Thank you, Viktor, for those kind words. It is over 15 years since I was first here, and I still
remember with great affection the kindness and hospitality shown to
my family and me by the Gairdner Foundation at that time. - We went to the Niagara Falls and it was the first time my young
daughters traveled in a stretched limo. It even had dark windows so
they felt like pop stars. Actually, it was the only time they have
been in a stretched limo, and for that matter my one and only time
too.
- The Gairdner Foundation Prize is one of the world's greatest
biomedical research prizes. It has the most excellent scientific
taste and great foresight. Where it leads others follow, including
the Nobel committees in Stockholm.
- This year's group of winners are truly outstanding and several
I can count as my friends.
- Kim Nasmyth and myself worked together in the same laboratory
for 4 years, he as a graduate student, me as a post-doc. I learnt a
lot from him and I hope he learnt something from me too. He is a
great friend and an outstanding researcher.
- David Allis is my colleague and friend at Rockefeller
University, not only a great scientist but a great member of the
community as well. He joins 13 previous Gairdner awardees
associated with the University.
- The work on the ribosome recognised by the awards to Harry
Noller and Tom Steitz is superb, and I can also count Tom as a
friend.
- And finally, Dennis Slamon's work on herceptin is of great
importance for the treatment of breast cancer. Cancer patients
throughout the world are grateful to him.
- Many congratulations to all of you for your magnificent work
and to the Gairdner Foundation jury for their exceptionally good
judgment in making these choices.
- The Gairdner family, Toronto and indeed all of Canada, should
be proud of the Foundation.
- I was asked to comment on, or perhaps give some advice on,
issues concerning science and society. When asked to give advice I
always remember what Oscar Wilde said about advice:
"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with
it. It is never of any use to oneself." - I want to ask the question "Why should society support science
and does it do it in the right way?" I hope this question will be
of interest to you, but especially to our guest of honour, the
Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry.
- Science is important to society because good quality science
provides the most reliable approach for acquiring knowledge about
the natural world, and contributes greatly to a better
understanding of ourselves.
- The core attributes of science combine several features: a
respect for accurate observation and experiment, consistency of
approach, intense curiousity, a healthy skeptism, and procedures
that generate ideas and hypotheses capable of refutation.
- Science is truly the most consistently revolutionary movement
known to humankind, because there is never a scientific dogma that
is too sacred to be overturned by new observation and experiment,
or by better reasoning.
- So why is the reliable knowledge acquired by science important
to society?
- It is because that knowledge, if used properly, has great
potential to benefit humankind.
- Science helps create wealth, underpinning a knowledge based
high tech economy. Think of the role of science in silicon valley
and the creation of the computer age.
- Science helps to improve human health. If you doubt this,
remember how science has contributed to our improving life span. In
developed countries at the turn of the last century, most people
died before 50, today they live beyond 80.
- Science also helps enhance our quality of life. By this I do
not simply mean the technologies that make our lives easier and
more satisfying, but also protection of our environment. Do not
forget that science discovered climate change and will guide us to
ways needed to control climate change.
- And science of course contributes greatly to culture. It is
through science that the wonderful workings of the natural world
are revealed, and that great insights are made into understanding
what it is to be human.
- So how can science be best harnessed to bring benefit to
society? At first sight the answers to this question seem
straightforward:
Identify the problems that society needs solving
Allocate resources to support science that can solve these
problems
Let scientists compete for these resources - It seems easy, and indeed this type of approach works well when
the problem is primarily one of technology and engineering rather
than one of scientific discovery.
- Examples are the Manhattan project or landing a man on the
moon. Most of the relevant science was well understood before these
enterprises were begun. What was required was the proper
application of that science to the problems in hand.
- But this top-down directed approach works much less well when
the science is not well understood, when innovative approaches are
required to solve complex scientific problems.
- Why is that the case? One reason is to be able to push back the
frontiers of science requires the most creative scientists, and the
main driver for these scientists is often not the creation of
wealth, or even to benefit human health or the quality of
life.
- It is instead a burning curiousity, a passion of wanting to
know the answer to a problem, to better understand the world.
- So one important issue for science and society is how to
resolve this paradox that the best creative scientists driven by
curiousity do not respond well to top-down focused direction.
- A second reason why top-down approaches can fail is that
sometimes the problems that society wants scientists to solve are
not yet addressable. Perhaps the tools are not there, or the
conceptual understanding for progress may be lacking.
- In these circumstances, throwing money at the problem is not
the answer. Nixon's war on cancer is a case in point. At that time
in the early 1970s, we simply lacked the conceptual understanding
needed to make progress in cancer.
- When resources are invested in projects like this, they will
always attract scientists to spend that money, but they may not
always be the best scientists, the highly creative individuals
required to solve the difficult problems.
- Great scientists are like great creative artists. No one could
direct a Leonardo, a Michelangelo, a Picasso. It is the same for
science.
- Let me give you an example. Today, there is great pressure on
biomedical scientists to work on translation, that is the
application of focused resources into translating our present
scientific knowledge into better human health.
- This needs to be done but it must be done effectively. A naïve
and over-enthusiastic application of translation does not fully
appreciate the real problems on the ground. Living organisms are
very complex, ourselves particularly so, and we do not understand
well enough how they and we work. One problem of course, if you
forgive the pun, is that living things are not intelligently
designed. This means doing translational work is very difficult to
do well because we still do not understand the basics well
enough.
- There is a danger of wasting precious research support because
the field is not as well placed as it should be, and may not
attract the best scientists because they recognise that they cannot
yet do the highest quality work in these areas.
- I suggest that we need to let the area evolve more slowly, to
develop more effectively. If we do not, there is a danger that in
the rush to translation, we run the risk (again forgive the pun) of
becoming lost in translation.
- So what is my solution? I would like to see an open discussion
between scientists, scientific administrators, politicians and
society as a whole, aimed at resolution of this paradox.
- How can we best continue to motivate and support our curiousity
driven scientists who are often the most effective and creative at
solving problems, and yet get them engaged in issues of concern to
society.
- This is difficult and I do not have the answers, but I have one
metaphor to start the debate. Imagine the scientific endeavour as a
geographical exploration of the world and imagine our scientists as
explorers.
- Society, working through politicians and scientific
administrators, needs to identify the general areas that need
investigating. They should indicate their interest in broad
geographical regions, in Antarctica, the Amazon basin, the African
interior
- Society should not be identifying which Antarctic glacier
should be explored, which tributary of the Amazon, or which part of
the African jungle the explorers need to focus on.
- That is the job of the scientist exploring on the ground,
releasing their creative energies to find the right areas to
explore, to locate the boundaries of knowledge that are ripe to be
pushed back.
- The job of the politicians and scientific administrators such
as myself, is to locate the continents, to identify the very finest
scientific explorers, to give them the best tools for the job, and
to let them get on with their exploration.
- Our job is not to micro-manage, to establish milestones, to
demand 3 monthly reports, to design road maps. That is not
appropriate for a creative scientific endeavour pushing back at the
frontiers of knowledge.
- Tonight, we honour five explorer scientists of the highest
calibre. They were given the tools, they explored, and they
discovered. Let us all learn from their example.
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