The Public Trust Problem | Observing Science

Public opinion polling shows a remarkable drop in confidence in science over the past few years, with only about half of all Americans saying that science has a mostly positive effect on society. Only about a third of Americans now trust the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the two most prominent organizations whose work is based on the health sciences. Given that scientists—perhaps particularly those working in the health sciences—need to engage the world around them to ensure that our work has impact, these votes of non-confidence suggest that something is being lost in translation.

Read more here.

Science and the Phantasies of Our Time | Observing Science

“Every age has its particular folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation.” From Charles Mackay: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. London: Richard Bentley. 2 vols 1841.

In the year since ChatGPT stunned the world with a compelling, easily available, and user-friendly large language model, there has been an extraordinary boom in interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Fortunes have been made by companies that trade in goods that are related to AI, and the number of column inches dedicated to AI in public media have soared.

Read more here.

With Gratitude | Dean's Note

On stepping down as Dean of Boston University School of Public Health at the end of 2024, paving the way for the next generation of leadership at the school who can lead the school into its 50th anniversary and the future.

This week, I let the school community know that I shall be stepping down as Dean of Boston University School of Public Health at the end of 2024, paving the way for the next generation of leadership at the school who can lead the school into its 50th anniversary and the future. Starting in 2025, I shall be taking on the position of inaugural Dean of a new School of Public Health at Washington University.I wanted here to follow up my earlier communication with a note of gratitude.  I have had the enormous privilege of serving as Dean of this school for 10 years. I have had the good fortune of working with wonderful colleagues and friends, contributing to a school I care deeply about, and shepherding a new generation of scholars and scientists who are going to be the future of this school, and of public health, in coming decades.  For all this I am so very grateful.

Read more here.

What we owe one another in this moment | The Healthiest Goldfish

How we engage with our communities in challenging times

This is a challenging moment in the public conversation. Across the country, there has been heated debate about issues of central importance to the health of populations and to the safety and stability of our world. These conversations have intersected with an election year which is unfolding in what is arguably a uniquely polarizing moment in our history.

Read more here.

Innovation Spaces | Observing Science

In a 2015 paper, “Does science advance one funeral at a time?” Pierre Azouley and colleagues show that when a star scientist dies, those in their network publish less, but those who had not previously collaborated with the dead scientist publish more. Dramatically, these new papers were, in this analysis, more likely to be highly cited. The authors suggest—plausibly enough—that the field, with the passing of an eminent scientist, becomes more hospitable to different ideas proposed by those who think differently than the deceased. In a subsequent publication of this paper, the same authors suggest that “the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge.”

Read more here.

A rhetoric of trust and inclusion | The Healthiest Goldfish

Towards a language that can support the creation of a healthier world and a less divided moment.

In 2017, I wrote an essay, published in The Milbank Quarterly, arguing that the then-new administration would be harmful for Americans’ health for two reasons—by representing a disinvestment in the resources that shape heath, and by sowing a language of division that would rend the fabric of trust that we need to create a healthier world. I was not alone in these concerns, and subsequent years have shown that they were not without cause. In many ways, this period of American history will perhaps inevitably be remembered as a time characterized by enormous public distrust and divisions that are unprecedented in the past century.

Read more here.

Collaboration | Observing Science

In February 2003, a new severe respiratory illness emerged in Guangdong Province, China. The World Health Organization global surveillance system alerted travelers to a new disease. The search began for the cause and eleven research labs from countries around the world began to work together to find and analyze what became known as SARS. This “collaborative multicenter research project” proceeded through daily teleconferences, shared electron microscopy photos, and viral genome sequences. Scientists traded samples, debated results, made decisions about experimental dead ends, and in one week a candidate virus was isolated nearly simultaneously in two labs. Three weeks later, confirmatory studies permitted the announcement of a novel coronavirus as the cause of SARS. This model of health science collaboration at a global scale was unique, the results remarkable, speedy and effective. The virus was, according to WHO, “collectively… discovered.”

Read more here.

Follow the Science | Observing Science

The COVID-19 pandemic was, in many ways, a triumph of science. The world, through collaboration by scientists across countries, sequenced a novel coronavirus almost immediately. We then, building on a novel mRNA platform, developed several highly effective vaccines faster than any vaccines had ever been developed in human history. These vaccines went on to save millions of lives and allow the restoration of social and economic function faster than anyone might have imagined. This was all the work of science. And yet, there was much that the COVID-19 pandemic did to illuminate challenges in science, and it is helpful to contemplate what the pandemic taught us that we can carry forward in the coming decades.

Read more here.