan Junior. I'm a Contract Researcher at the University of Houston. Seismic physics, which is how to find oil and gas. To make a long story short, service companies go out and explore for oil and gas and they send sound waves down into the Earth, they're reflected and recorded, and the trick is to convert the recorded sound waves into maps of the underground rock formations. And that's where our group gets involved. We write mathematical code that takes the recorded sound waves and converts it into maps. Then geologists can study and try to infer the locations of oil and gas.
RS: Do you teach?
JM: I'm strictly research. No to make a long story short, I got my undergraduate degree in physics, started grad school in physics, that was during the Vietnam War, and so the federal government was cutting back support for basic science to help pay for the war, and so I switched to the graduate business school, got an MBA, was hired by a major national oil company, spent almost 34 years doing mostly financial work, and then I retired in 07, and decided to try to go back and pick up where I left off in physics. And went to University of Houston, got a PHD, was a postdoc, and then decided to cut my hours and become a contract researcher.
RS: Relationship between science and religion?
JM: Well, the way I view it is it's process-based, I see science as based on the scientific method, and I see religion as being faith-based, and I don't, I personally don't see any connection between the two. You can use the scientific method to uncover truths or you can have a belief that certain truths exist. And I don't see any possibility, I don't see any connection between the two.
RS: Distinct line between the two?
JM: Yes. Our work is I would say strictly math and science-based, and to be honest we have never had any religious discussions within the group, it's just something that has never come up.
RS: Are you or any colleagues religious in any way?
JM: The professor that we work for is I would say he's somewhat religious, to the extent that he references his religion, and he loves to tell jokes about his religion, but other than that, there's been no discussion of religion in the group. Now, I might say that most of the people in the group are from China, mainland China, and whatever beliefs they have, they just don't discuss in the work environment. And I don't bring up my philosophy either.
RS: Do you have faith?
JM: I guess my, my faith is pragmatism, I look at what works and what, or what works better than others, and the example that I like to use is medical progress, I mean for most of our history, we had very high birth rates, very high death rates, very slow population growth. And then, only in the 19th century was there a connection made between disease and contaminated water. And when, in fact you know, in London I think that connection was made. And when cities started providing clean water, the death rate started plummeting, especially among children, and that's when our population started increasing, and people started leading much healthier lives. Was they made the connection between, by using the scientific method, they made the connection between gee, drinking dirty water causes disease and death. And that was a scientific finding, not a faith-based finding.
RS: The scientific method.
JM: Well the working knowledge, working definition that I use is you observe the physical world and you make a guess, in other words, if A happens then I predict B will happen. Then you go out and you take data, and the data says, yes you're right, A makes B happen, or no, you're wrong, A does not make B happen. And then you come up with a different guess. And by piling on these successful guesses that are validated by experiment you build up human knowledge. And come up with lower death rates, better nutrition, I think a better quality of life and so forth.
RS: Science can answer every question?
JM: Probably not, because there are some questions that are out, I would say outside our ability to know, for example, you may know that evidence says the universe is expanding, but there's a boundary out there beyond which we cannot see, because light hasn't had time to come back from that boundary. So what's outside the boundary, it's likely we'll never know. Whether certain beliefs are true, there's probably no way to tell. You know, for example, one religion believes that their prophet bodily ascended into heaven, now is there a way to test that belief, probably not. Because it happened centuries in the past. So I would say yes, there are limits to our knowledge, but inside that boundary, I think we can discover almost anything given enough time and resources.
RS: Cultural, not having a discussion about religion in the lab?
JM: Well I never thought about it until now, but it's probably the latter, we just, it's just not something we talk about, I mean we talk about differences between Chinese culture and American culture. We talk about the difficulties we're having with this particular experiment and collecting data, or getting the code to work. but religion is just not something that ever comes up, we just, never discuss it. And when I think about it, there's no particular reason other than we're just not focused on it.
RS: Should it come up?
JM: Well, given my belief that you have the scientific method versus faith-based, I don't see where it has a place in, in a scientific group or research group. you know, sitting here thinking about it for the first time, it's like, how could a discussion about faith have any influence in what it is we're trying to do, which is you know, try to get this code to work or trying to figure out, how do we get from here to here, in terms of making the next step in our seismic analysis, it just, I can't see where it would help, and therefore why would you talk about it. (DOESN'T COMPUTE) Doesn't compute, exactly, yes.
RS: Consciousness...
JM: Well in my mind, well there's an old saying, that biology is chemistry, and chemistry is physics is math. And it is in theory possible for you to write an equation that describes the working of the human brain. Unfortunately, it would be so complicated nobody could solve it, attempt to solve it at this point in time. Because when you talk about the billions of neurons in the probably hundreds of billions of interconnections in the human brain. So consciousness to me is a physical attribute of the structure of the human brain. And we're making, I think good progress in understanding how it arises from the underlying structure, because you can say, well we have the neurons and they interconnect, and then the neurons are based on chemical messages being sent back and forth, and so forth and so on, so consciousness is physical from that perspective.
RS: Not a physical property, is it dismissed by physicists?
JM: Well my perspective would be a combination of what you just said. it's not something you can test, therefore it's outside the realm of physics. In other words, going back to the scientific method, you have to give us a testable hypothesis, otherwise what you're doing is not science, and therefore would not interest a research group like ours. And you say well, consciousness is separate and apart from the physical body that it resides in. Ok, well give me a testable hypothesis that I can test. That derives from that hypothesis. That consciousness is separate from the physical body. And I don't, I haven't heard of one.
RS: Wait for science to solve it?
JM: Well, in my mind there are two kinds of inexplicable. One is based on what we know now, we can never do that, for example, travel faster than light, ok. As far as we know it's physically impossible for any material body to travel faster than light, that seems to be a fundamental speed limit in the universe. On the other hand, it may be we don't know because there just hasn't been enough time and resources and creative thinking applied to the problem, like a cure for cancer. Ok, I mean we've made excellent progress in curing different kinds of cancers, and in extending people's lives that have been diagnosed with cancer, but have we come to a complete cure, no. Will we, I think so. Because it's within the realm of science to do something like that. It's just a question of getting enough creativity and resources and time and money to apply to the problem. And the reason-- and of course, the reason cancer is so difficult is not-- there is no one cancer, there's what, 200 different kinds of cancer. Some of which we have excellent results, some like pancreatic cancer, we haven't cracked the nut yet, as to how to solve, how to cure pancreatic cancer. But to me it's a question of time, and resources, whereas exceeding the speed of light, as far as we know, is just not possible.
RS: Technology... crack the code.
JM: Well, in order to, ok, suppose the goal were to cure pancreatic cancer, well we have to understand what causes it, and once it starts, how does it progress, if it's progressing, what are its weak points that we can attack, and that might be a combination of radiation, might be a combination of chemotherapy, it might be a combination of I don't know, stem cell, stem cells. But it would be, it would involve understanding DNA, that you know, where, what gene that had an incorrect sequence in it, combined with what environmental factor, triggered pancreatic cancer in my friend. And that's the type of thing that we need time and resources and money and people to to figure out.
RS: Beauty and awe?
JM: Beauty, yes. Yes. There are many connections that I'm just in awe of, it's you learn A, you learn B, and then you find out that there's an underlying connection between A and B, and it's just, it's amazing. It's just absolutely amazing.
RS: No faith?
JM: Not for me, no. It's beautiful in the sense that the way the universe is interconnected. And the earliest example I can remember is being an undergraduate and you hear all these names of different kinds of functions, and you think there's no relationship between them, and then you find out you know, they're just permutations on a common theme. And it's like wow, that's incredible, that's amazing, all of these different functions that on the surface look completely different. Are actually just variations of one underlying super function, I mean to me things like that are just absolutely amazing. And beautiful. But spiritual, no, it's just something-- some things are beautiful and one of the reasons I like physics is a lot of the relationships in physics I think are beautiful, because for example, physics, one of the fundamental concepts in physics is symmetries. And if you have a symmetry, then there's something conserved. And one of the simplest examples is, if I do an experiment here, and if I move it over here and do the experiment I get the same results. Because there is no preferred direction in space. Well, because that's true we have conservation of what's called linear momentum. And there was a famous German mathematician, who gave the mathematical proof that is like, if you have a symmetry, then there is something that's conserved, and that's one of those wow moments, that you, that you get when you finally understand something like that.
RS: Limits to what science can do or tell us?
JM: The only limit that I know is the one I said earlier, is that, as long as you can say if A, then B, and then test that, then I think we can go as far as our imagination and creativity can take us. but it has to be testable. you, when you get to the point where well, you just have to believe that if A is true B is true, well that was how people did it before they invented the idea of collecting data. You know, some scientist said, and I forget who, let the data tell us the answer. That may have been Galileo, but you know, he said it doesn't matter what we believe, the data will tell us what is true and what is not true. And to me that's another way of looking at the scientific method.
RS: How but not why?
JM: Well, the meaning of life to me would be a subjective question. I mean, does life have a meaning. And I'm not sure that kind of question is inside the scientific method or not, I mean, because you, you could argue that if certain physical things exist, like in our case atoms, molecules, so forth, and certain conditions exist, like energy, liquid water and so forth, life will arise, spontaneously. Does that mean it has a meaning, or does that mean that given the parameters of our universe, if these conditions exist, then life will arise. It doesn't necessarily mean it has to arise because it has a meaning.
RS: Important to explore the meaning of life?
JM: I think for me, yes, let the theologians sort that out. I mean you know, as you probably know, you know, quantum mechanics, when it was developed in 1920s and '30s, was so different from our everyday experiences, there was a lot of I guess what I call philosophy discussions about its meaning, and you had one group of gentlemen saying, gee, we need to we need to understand the underlying meaning of quantum mechanics. There was another group of scientists who were saying, yeah, but it works, it gives the right answer. You know, we can use quantum mechanics, we can build integrated circuits and whatever else we need. Now we don't understand some of the things in quantum mechanics, but that's because they are so different from everyday world, but guys, it works.
RS: Philosophy side?
JM: No, they, you can certainly talk about it over a cup of coffee. but when you get back in the lab, the philosophy of quantum mechanics isn't going to help you, I think get to the next step of ok, can we make the transistors ten times smaller than they are now, and pack them more densely on a, on a silicone ship, or do we need to go to a different kind of material like germanium or something, I mean to me those are real practical problems that the scientific method can address. The philosophy underlying quantum mechanics, to me it's not very prag-- not very useful.
RS: Feelings about things not readily observable, non-material aspects of the world.
JM: Well again, my belief is, if you can't observe it, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist. And you say well there are a lot of things I can't see with my eyes, but I can build telescopes and microscopes. or I can build atom smashers and radio telescopes or whatever but if I can't, I'll have to be careful there, because in some cases, mathematicians or theoretical physicists have predicted things that exist in the physical world before we ever knew it. But I guess my belief is that, if you can't see it, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist. It's like well you say well, there's truth in beauty. And I say, yeah, but how is that going to help me? You know, do what I'm trying to do. How is that going to help me write this code or build this integrated circuit or whatever. So I guess I'm very, I'm just very pragmatic oriented. And if it doesn't help me understand how pancreatic cancer gets started, or how can I increase the density of transistors on an integrated circuit, or how can I make, how can I write artificial intelligence code if it doesn't help me do those things then, I'll let the philosophers deal with it.
RS: You're very practical.
JM: Yes. Very practical. (LAUGH) It works or it doesn't. (LAUGH)
RS: Define progress.
JM: Progress to me means I understand more today than I understood yesterday. And that can be information for information's sake, for example, at the subatomic level, why are there three families of fundamental particles? Well then, that's a very interesting physics question, although it may have no practical use. It can also be making progress, progress can be helping people lead better lives. Like, if we could reduce the incidence of disease, continue reducing the incidence of disease, reduce the incidence of hunger, by genetically engineering plants there are a lot of things we can do to make people's lives better. We have to define better. But to me that's progress.
RS: Moral and ethical issues.
JM: Well let me give you a very narrow answer, because it's something that I just saw a couple of days ago that made me stop and think. The most deadly poison known is botuline which is produced by certain bacteria that causes botulism. And we thought there were seven kinds of that poison, and recently we discovered an 8th, and it's the most deadly poison known to scientists. And they sequenced the protein structure, they know the protein structure, but now the question was, do we publish that. Because if we publish the structure of the most deadly poison known, somebody might synthesize and use it as a terror weapon. And so by consulting with ethics committees they call them, the decision was made to not publish this scientific finding. It was considered too dangerous. And so I think the answer to your question is, you need to have groups of people sit down and decide this should be published, this should not, because it's too dangerous. For example, detailed designs of nuclear weapons have never been published, for that reason. You don't want some terrorist trying to build a nuclear bomb. But it takes probably all kinds of professionals sitting down together discussing. I mean you need the physical scientists that are doing the research, you probably need theologians, you probably need ethicists, philosophers, to talk, talk about the various aspects, the various facets of the problem, and come to a decision, yes we can publish this, no we can't publish this, because it's too dangerous. I don't, and no one, no one group can know everything, you need to have a collective thinking.
RS: Why?
JM: For me, when I think about, I think of what you're referring to, like a terrible disaster, WWII for example, I mean to me World War II had a very physical cause, or causes. And that, those causes can be explained by science, economics, politics, you know, human, human understanding. We don't need to invoke faith-based beliefs to explain why tragedies like WWII and the Holocaust happened. I mean we can explain those using what we know. probably to me the more important question is, can we use our collective wisdom to avoid a repeat of WWII, or we, ok we, we screwed up, we had WWII, can we, are we smart enough to avoid a repeat of WWII. To me that's the big, big question. Can we avoid mad men getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction? Like nuclear weapons or genetically engineered viruses, or nerve toxins, you know. To me , the important question is, can we prevent tragedies. And I think everything we need to do that is within us, are we smart enough to do it. I don't think we need to invoke higher powers or you know, non-material explanations to do that.
RS: Faith potentially could answer questions that science cannot?
JM: For me it's hard to understand how a question that science cannot answer, either now or in the future, would be relevant to our lives. It's yes I'm, faith can probably answer some questions, but what's their relevance? I guess the one example I can think of kind of loops back to something we said a few minutes ago, what's the question, why is there evil in the world. And religion may give you one answer, but science may give you another answer, based on there are people who rise to power, they have they're amoral, they they whip up the fears in the people that they rule and they start wars etc., so why is there evil in the world? Well it's because it could be as simple as a Joseph Stalin or an Adolph Hitler had a very unhappy childhood, and it snowballed from there. I believe all the relevant questions can be answered by science, either now like how do you stop, how do you stop prostate cancer, or in the future, how do you stop pancreatic cancer? It's a question of time and resources. And we'll get there. Will we ever know everything, no. Because the universe is so vast, it's, it's, but it's going to be fun learning. It's, it's the journey, what's the old saying, it's the journey, not the destination. And the journey is fun.
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MG: My name is Michael J. Galko, I'm an Associate Professor at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in the Department of Genetics.
RS: The work you do?
MG: My laboratory is interested in how animals respond to tissue damage, so about half of the laboratory studies skin wound healing, and about half of the laboratory studies how injury changes the way that an animal feels pain, so for instance like this does not hurt, but if I had a cut or a scrape there, that would hurt. And we do all of that work, one of the main reasons we're in a genetics department, we do all of that work with the little fruit fly drosophila. So, we wound them and then study either their study responses to heal a wound or their behavioral responses, at a level of showing pain behaviors after an injury.
RS: The intent?
MG: The intent of the research is to basically understand the molecular genetic programs by which an animal heals a wound, and also exhibits behaviors that facilitate healing. So, I would argue, the pain hypersensitivity that animals show, is actually, it's a response of the animal that facilitates healing, because it allows that area to be protected. [11:19:40.10] and I do this at a cancer center basically because these biologies, skin repair and pain are major players in a lot of cancer and cancer treatment responses.
RS: Intent is to transfer knowledge to humans.
MG: Definitely. So you know, my lab is a basic research lab, we work with a model organism. But the genes involved are generally highly conserved, so our strategy is to identify the genes that orchestrate these processes and then hopefully some of those will be useful as clinical targets in the future.
RS: Healing is an issue, why?
MG: So, wound-healing, there's a theory that was first put forth by pathologists in the late 19th century that solid tumors in particular are a form of, of the body's normal wound-healing response that has gone wrong. So normally when your body has a wound and we all know this there's a gap in your tissue and the cells around that gap, they respond, they proliferate and they move and they heal that injury. One of the ideas or theories for certain solid tumors is that the tumorigenic response is similar to that with the exception that it does not stop, and so that's one of the main reasons why we study that. We want to know how you get a cell that's just resting there, serving its normal function, and get it to change its behavior in these radical ways. And then revert to a normal state when that process is finished. That's the connection.
RS: Science and religion, should they be separate?
MG: I'm not entirely sure I understand the question but I do think science should precede unhindered from religious influence. I think that's a different question from whether scientists you know, have their own religious beliefs as humans and as practicing scientists. But I do believe the-- you know the scientific methodology, the scientific method, that we use in biology and other scientists use in chemistry and physics, that should largely be pursued independently of religious consideration. Now of course there are some exceptions to that I think, you know, biology, some of the biological technologies these days, run up against serious ethical questions. You know, if you can have a stem cell and change a stem cell and introduce that into a person to either treat their disease or potentially to change some trait that they might have, that raises into, or reaches into areas of ethics of when is it permissible to you know, alter someone's material state or not. You know, in secular countries, in western democratic countries, that is a question for the law but of course, that law is often guided by more ancient ethical considerations that are often derived from religion.
RS: The scientific method...
MG: Well, I think my understanding of the scientific method is fairly straightforward and simple, this method entails formulating a hypothesis, and coming up with an experimental approach that allows one to try to negate that hypothesis, you know the best designed experimental approaches have many controls for the various procedures that, that one is using and if all of that goes well, then one can make conclusions about whether the hypothesis is or is not supported. [11:24:11.13] I think one of the great virtues and advantages of science for humans over the years is that this is a pretty rigorous methodology, and if you fly it well, you can certainly learn a tremendous amount about the natural world. It works. (LAUGH)
RS: Scientists with religious beliefs?
MG: Well, I would describe myself as essentially an agnostic. I was raised in the Catholic faith, somewhat half-heartedly by my parents. And sort of wandered away from that in my mid-teenager years. But I think that, that upbringing especially some of the catechism teachings of what is right and wrong and ideas of stewardship, of the world that we live in, were pretty strongly inculcated in me, so I'm not sure that I would classify them as religious beliefs for me, I'm not a church-goer, but they're derived from that tradition for sure.
RS: What happened to your faith?
MG: Yeah, well I think there are many practicing scientists who I would say are probably fairly militantly atheistic, not all of them, but that's a view that's probably more dominant in the scientific community than in other communities. I, when I first got into science and practiced science as a graduate student I would say I certainly had a phase of that, that this is the way to know the world is to interrogate it with this methodology. And I think as I aged, both as a scientist and as a human, I really mellowed out on that view a lot, because, and it's partly, it might be some of the nature of the work that I have done and that we've done in my lab, where much of it is astonishingly beautiful and mysterious. So if you just look at pictures of the fruit fly's skin, these cells are spectacular. And I became struck over the years that there's a component to the natural world, having to do with the mystery of these cycles of reproduction and just the beauty of animals. That is not approachable through what I would consider a normal scientific method. So certain things about, that have to do with beauty and societal things that have to do with justice and things like that, these are not things that one can interrogate, I think, with the scientific method. One needs different ways of approaching those questions. And I don't know, you know, my view of that is my own, I have no idea whether that's a dominant view in the scientific community.
RS: Sense of beauty, if not awe...
MG: So one example when I was a graduate student I worked in a lab at UCSF University of California at San Francisco. We studied how nerve cells that are born in the nervous system grow to their targets. So originally the nervous system, the cells are born, but there's no wires, there's no connections between these cells. So these axons have to grow out and find their partners to connect to make a functional nervous system. And the gentleman that I was working for had developed this amazing assay where you could put a little clump of neurons, dissected out from a spinal cording culture, and you could give them a signal, and these neurons, normally if you just put them in there with no signal, they'll just stay put and they'll grow, but they'll live but they won't do any movement. If you give them the signal, they'll not only move to it they'll kind of turn and gravitate towards it. I remember the first time I saw that and I thought, we can understand this sort of at a molecular level, of you know, this signal binds to this receptor, and it helps guide these cells to whatever their target is. But that's happening for trillions of neurons in the brain and there's a sense of scale and awe, of how this comes about. And that's just one example. I think any, for me, if I look at tissues and cells, either in culture or in their native state in the body, that reaction is a prevalent reaction. The mystery of how they do what they do, and some of that mystery I think is interrogatable, but the mystery, I guess to some extent, the mystery I'm talking about is the mystery of perception of perceiving it. And trying to understand it and this awe is the right word, of the complexity of it. Yeah. So for me, that is a, I don't know what the right word for it is, maybe spiritual connection with the work and what we do. There's also certainly a service component as well, which for me does come from my religious upbringing too, that it's just a service to humanity to try to understand the world and disseminate that information.
RS: Spiritual connection, something beyond that is moving you?
MG: So I'm generally struck day by day, by how beautiful biology is, and how beautiful cells are. You know, I have students in my lab and much of what they do is they, they take pictures of cells that are healing wounds, or responding to an injury in some way. and those cells are, are beautiful and so that there's a sense in me of often, of, it's almost like a dividing line of between what you can understand that gets cells to behave in a certain way and what you can't understand which largely has to do with one's reaction to, it's like looking at an amazing work of art. I'm not sure that science will ever be able to tell us for instance, why different human beings perceive different works of art differently, or what they appreciate about them. these are to me kind of non-scientific questions in a way. They're related to science because there's questions of consciousness and how one perceives color and pattern and things like that. But that won't get you to you know, why does art make us feel good or better or transcendent. (LAUGH)
RS: Is there a place for spirituality in science?
MG: I think there is for me, you know, I feel that the actual doing of the science to some extent, it intersects with what I would consider my spiritual life of that life, appreciating beauty in the natural world, appreciating community in the human world, those are a part, for me, of what I do. But again, I can only speak for myself. I don't think they have to be apart, you know. I think some of the scientists I know who are, you know, really atheistic in their beliefs, they have their own constructs of how they think about these things. I'm not trying to say that atheists can't appreciate beauty or things like that but everybody's got their own way of thinking about it. I think some scientists certainly bring their religious beliefs to their work, probably more than I do and some certainly less than I do.
RS: Did faith re-enter your world?
MG: I would, I would say yes and no. Not in an organized way, so I don't participate in any organized religious services. but I think I certainly probably midway through my graduate career had a growing appreciation for what I perceived as a spiritual dimension to humanity and being a human on, on Earth. And I think that spiritual dimension can be brought to anything that one does as a human. Whether it's science, which I do, whether it's poetry, which I also do. as a writer. Or whether it's improving one's community, preparing a meal, it does not matter what the activity is, there's the, for me it's a sense of connectedness. to other humans, to the planet, to other organisms.
RS: Does understanding your faith help your science?
MG: That's an interesting question, I'm not sure I've thought of it quite that way. And I guess to some extent it does, I would say that one of the things that drives my science, is trying to do things that are, that are highly creative. so the idea of for instance using flies to study wound healing, when I started that project back in the early 2000s, there was really nobody doing that. And it was the act of doing it and formulating this project really, I viewed it as an act of creativity, to try to do it. And that's similar with the other project that we have in my lab to study the intersection of tissue damage and pain perception. It's so we do a lot in my lab of inventing our own assays, inventing our own tools, using the scientific method to do that. but that is motivated by this sense of mystery, you know. It is a simple organism, simple in quotes, like a fly, do they have a sophisticated way to heal wounds. Turns out they do. If you injure them, do they do this thing that we do, where they get hypersense, it turns out they do, you know. I think there's a sense of, for me, one of the motivators there is to interrogate the boundaries of where things exist in the natural world and where they do not exist in the natural world.
RS: Faith can answer questions science can't?
MG: Well I guess my own personal view of this is, and this is just my personal understanding of faith, as I'm not sure faith is about answers. (LAUGH) and certainly it is not for me. Faith is more about, I view, my own question of faith is, it's the way of believing or seeing the world that I apply when basically science doesn't work. (LAUGH) Right, and other strategies of thinking don't work. And for me that's not about answers, I think that's maybe one reason why I keep using the word mystery. Those elements of humanity, why we appreciate beauty, why we appreciate justice, why we invent stories that illustrate the difference between right and wrong and things like that. Those are not scientific questions to me. can they be answered with faith, I don't know. But I think they can be appreciated with faith, and approached perhaps more effectively with a spiritual outlook than with a scientific outlook.
RS: Science can focus on the how, faith on why?
MG: Yeah, I think in our phone conversation I touched on that. I do feel that science is particularly useful for interrogating how things happen. And I've kind of communicated this idea to my students over the years. It's particularly ill-suited for answering the question of why things happen. Evolution comes into this, into some extent. So for instance, the biology that I'm talking about, pain hypersensitivity, you can come up with a why. One can come up with a reason why we become hypersensitive because it allows the body to protect the site of injury while it heals. That's a perfectly reasonable idea, perfectly reasonable hypothesis. There's evidence for it in the scientific literature. But, you know, why things evolve the way they did versus some other systems, sometimes I think it's useful to think like an engineer, almost about problems, and you know, you could imagine a, many different ways of getting neurons to be hypersensitive or doing this, and why the ones that are used are that. I'm not sure. Other than the vagaries of how evolution proceeded, I'm not sure it's an answer to those questions. (LAUGHING)
RS: Can science answer every question?
MG: No, I don't think so. I think it can answer many questions about how and some of that is just a question about how good one's interrogatory technology is for looking at certain phenomena. I think the boundary for me at least in my mind, if the questions that are answerable with science, versus answerable not, to some extent have to do with consciousness, and the feeling-- and feeling. And emotion. I mean there is a biological basis for emotion, neurological basis for emotion, but I don't think that understanding h-- will, and perhaps this is just skepticism on my part, I'm not sure that understanding will ever really help us, why one human being reacts to a situation in one way, and another does in another way. Whether it's a positive situation that might be expected to elicit joy or some negative situation that might be traumatic. Humans are incredibly, and animals are incredibly different in how they react to these things. I don't know that the scientific method can help us understand all of that, maybe some of it.
RS: Can faith?
MG: Well, again for me, I'm not sure faith is about under-- it-- I'm not sure, to me it's not about answers. It's about appreciating the differences and having an understanding of those differences. but that's a personal view...
RS: God has the answers, we just need to listen, to hear it.
MG: Well, certainly I mean I have my own view of faith, and part of my view of faith for other people is I think, basically whatever helps, whatever belief system helps people get through their lives, is good for them and I have no right to question that. For myself, you know, when I ponder questions like, you know, what, what is the nature of God, say, or is there a God, I do not know. I know that when I see certain things in the world, I'm struck with a feeling that I think is beyond biology, (LAUGH) right. I don't presume to know who God is or what God wants, but I do feel, and this where my agnosticism and spirituality comes, that there's something out there, there's some entity out there, I wouldn't put it as watching over us, I would put it more as that connects all of us. In a way that we should, this person, that we should respect and honor.
RS: Your colleagues?
MG: Well, that's a great question. I would say that conversations about religion are somewhat common, among scientists. I mean, many scientists like myself grew up in some faith-based tradition, and as they became more involved in science, for some folks, that compliments their faith-based tradition, and for some it has largely replaced their faith-based tradition. There are certain scientists where I've met, where there's an idea that the scientific method can basically explain anything if you design the experiments and apply it right. And I'm not, it's not my intention to be dismissive of that view, I think you know, there's some merit in looking at that. Scientists I think, in my experience, tend to like to talk about religion, (LAUGH) because it's an alternative way of trying to understand the world, and so I think there's generally quite a bit of curiosity about it. There is also, and I mean there's no kind of mistaking this. I think the more, and I think we may have touched upon this in the phone conversation, the more fundamental strains of religion, fundamentalist Christianity, Islam, that purport to have a complete understanding of the world. You know, I would agree with some of my colleagues, those faith-based traditions are really fundamentally at odds with science. And with our body of scientific knowledge. There is a conflict there, how that conflict gets managed is a different question, but there, those belief systems are largely incompatible is my view of that.
RS: Scientists say to check religion at the door?
MG: Well, I would agree with that to a large extent. You know, I mean, I'm contradicting myself. I don't do that, I find doing science to be quite a spiritual activity. for myself. That said, it doesn't come with any agenda. If you know, I need to find this because this will support a certain religious view or something like that. It's much more abstract than that. and I, I can't think of any scientists I've known who bring their religious beliefs into the lab in the sense where they're, the hope is that some hypothesis will be proven or disproven, because it has some religious ramification. This was a big issue for Darwin. (LAUGH) When he was writing his Origin of the Species for sure. He struggled with the religious implications of his findings. I imagine that there are, there must be scientists now who work on stem cells for whom this is a fairly large preoccupation. Because there are ethical religious implications to some of that work, that are profound.
RS: Such as...
MG: Such as you know, well anytime that a scientist can come up with a technology where you can alter organisms. I guess I see this in my own work. You know, we, in my lab, any lab that works with model organisms, we do genetic engineering. You know, we create if you will, organisms that have new sets of genes in them. So I think when that technology first came out, 30 to 25 years ago, there was a lot of consternation about, you know, where's the line between altering an organism and creating an organism, and should humans be doing this. I can't make a fruit fly de novo. I'm not, we alter individual genes. Some of the stem cell stuff I think is, is a different order of magnitude from those original genetic engineering questions. So this societal debate, occurring in the religious sphere, occurring in the governmental sphere, and the civics sphere, is going to happen again and should happen. These questions should be considered whenever the technology bumps up against long-held and strongly held beliefs. I think that's a healthy thing.
RS: More helpful to be faith-based to have those conversations?
MG: I, yeah, that is also a good que-- for me it is. And I think probably, I would maybe venture to guess in general it is helpful to have that certainly that compass. That said, you know, I know some scientific atheists, they have very robust and strong moral compasses. They may not be derived from a standard religious faith but they're there. So I don't think those are incompatible. I do think you know, many scientists, certainly scientists where their work rubs up against these lines, are generally quite concerned-- generally quite knowledgeable about these debates. [11:48:45.00] where they fall may differ depending on their religious views or science views or other factors. But, you know, for myself you know, the-- I, even though I'm a scientist and believe strongly in the scientific method, when these questions come up about how to apply technologies to the natural world. So for instance like genetic engineering of crops, and this is probably just my personality, I favor caution in how those things are applied, rather than just full-steam ahead. But there are arguments for, for both sides there.
RS: Does faith help you understand it in a way that science doesn't?
MG: Consciousness? Definitely. Yes, so that would be a good ex-- I mean I, I think the difficulty for me as a scientist in thinking about this question, is I don't understand about faith, where my understanding is coming from, right. So when I have an appreciation of the natural beauty of art or, when I write a poem, I think, how in the world did that combination of words come into my head. Right, that moment of spark. I don't, I can't answer the how, but I do know that faith is much closer to figuring out that question for me than science is, or ever will be.
RS: Because?
MG: Because... for me, acts of creation, creativity in particular, writing a poem, painting a painting, making something out of wood, (LAUGH) formulating a hypothesis, these are creative acts and there's something to me, very mysterious about where they come from, in the mind. And very mysterious about the question of you know, why, why are some humans better at this, better at this than others, or do we all have that capacity but only some of us are using it, I don't know. But for me, those questions of how we are creative, the ways in which we are creative is an incredibly individualistic thing. You can, you know, I read poems around town regularly, and I'm just constantly astonished at how different poets can approach the same idea, or the same topic, in completely different ways. Science is similar to that, you know, I have maybe twenty colleagues in the world now who study wound healing with fruit flies. Everybody uses a different approach, different set of techniques. There's a, there's an aspect of individual humanity and creativity to this that I think is just not explainable to me, through a scientific method. Maybe it's just not explainable yet, through it I don't know, some might say that.
RS: Does faith help you understand a concept like the soul. What is a soul?
MG: Yes, I think that is true as well. You know some of I think my own personal kind of coming back to a spirituality has partly been a process of living life and having things happen in one's life which I think happens as one ages, sort of traumatic events. When I was in graduate school I had a friend, a very good friend, who was murdered. Over the last few years I had the process of basically watching my father pass away, he lived in Austin, and going back and forth every other weekend. And seeing him deteriorate, but also to some extent coming to an appreciation of his life. I think these experiences, which all humans, not all humans necessarily have the experience of having a good friend murdered, but there's always something traumatic. People are dying. You know, displacement, a war, a flood, that re-- requires us to act as humans. And we can either act in productive ways that help our situations, those of others or not, and (SIGH) for me, having some of these experiences really rekindled my appreciation that there's probably a lot more to life than just interrogating the world with the scientific method.
RS: Faith makes you more holistic?
MG: I would say that's a reasonable way of putting it, yeah, it's a decent way of putting it. Well I think yes, it comes back to that question, I think-- the scientific method is really useful for interrogating how things work in the natural world, or the physical world. but the larger structure of those things and their meaning, I think, is a domain that is difficult for the scientific method to approach, and is probably more appropriate for approaching with faith, whatever that faith is, for, for different humans. (OR SPIRITUALITY) Yeah, or spirituality.
RS: Not one epiphany for you?
MG: I think that's quite true for myself, it was a gradual process of you know, being brought up in a faith tradition, although as I said, somewhat half-heartedly. and then kind of wandering away from that tradition and into a really somewhat rigid mindset of the scientific method can do anything, to backing off from that and realizing, the scientific method is good for this, but maybe it's not so good for this. For writing poems, I don't use the scientific method to write poems. (LAUGH) I never would.
RS: Would you encourage fellow scientists to journey with you on exploring spirituality as a way of being more holistic?
MG: I certainly would, yeah. I think there, for me there's many personal benefits for having both views, or both methods in my life. I feel like it makes me a richer human, and a better human. you know, I'm not a person who likes to tell other people what to do (LAUGHS) you know, I think whatever folks believe, as long as it's not harming other people, then I'm generally ok with that. And I understand and appreciate that each person has their own tradition in life, their own upbringing and their own experiences that deeply color this issue, so you know, I don't really feel like I'm in a place to say oh, people should do this or should do that, but I can say that you know, for myself, this backing-- this gradual backing off of a very somewhat militant atheism to a much more holistic approach has been very beneficial in my life.
RS: What do you tell your children as a scientist?
MG: Well, you know, some of the topics that we're discussing right now in this conversation, I've had these conversations with my, I have two daughters, one is twelve, one is fifteen, they're not being raised in any organized religion, religious tradition, and certainly compared to myself when I was growing up, they have an incredibly dim and unsophisticated view of what religion is, because they haven't been in it. That said, I think they, we have talked about, you know, they know that I'm a practicing scientist, and what I do is a very I like your word kind of clinical, there's a methodology to the scientific method that you can apply. And it's useful for certain things, and I think they appreciate that, but I think they probably have their own, they must have their own understandings of it, that there's a boundary in there somewhere, of what the scientific method is useful for and what it's not useful for, and that those things that it's not useful for there's got to be some other way to understand them.
RS: Big unknown questions science can't answer?
MG: Well, I think you know, to me one of the major ones is the nature of human individuality. I think science can reach an understanding of perhaps you know, if you're sad, or if you're joyful, what neurons are firing and what regions of your brain are activated and some of that. But the deep question of how different humans can have a very similar experience, for instance, this flood that we recently had here in Houston. Many, many people have lost their homes, been displaced. Some folks react to that with acceptance and with a certain level of equanimity, even though it's a disaster. Some people spiral into a depression, some people help their neighbors. Some people, there's such a diversity of human interactions, sometimes in people who have quite similar personalities, I don't think that mystery's ever going to be touched on in a really comprehensive way by science.
RS: Other questions, can't answer?
MG: You've probably gleaned this from some of my comments before, I think the nature of creativity, to me, how it happens, why it happens, when it happens, I don't think we're ever going to understand that, that question. you know, you can study as a scientist, you can look at a painting and say oh, people perceive this as beautiful because of this combination of colors, (LAUGHS) that doesn't get to the actual feeling that when you stand in front of a great painting, and are really or listening to a great piece of music live, and are transported out of your body, to some other place, even if it's just for a moment. I don't see science addressing that.
RS: Why are we here?
MG: Well, I think science, I'm not sure that's a small question but, you know... science can certainly come up with an explanation for you know, the evolution of life on Earth. And I think that evolution is, and those explanations I think are sound, you know, but what was the initial spark of life, and how did we get from that to creatures like yourself and myself, who have this incredible, any human, who has this incredible multidimensionality, of what they feel and how they express it, and you know, the evolution can get you to yeah, we've got these genes, not pants, GENES, we've got these genes, and they act in this way and these are expressed here, and that's expressed there, that doesn't get you to the myriad experiences, even within one human in a day. (LAUGH)
RS: The other side... comfort in ways science can't? Do I think of it in terms of comfort, yeah, I guess it probably does. Yes.
RS: Does it help to fill in blanks...
MG: Yes, so I think that's a good way of putting it. I think when I was younger, and trying to use you know, almost exclusively the scientific method as a way to understand the world, not just the natural world but anything you know. for me, that exercise became really frustrating, because, and for me, the reason it became frustrating is because some of these questions are, as we've been talking about, I think, just really unapproachable, we're so far away from understanding some of these mysteries, that if you're relying on the scientific method and the scientific methodology, you may have to wait quite awhile. I guess there's several options there, you can just accept that, and understand, well maybe, eventually we'll get along to that, or you can turn to alternative ways of understanding those things, where the science isn't there yet.
RS: Could technology someday answer these questions?
MG: Well, I do think that that might be possible. You know, if you could you know, if I could go into complete imagination mode for a moment, and you could imagine technologies where in a given human, you have two humans, they get the same experience. And you can map everything that is happening in their bodies, in real-time. All of the metabolic changes, all the gene expression changes, all the neuronal firing, and you have some way of understanding that map. Saying ok, to me, the scientific method, it comes down to predictability. So you could see the map in one human and say, ok, freeze there. That human is about to feel sad in a really profound way because of X,Y&Z, and these memories that are embedded in their head and these experiences. And this one, is about to go into you know, calm, proactive, do-something mode. Maybe we can get there, I doubt it. I really doubt it. But that may be a limitation of my own imagination of what these technologies could achieve.
RS: Patterns?
MG: Well scientists spend a lot of time looking at patterns. That's for sure true. You know, that, in my work and in many areas of science, a lot of it comes down to yeah, how adept is one at recognizing patterns in, that fall out of lots of data, whether it's pictorial data, or abstracted numerical data.
RS: Scientific method but also filling in lines with faith and spirituality?
MG: Yeah, I think that is fair to say for myself. Well, I think that yeah, I use the scientific method to interrogate the things that I, I think that, that method is useful for. where the blanks or the holes are as you put it, I tend to use other approaches of belief or understanding. And you're right, to me that is a comfort actually to do that. but I, I don't presume to think that I know the answers in these areas, where there's holes. I actually, I guess I don't presume to know that in science as well, I mean I think one of the interesting things about science is that our understanding of given biological processes, just to use biology as an example, evolves over time. Largely because as a development of new technologies you get a better look you say, oh, it's actually happening this way, we thought it was this way but it's actually more like this. That's a natural evolution of our scientific understanding of any process. It, there is a, what we know, is not actually set in stone, it is itself evolving.
RS: How do you find purpose?
MG: This is a really good question, this is a question that I have grappled with as a, and I think many humans grapple with for many years. When I was young, in my training, I felt like I was good at doing science. And that I was, was smart enough where I could work in a lab and come up with creative ideas and hopefully do something that would benefit humankind, even if only at the level of ok, we understand this now this way, because we did this, maybe it would have some larger benefit, we can understand pain this way, we should drug this pathway and maybe make a new pain drug. For me that's a purpose, just the desire to understand the world and give that information back to the rest of humanity. In my own life there's been a real dichotomy, because for many years since I was a teenager, since before I became a scientist, I've used creative writing to try to understand myself and the world that I live in, mostly poetry. I feel like I also have some talent at that, and I have often thought, what, what should I be doing, is my purpose here in life to do this science, which I'm good at, or to do this, which I'm, which I'm good at. Or maybe to do both, that's what I do now, I just try to balance them as best as I can.
RS: Define progress.
MG: So I think you know, for me, in scientific terms, progress is a solid enhancement in our understanding of any problem. You know, when we publish a scientific paper, in my lab or any lab, I think, if that paper's sound, and it's been reproduced, and you can rely on it, that's a step forward. That's progress in our understanding of the world. and I enjoy it, and some steps are larger than others, in the creative sphere, like in writing, writing a poem, I think anytime somebody writes a poem, that connects with another human, by definition that's progress, to me. (LAUGHING) If you can connect with another human and, and have them feel something positive, that's always progress you know. Science does that for me. Discovering the world is, like I said, to some extent a spiritual creative act for me to try to do that. Yeah, through science. and I enjoy that. The question with science gets a little bit blurry though, because most people in you know, even in a highly educated society, don't have a super-deep understanding of modern science and how it's practiced and what the boundary is between what we know and don't know on any given topic. Science is I think, often, or living in this very rarified world, where compared to the average citizenry, their understanding of at least their narrow niche, is you know, a jump above, well for instance, I think of you know, my own, everybody who is a human has an understanding of pain. That everybody has experienced pain. A scientist who works on pain, their understanding of that is a little bit different, in a way that is unless the average citizen is incredibly well-read in the literature it's different, because you're thinking of things actually happening at the level of cells and neuronal firing changing and you know, the way the neurons sensitize could be because it receives this signal, or because this synapsis strengthens over here, or there's more branches, there's all sorts of ideas, I think most people you know, when they experience pain they just think I would like to get rid of this, (LAUGHING) I would like to not be experiencing this.
RS: Your mindset about it...
That's basically all I was trying to say about it.
RS: The awe and wonder... are those important motivators?
MG: Definitely, yeah, they are really important motivators. Our aesthetic considerations are wonder and awe, are those motivators for me in my own scientific work. Definitely, you know, I'm often asking my students to take pictures of things, simply for the sake of taking pictures of them, and that they look beautiful, and that you know, maybe we'll be able to learn something, maybe not. I actually try to communicate to most of the students, especially the ones who do very visual work, to develop an eye for what's an attractive photograph. (LAUGH) And this is a part of science these days. You know there's, especially in cell biology, there's a whole wing of this discipline intersecting with art. And using these pictures as artistic statements in addition to scientific evidence for-- to support, or not support, some idea or hypothesis. I'm for that. You know, we do that in many of the scientific journals these days, especially the biology ones. They have covers, right. So, and, it's a real coup if you're a scientist to take your picture that's beautiful enough to get on the cover. (LAUGH) And that's not a scientific concern, that's an artistic concern.
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VH: I’m Vicki Huff. I have a PHD in Human Genetics and I work, I'm a Professor in the Department of Genetics at MD Anderson's Cancer Center here in Houston.
RS: Your background?
VH: So I focus on, my training was human genetics broadly, but I got very interested in cancer genetics as a graduate sch-- student. and it was kind of at the beginning of the whole area of cancer genetics, which was, I was really lucky to be able to kind of get into the field, sort of at the ground, not quite at the ground, sort of in the ground. In terms of what got me interested in genetics, I wandered a lot when I was in college, I must have gone through about four or five different majors initially. And I decided I was wanting to save the world and I decided the best way to save the world was to be a physician. And so I started taking science classes and I took this course, it was a little mini-course called chromosome structure and function, and unlike the didactic lecture courses, we actually read the literature, the old literature and discussed how people were able to draw the conclusions they drew and then what the next step would be, what the questions were, etc, etc. And that just got me fascinated with genetics. And I sort of, thinking about it later, sort of meshed the idea of human health with genetics, and so the genetics of human disease just became a real passion for me. And so then I, I worked for a while in the lab, I was a technician in the lab, and then went back to graduate school and I wanted to do it in human genetics.
RS: The ground floor?
VH: Well not quite the ground floor, I mean I don't think I'm that old, except, so it was actually in the early mid-'80s when ankA genes were just being identified, so these are genes that suddenly people realized were nor-- normally there, there are genes in your body, normal, that have a normal function, but then they get mutated in cancers and because of that mutation, the cells lose their ability to regulate their differentiation, proliferation, etc. and so that was going on at the very tail end of my graduate work. And so I decided I wanted to do a postdoc in human cancer genetics, and so my husband was looking at different positions, he was looking for faculty positions in a couple of places, and Houston was a really good place, because there's a lot going on, so he had an offer of a faculty position, I had an offer a postdoctoral position, basically looking at genetic predisposition to cancer, familial cancer syndromes. and it was a perfect fit and so nice, the environment is so nice that even though we were looking at other places to go, usually you move on, (LAUGH) and we had a great offer at Fred Hutchison in Seattle and we love the Seattle area and all that stuff. But, for both of us it was better for us to stay here and so we've been here for a while.
RS: Science and religion...
VH: I see science and religion as being very distinct entities. And I think, my personal opinion is they should be very distinct entities. Now, you could be a good scientist and be religious, I'm not, but you can. I mean it's possible, but I think that again, it's two different systems, one's a system of facts, of hypothesis, getting facts, developing conclusions based on facts. And the other is belief, and that's not bad, that's, I don't say that in a negative way. You know, belief, something that sustains your soul and I think, I think that's good. But again, that's very different, those are very two different worlds, and you can inhabit both of them. I think, without conflict, depending on maybe your religious beliefs.
RS: Scientists are seen as hardcore rationalists?
VH: (LAUGH) Yes and no. Rationalists, yes, but I also see scientists in their scientific world being not so rational, sometimes. There's always, in science there's bandwagons you get on, there's pet theories that you embrace and you don't let go of, even though you probably should think them through better. But I think for the most part that's maybe a good delineation, sort of the rationality of science, at least in its perfect form. Whereas religion again, is not supposed to be rational, I don't think. It's about belief. It's about spiritual sustenance.
RS: Did you grow up with faith?
VH: I did. I did. My father's father was a Methodist minister. My parents were active in a church. I was active in this church. It was a very unusual church, so I grew up in a real small government town, and the church I went to was the original church in the town that served all Christians. Initially. And then first the Catholics broke off, and then the Baptists, and then da, da, da. And what was left were kind of maybe people that were more questioning about their religion, and so, when I was in high school the minister we had was this great guy, and the youth group, we'd all joke about how you know, it wasn't really a sermon, it was a book review. but again, and my mother, my dad was deceased at this point, but my mother would go to the adult Sunday school classes, but it was really discussions of how to be better people, and maybe, and also how you incorporate the best of religion to your everyday life. So, it, I did grow up with religion, but I didn't, it was not a religion that was dogmatic, it was quite a questioning religion, it allowed a lot of different ideas, and at least my mother one time told me that the church decided they needed a creed of some sort, and there was a big discussion about whether part of the creed should be a belief in God. And there was discussion, it was decided well we won't, we won't do that, because there are people that they're not sure if there's a God, there are people, I think my mother was one of them that she was saying, how can you know if there's a God. How do you know, you believe or you don't believe, or you're questioning, but, so she was an agnostic, I think in the true sense of the word. but there were people that were trying to live by religious tenets, but not, but thinking about them, taking them not sort of hook, line, and sinker, but thinking about them.
RS: Did this diverge with your sense of faith and religion?
VH: Because again, religion wasn't dogmatic to me, religion was really about being a good person. Having you know, treating people well, other people well. Being a good person, living by the Ten Commandments so to speak, but not being dogmatic about it. And so, and I can remember when I was a little girl, I mean, young, hearing stories from the Bible about the sermon on the mount or something, and I remember thinking, that's just a story. You know, that's kind of the way I always took religion, these are stories, they're stories that tell you how to be good people, but it's just a story. So I never felt like I really diverged at all. I had a strange quote, religious upbringing.
RS: Did that help provide for you later as a scientist?
VH: Oh, I think so-- I think that plus my parents. You know, they modeled how to be a good person, and you know, a conscience, and treating other people with respect. So it was probably more my parents, modeling and their, just modeling, not, not teaching, but just modeling behavior.
RS: Science...
VH: Science for me is fact-based. It's rational, it's looking at facts with kind of cold, clear eyes. And developing hypotheses, and then trusting that. Now the next question is, faith is... So to me, faith is something that you believe in, it doesn't have to be based on fact, it doesn't have to be rational, if it makes you feel good, if it makes you a better person, if it's a comfort to you, that's great. But that, that to me is what, what religion is, and hopefully it's a guidepost for being a good person, I think there's a lot of examples where very quote religious people unquote aren't good people, but I think there's, for people, I have a lot of respect for people who are very religious, who think about their religion. Who are-- haven't just sort of taken it in and just sort of a knee-jerk reaction, but they've thought about it and they maybe realize that some of the things they believe um you know, so how old is the Earth, I don't know what the Bible says, but apparently it's not what geologists say, you know, but they don't worry about that, because they don't take things like the Bible literally, they take it more as a metaphor. But they think about their religion and I have a lot of respect for people that think about their religion. Same as I have a respect for scientists who think about their science, really think about it.
RS: Does it ever come up?
VH: I have not personally. The only two times, this is not quite the example that you're interested in perhaps, one time I had the opportunity of a three-hour road trip with a colleague of my husband's who is very religious, and he was very curious about my lack of, at least going to church, religious conviction. And it was really very interesting to me, because again, he had thought through certain things, he embraced his religion in a very thoughtful manner. And that was one conversation I had, and then I've never had a conversation with him, but a very probably the most famous example of a scientist being also a very religious person, Francis Collins. So he was at Michigan. the tail-end when I was there. And he's written at least one book if not two, I haven't read them but but I respect him very much as a scientist, and I think that his religious convictions are very deeply held, very well-thought-out, and so that's another kind of place where I've had this sort of interface but not, I've never had a one on one conversation with Francis about his religious convictions, but I know that the first year I was there, he came to the, the department Christmas party with his guitar, and his two young daughters and his wife, and sang Christmas carols. You know, and we were just all stunned, because no one ever did this, I mean, and but it was interesting, it was interesting that he was a part of him so much that he wanted to share it with people and make that personal connection.
RS: Does it worry you, religion could compromise science?
VH: To me, what concerns me, and it's more, not necessarily religion in science, as it is religion in public life, in government, that concerns me more than religion in science, because I know colleagues who are I think pretty devout Catholic for example, but I don't think it affects the way they carry out their science. Now, maybe they would choose not to do some things, maybe they wouldn't work with you know, embryonic fibroblasts, you know, except from mice. You know, so but, that doesn't really affect their science, it just affects their choices of what they want to study and how they want to study it.
RS: Any limits to what science can explain?
VH: Oh absolutely. Yeah. Well, I won't, I don't have good examples right now, I guess I have retrospective examples, so I have a very close friend from childhood who's very spiritual. And so, she's wanting to see connections with things and la la, and so I always use the example of sonar. That a hundred years ago, scientists wouldn't have been able to understand how dolphins can, you know, seem to communicate with each other. Science wouldn't have been able to do that. but now we know about sonar. So perhaps there are things that we can't explain now, that people put under the rubric of sort of the paranatural, or whatever, not to say that I believe some of these things, but maybe I won't, I won't say it's not true. that maybe some of these things, it's just because we haven't discovered the quote sonar explanation for it. So maybe in that sense I'm saying that I do believe that eventually science can have all the answers but that's more in terms of biology or, or physics or whatever. But there's so much about society that's not biology, it's not physics, it's not chemistry, it's you know, human interaction, that I don't think people can, science will be able to explain fully.
RS: Will science be able to explain the soul?
VH: But does it really matter if science can't explain that? I mean, why not, just it's there, embrace it. And again, that's not necessarily a faith thing, but it's just a world outside of science. Something outside of science, and why ask science to explain it, or why even want it to be explained.
RS: Things that are unknown at this point, science will solve those?
VH: In terms of the universe, in terms of like the origin of the universe, in terms of… I think eventually yeah, something physical like the universe, I think with time, yes.
RS: Those with religious beliefs, do they experience discrimination within scientific community because of faith?
VH: I don't think so, I would hope not of course. but I think probably people that are religious perhaps don't, won't talk about it much. Because it, maybe they consider it unprofessional, maybe they are worried that people will, you know, the more rational scientists will look down on them. I don't know but I don't, I just don't see that people talk about religion a lot, so if you don't talk about it, you don't know what someone's beliefs are, so you wouldn't discriminate against them. And again, Francis might be, I think he is, a very notable exception to that. and I will also say, at least I think that initially, oh, people might have thought he was a little bit odd. But he was such a good scientist, that you, sort of, balanced it out. but I don't think, I don't think people are discriminated against because of their religion.
RS: Scientists usually leave religion aside, not talk about it? Because?
VH: Maybe because it's considered personal? maybe because it's considered potentially divisive. and maybe people again, if you have very strong religious convictions and maybe very straight I'll say religious convictions, that maybe you are a little worried that maybe your colleagues wouldn't understand that... (OR TAKE YOU AS SERIOUSLY) Or take you as seriously. But-- another example I just thought of, is a very close colleague of my husband's, a very devout Mormon, you know, an elder in the church and all of that stuff. And he makes no bones about it, I mean he's very forthright. More about his membership in the church and his activities in the church, not really what that means in terms of beliefs and all. So apparently he doesn't have any qualms or any concerns that his religion will be held against him.
RS: Divisive. Why?
VH: Don't you think religion is divisive? I guess I just see that it becomes uncomfortable when you're sitting around the table you know at dinner, study section or something like this, and if someone were to profess to be devoutly Muslim, and then there's someone who's orthodox Jew and then it gets into the political you know, it's, it becomes uncomfortable. It becomes complicated, and it's too bad, I've always thought it would be nice to be able to talk to people and explore their opinions, their thoughts in a very non-stressful way or non-judgmental way, but people do, whatever your position, people get defensive about things and so it's very difficult to have kind of easy conversations.
RS: By excluding religion, does it limit scientific exploration about issues?
VH: I don't think by excluding religion it restricts science at all, and then your second question in terms of excluding religion, it restricts conversation? No.
RS: Conflict between being a scientist and being religious?
VH: I would say that a lot of it depends on what you mean by being religious. So if you know, you believe literally in the Bible, you cannot be a good anthropologist for example. but that's an extreme example. So I think for the most part, there's not a conflict, you can be religious and be a good scientist. I really think that. I mean, in the media there's all this, that scientists are raging atheists and you know, Stephen Hawking, is Stephen Hawking the one that has written, released screeds against religion and all, Dawkins. Dawkins… So you know, Richard Dawkins you know, has written these screeds against religion, I don't think that does anybody any good. we don't want to pit each other against ourselves. and I think that does that, and I think it makes it very divisive, and I think the tone in the popular media is that there's this big division, but I don't think there needs to be. And maybe, maybe people, everybody wants news, everybody wants hype and he wants to publish books you know, so people take extreme positions that perhaps they don't really, really believe.
RS: Are religious people less likely to become scientists?
VH: Again, I think it depends on what your faith is. I would say it's more a matter of your personality, so, and this is going to be, maybe I'll want you to edit this out, but so I think that if you are religious in the sense of being sort of, this is what you've been told, you followed this you're not being raised as being a curious person. Or a reflective person, and so if you're not curious, then you're less likely to go into science. Science is about curiosity, and science is about taking facts and reflecting on facts. And if you haven't been raised that way, then you're not interested in science. You just consider it just a sort of memorization of facts.
RS: Does religion or spirituality play a place in your life?
VH: For example, when my family, my children, my husband and I are in Houston, we always go Christmas Eve to a Christmas Eve music ceremony. A service. Because I love Christmas carols. Because it takes me back to childhood, I know the words, I know you know, oh come all ye faithful, all five verses including the Latin one, you know. And, and I love the or-- I just love that. And my husband really likes it because he was raised Catholic and we go to a Catholic church and they have incense. It's the whole sensual thing, it's wonderful. But that's, that's just you know, one day out of the year. so, that's probably not really religious, my religious aspect of my life, it's more a cultural aspect. and in terms of spirituality, you know again, I have this close friend who's very spiritual and she's very upset that I'm not very spiritual, but I guess I-- I have certain, some spiritual feelings more in the sense of kind of, maybe what you're talking about in terms of soul, and the connection between people, the connection within your family, the connection between generations. You know, the stories that you hear about your ancestors, the stories you hope your descendants will hear about you, and so I, maybe that's a little spiritual. It comforts me.
RS: Some scientists experience beauty, awe, wonder. Have you?
VH: No, no. (LAUGH) I feel, well maybe, this course I was telling you about… No, and I feel when I say that, I feel very cold and calculating by saying that, because it's more, I won't say awe, but it's, you find something unexpected, you're excited, I guess I would say that's more excitement rather than awe. And I guess I approach it more, that when you look at things and you say, oh my gosh, how this whole system of just maintaining a cell, homeostasis, you know, is incredible. It's just incredible. Now, I don't cons-- I don't have this aha awe moment, but it's more I appreciate it, and I appreciate the complexity of it, maybe some people would say you know, I'm in awe of it, and I guess I am in awe of it, but I've never had this moment where you know, I was looking under the microscope and suddenly this profound feeling of oh my goodness, you know, look at this, no. But I'm not as um... maybe as excitable a person, just personality-wise.
RS: The sense of beauty and awe of a neuron, my son...
VH: This is not quite as good an example of your son, but for example you know, looking under the microscope at tumors, and the particular tumor I work with, it's fascinating. It starts out presumably from an undifferentiated cell, but then it can go on and differentiate in little different ways. And you know, looking at it, you go, oh my gosh, how could one cell, because it's aberrant, you know, now it's looking over here in this region of the tumor, it's looking this way, like renal epithelial, tubules. And over here it's looking more like you know, the undifferentiated cells, you know, and just looking at that, and thinking the, the complexity of that, and maybe that's not a good as an example of this neuron and him being a philosophy major and studying people's thoughts and then suddenly seeing the cell that is important, critical for connecting those thoughts and coming up with these ideas. But so I certainly see beauty, and I'm in awe of the complexity of science, but I've never, I don't think I've really had that sort of you know, where angels sing and you know, lights flash and things like that type of experience.
RS: Hot moments scientifically?
VH: Absolutely. And it's been exciting. And it's been yeah, thrilling, and it's been awesome in the sense of ah, this is how this connects with that, in the physical world, in the biological world, yeah.
RS: What is progress to you?
VH: I would say progress is knowing, learning something that you didn't know yesterday. And then putting that together with things that you previously knew. And then integrating those two things together. And I would call that progress. And now is it progress that we can point to and say ok, this is going to help somebody with this particular medical condition or whatever, or develop a new drug whatever. No, maybe it's not immediate, and maybe it will never be part of that type of progress, but I think that, I believe, so this is my belief, totally non-factually based, but my belief, or maybe it's my hope, that all the progress, all the new information you learn, at some point will be important. Important to understand that some mechanism, some phenomena, it will be important, you know, hopefully it will be of some practical use, eventually.
RS: Broader context for progress?
VH: So, to society generally, yeah maybe good and bad progress. (MEANING?) So genetics, everybody's interested in genetics now, people are, because of work that's been done understanding the genome and people you know, 23 and me, and find relatives, ancestors, everything like that. so, broadly speaking, maybe that helps society in terms of understanding where individuals have come from and how we're, how we're related certainly, and now I've kind of lost track of your question, but in terms of helping medical conditions, I think we've made a lot of progress. But, I also think that sometimes, you know, what are we going to do with that, so, and practically speaking, and this is something I'm struggling with myself right now, is so you learn all this about, and again maybe I want you to edit this out, because I'm not sure I want colleagues to hear me say this, but you learn about the mutations that a particular cancer has, and so then you can develop a drug that will treat that, and you go on and on and what's happening now, is now the cost of treating cancers, sometimes is astronomical. And for the individual, for the family, you know, it's ok, it's impo-- that's important money to spend, it's you know, of course. In terms of society, is that the best place to spend money? I'm having some doubts. and maybe I can say that because I was diagnosed with breast cancer many years ago, but it was you know, kind of like baby breast cancer, I mean you know, no problem. but maybe if I had been as you are, impacted by a cancer that perhaps was amenable to using drugs that were developed based on all this cancer genetic research, I, the balance, the worth scale, would tip differently. But I, I guess, so I worry that people are in terms this is just sort of broadly the medical community, that we're focusing too much on very, very expensive treatments for fairly rare things when maybe we should spend the money very early, early, but unfortunately the money you would spend very early on would be more, societal intervention and having people eat better and exercise more, then it gets into the whole sociology mess.
RS: What science cannot give us that faith does?
VH: Absolutely. questions like, why am I here, what's my purpose for being here, is there, do I have a particular purpose for being here. how do I connect with people, I, yeah, absolutely.
RS: The why.
VH: Right, the why. Science is never going to figure out the why, why we're here. I mean, in terms of you know, why are you or I individually here, or even why people are here. Science can maybe tell us how it all evolved such that we are here, but what's the way, that doesn't address the why, it just addresses the how. But not why. So science is really good at the how, how did we come to be here, but the why of we're here, I don't think science can address that at all.