Science Under Attack: Can We Rebuild Public Trust? | Pres., NY Academy of Sciences

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:01.442)
When trust in science declines, society does not become more free. It becomes more fragile. Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Mykel Salomon. Today's conversation is about truth, is about trust, is about science. Not as a slogan, not as a debate tactic, but really as a public good.

My guest today is Nicholas B. Dirks, President and CEO of the New York Academy of Science. Nick, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Nick Dirks (00:40.121)
Michael, great to be here. Thank you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:42.388)
Awesome. Appreciate you taking the time to be with us today and to go over this conversation. Because I really think that we are at a point in time where the human history around science is really under pressure and public trust in higher education has been shaken, right, as we know. The information ecosystem make it easier for misinformation about science to spread and harder for people to know.

what is accurate anymore, right? So I think this conversation is very sound and it's very current and I'm looking very much to have it with you. And to get started, Nick, I would like to ask you, when you look at public trust in science and higher education today, what do you think it's actually breaking?

Nick Dirks (01:34.991)
Yeah, so it's a really, really interesting question because I think the roots of distrust are multiple and they also direct themselves towards a variety of institutions, not just science or scientific institutions, not just universities and higher education, but in fact, the whole domain of expertise and the ways in which knowledge is

basically produced and then used in a variety of different contexts. And of course, from the point of view of people who, like me, have lived my entire life in universities and have just assumed that people would think, science is a great thing. This has all been difficult to process and even more difficult to kind of both comprehend and then figure out ways to respond to.

So, you again, we can drill down on various parts of this, but I think first of all, it's important to remember or to know if one is not necessarily looking back in time. In this country, not to mention around the world, but in the United States, there has been distrust about science on and off since our origins. Almost every 20, 30 years or so, there almost seems to be a cycle in which there's a...

if not a revolt against science, certainly a lot of indications that, you know, science is a problem. You know, last year we, I don't know, celebrated, but we marked the 100th anniversary of the Scopes trial, which was the trial that took place in Tennessee in 1925 over the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. And the teacher who, John Scopes, who was teaching evolution was found guilty of violating

state law. And so, you know, it was a jury that unanimously decided he was guilty of teaching something that he shouldn't have taught and he was teaching science. you know, 1925, by that time, Darwin's theories of evolution were pretty well established. He had published The Origin of Species back in 1859. And it's actually, you know, kind of

Nick Dirks (04:03.137)
wild in some ways that in America, you know, there's been this controversy around it. There were, you know, controversies that took place in the United Kingdom and Great Britain where Darwin, of course, developed his theories, but never anything like the US. So, you know, first of all, this goes way back. Secondly, the kinds of things that scientists do often really do challenge our everyday assumptions about life. And, you know, one can go back to

Newton and the apple falling from the tree and gravity. But, you know, even scientists like Einstein, who in the early years of the 20th century came up with, you know, the theory of relativity, even he, when he was faced with some of the implications of his new theory, said, you know, I don't believe this, God doesn't play dice. And that was really about uncertainty and the whole history of physics with Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle.

Schrodinger and the question of Schrodinger's cat and all these different kinds of very arcane things that were being both discovered and you know and kind of wrestled with in the early part of the 20th century and even scientists sometimes find it difficult and then what happens with quantum physics? Well, we develop the atomic bomb.

And of course, we know how devastating that can be and we are, you know, all of us always, think, deeply concerned about the possibility of nuclear war. Well, you know, that's something that science could do, which would be pretty awful. It could lead to not just the end of the world, but to the destruction of the planet. So, you know, it's a complex question. But we all know that in the current moment,

we're facing a kind of political challenge, which is that the people who are actually in power over the institutions of government that are responsible for things like public health, centers for disease control and the, you know, Department of Health and Human Services and so on. These are people who were part of an election that effectively was

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:51.053)
Yep.

Nick Dirks (06:15.417)
revolting against the kinds of experts who used to dominate both bureaucracies in Washington and for that matter, universities and other places where scientific research takes place. So I think this is part of an ongoing conversation, but I think we have to begin really by not just saying, come on, just if we speak as scientists a little louder, we just shout this out.

and speak more slowly perhaps about who we are and what we do and why it is you should take us seriously. People will take us seriously. But I think actually it's a moment to pause and reflect a little bit and think maybe it's not just the communication strategy that we're using. Maybe it's what we're trying to communicate. And maybe we have to think about it really differently. I'll say one more thing and then I'll ask you to tell me what I'm saying.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:10.99)
It's okay.

Nick Dirks (07:14.267)
You know, in the early days and months of the pandemic, the slogan that we encountered all the time was follow the science. And everyone, of course, who was part of the university world repeated that slogan and sort of understood that slogan and felt that that slogan sort of said it all. But, you know, the problem is that the science was changing. It was changing almost

daily and it was changing in full view of everyone. So at the beginning we all scrubbed our packages and our boxes and we were concerned about surfaces only to realize that of course this was spread by aerosol not by surface formides. And then we were told don't wear a mask and then we were told do wear a mask and then we were told maybe we were told not to wear a mask because there was a shortage of masks and yes if there's a shortage of masks sure medical

frontline medical workers and the likes should get it first, because they're the ones who are most in danger of being infected. But that doesn't mean you tell people not to wear masks. It's not important to wear a mask. You actually say, if you can find a mask, wear a mask. And you work very hard to get masks and all of the things that eventually took place. But in fact, there was a bit of chaos around both the communication of the science and also about the scientific understanding of the coronavirus. Well, all of that

has imprinted itself very deeply, I think, on the American psyche. And there's a lot of distrust that continues to this day. And of course, a lot of the decisions that were made about responding to the coronavirus, shutting down schools, insisting on social distancing, requiring us to all communicate by Zoom, these have had other effects, not all of which have been good. At the same time that

what science did was, I think, miraculous. That is to say, producing the first mRNA vaccine that was incredibly effective, that was rolled out in less than a year, and that had a huge, huge benefit, preventing millions of deaths in this country alone, perhaps, but certainly globally. yeah, science is miraculous. It can do things that will both protect our health.

Nick Dirks (09:36.817)
and then deal with other kinds of challenges from cancer to neurodegenerative diseases. But science has a lot of other dimensions and we can't ignore it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:47.754)
It's when I was hearing to you right now, it's it's almost went into a history lessons with you right now in the past five minutes. And and I wasn't expecting you to land into the COVID era, which I think it makes perfect sense. And I've been listening to what you're saying is the public distrust. I think it got it accelerated with COVID.

And there are some political parties and people that use all that scenario and situation to try to infiltrate and to put in people that distrust because of everything that we were going on. But science doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be perfect. And with COVID-19 and our response, it wasn't perfect. And we were, the scientists were also, you know,

making decisions based on the data and the information that they had at the time. But I think that back to this question on this topic and the problem with trust, especially in science, I think there is a communication problem there, as you were saying, maybe an institutional problem, even a political one that exacerbates

all of this and the situation that we are regarding science.

Nick Dirks (11:15.311)
Yeah, no, I mean, there's all of those problems. We say it's communication, to be sure. I didn't mean to suggest that we can't communicate better. We certainly can. But there are institutional questions. That is to say how that knowledge is then taken up by an institution and turned into social policy. And that then becomes a political issue, which, of course, we've seen play itself out in front of us very dramatically over the last few years.

All of those things, you know connect to each other, but they also they also do raise the larger question What will it take to restore trust? What is trust based on and you know and you you're you're from the world of tech and you know about this and And you talk about this a lot on your podcast We're now at an inflection point in terms of the history of science and technology with the development and rapid you know in incredible progress and

in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. We're looking at a world in which things will change dramatically and preserving some sense of what is fundamental to being human, which includes recognizing that technology has to accommodate itself to certain kinds of

social norms. It has to accommodate itself to certain kinds of human needs. And it has to be something that we think about not as an independent process of just technological development taking place on the one side, but as something that is deeply embedded in all the other things that we think about our politics, our institutions, but also our social fabric.

and our individual lives and what it takes to live a life that is full of meaning and purpose.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:16.3)
I love technology, as you're saying. That has been my whole life. But I do love more being a human being. And especially in this era with AI, and I do love AI, I use it. But I feel like we are playing catch-ups. Like human beings are taking the second place in this race while AI is put at the top. And that's my main challenge right now, which AI accelerating everything that should be good, right?

know, helping science to discovering maybe the cancer cure or something in that regards, but it's also exposing everything that is bad about being human. For example...

how to recognize fake news anymore. There's so much about fake news out there that AI, it's kind of complicating this already fragile relationship that exists between what is truth and what is not. And that's the problem that I see today, especially with AI and accelerating the distrust potentially because of fake news infiltrating more our day-to-day life.

Nick Dirks (14:28.549)
Yeah, I know for sure. I mean, you we've seen the problem of fake news with social media. You didn't need AI to produce misinformation or deep fakes or whatever. But the kind of misinformation, the authenticity or the feeling of authenticity that comes along with some of this information, the ease of producing it. And of course, you know, the technologies that are not only about creating news, but also about creating images, videos.

representations of things that look as if they really are happening in front of you when you see them on a screen make you really, really worry, particularly given the fact that already we've seen the negative effects of this. But then the question goes back to trust, because who are you going to trust? Who's going to say this is real information, this is real news, and this is fake? And if you don't trust the expert,

or you think of expertise itself as a problem and you actually think you have as good an idea as anybody else. In fact, now you can access your own information through whatever social media channel you rely upon or your friends recommend to you or that just comes across your feed and seems to correlate with your political or social or cultural preferences.

that that should be more reliable than some disembodied voice that will come out of the federal drug association or wherever it might be, or a university or wherever. And you can say, this sounds better to me. I trust this more. So the problem of trust is one now that is getting much more, I think,

complicated, much more deeply embedded in the everyday technologies that we're going to be working with, experiencing that are going to change our lives. And then the question becomes, and I know you've thought about this a lot as well, if this technology is used for things that are good, well, that'll be a real mark in its favor, right? So if we get a new cancer drug that comes out of the use of AI to figure out how

Nick Dirks (16:54.811)
drug might work to go and accelerate human trials and that then you find out your aunt who gets diagnosed with cancer recovers much more quickly and totally from than would have been the case before. You're going to say, OK, AI, I'll, know, yeah, and the experts, the technologists, all of them, maybe I should trust them after all. But if.

If AI is to rig elections or to foment social strife, to displace jobs from companies where you're hoping you can get a job or your children will be employed, if AI begins to make humans seem irrelevant, if we end up having to defer constantly

to a machine, you and if we go to see a doctor and the doctor turns out to be a robot and we're told yes, the robot has, you know, a 95 % chance of reading your X-ray correctly and the actual, you know, the flesh human doctor, you know, only has a 90 % chance. So you want to have a robot. Are you really going to sit there in the doctor's office and think this is better world?

Particularly when the robot has one motive talking to you and, you know, says do this and gives you the statistics, but isn't able to empathize with you in the same way a human would. God forbid, of course, if the robot gets to be able to empathize with you more than a doctor, but you get my drift. I mean, the problem is, you know, we're going to trust expertise partly on the basis of, you know, how the communication takes place, but we're going to expertise partly on the basis of what

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:30.766)
the

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:42.221)
Yeah.

Nick Dirks (18:45.573)
you know, the things that the experts are creating, what it is, how it's used, how it affects us.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:52.846)
I think it gets us back to the communication challenge, right? And I know that you're passionate about science. You lead one of the oldest scientific institutions in the US. And the communication part of it is how we can make it or break it in a way. So from your point of view, Nick, how do you think scientific institutions, scientists should...

try to communicate in this world with AI maybe accelerating and producing fake news and misinformation out there.

Nick Dirks (19:36.305)
Right, well, great question. So first of all, I think, and this is something that we work on a lot at the New York Academy of Sciences. We have various programs that we put on for the public. In fact, in the wake of COVID, just to go back there, in the first two months of the pandemic in the US, really basically from the middle of March 2020 for a couple of months.

We put on regular webinars and we transitioned completely obviously to being online. Everybody else did too, but we got some of the experts that we had part of our network as part of our network. We got them to speak about research that was going on and we did it a couple of times a week. And we found out that even in the space of three or four days, people would have new experimental or

actual practical data that they could report on. And so they could kind of update what they were learning. But the most effective webinars were the ones where the scientists were actually talking about how they were learning new things. In other words, they were transparent about science as a process of learning, a process of discovery, not a dogma of truths that they'd already discovered.

And it was those programs that people responded to most positively. We actually had a lot of journalists who would come to these because, of course, they were looking for better scientific answers for the stories they were writing in the newspapers and in magazines and so on. And they complimented us for getting these scientists who were able to actually convey the process that they were going through to try to learn more. And as we...

thought about this, we realized that, you know, this was actually a much more effective way of communicating science because you were communicating what science does, not what science is. And in that process, of course, the scientists were expressing a good deal of humility, they would say when they didn't know something. And, you know, our instinct as scientists is to say, this is the scientific fact, just listen to me.

Nick Dirks (22:00.931)
But it's not effective. It often turned out not to be true because things did change. But ultimately, of course, it just wasn't even persuasive. So what we try to do as much as we can is to say, trust the public to be able to understand when you say, this is complex. We know this part, but we don't know that part. Yeah, this is frustrating.

But that's how science is conducted. And no, what is important here is not so much to trust everything that we say we think we know, but to trust that we are leveling with you about what we don't know as well as what we do know. So I think the point of all of this is that we really do have to figure out ways to be able to communicate that

that science is something that is part of a human process of learning. It is miraculous the things that we've learned about the universe. It's miraculous the things we've learned about the human body, about disease, about potential cures. But it's all been done by humans. And it's all limited by the fact that we are human, even as there are things that, and there are scientists that are part of our networks too, who are just incredibly impressive.

I you talk to them and you say, my goodness, this really is a brilliant scientist. But at the same time, that brilliance is much better communicated when you hear about what they are confused about and what they are puzzling about and what the process of figuring something out is all about. And then it becomes, and we're humans who also like narrative, right? It also becomes a story. And as a story,

then it becomes captivating and not just a set of numbers or a, yeah, and you connect to it. And then you become part of it. You can actually participate in it because a narrative is about bringing you in, connecting something to your own life, your own experience, your own hopes, dreams, fears, and all the rest of it. And it becomes a much more human endeavor. you know, to...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:04.32)
It connects. Yeah.

Nick Dirks (24:26.063)
borrow a title that I see on my screen in front of me, it becomes part of the human protocol.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:31.63)
There you go. It's all about humans connecting to other humans. And I think that not only on this topic, but like anything that is happening right now, we need to try to connect more with each other, right? Instead of allowing others to detach us and to separate us, we need to try to find ways to connect to each other. And that doesn't mean that we're going to agree on everything, but that means that we can find a common ground.

where we both maybe can speak the same language. And speaking the same language sometimes means that you, the scientist for example, is going through its process and we are just here on the standing at a level that it makes sense for us. And that's what you were saying right now, it makes total sense Nick, because it's the same thing in politics, It's the...

elections are won by sometimes those that may not be the most political savvy, but those that connect with people in their own way. And sometimes it's about finding what is that place that you can get down to or to to connect with the rest of us. And once we find it, the rest is about building trust and building that relationship. And we all love science.

And, you know, to hear what we hear today in the news and people talking and putting like scientists and, you know, and making people distrust what science has provided us for centuries, it's just crazy and wild to me, right? But it seems that they have been able to communicate better than what we have been able to. And I think we have to regain that part and get

to the place that we regain that trust, as you were saying.

Nick Dirks (26:33.935)
You know, when you talk about, you know, the kind of way in which politics works, not just in this country, but around the world, you're completely correct. It's the people who connect with the public who succeed, and they don't always tell the most complex stories, and sometimes they don't always tell the most truthful story. And, yeah, that's an issue and a problem. But on the other hand,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (26:52.622)
There you go, there you go.

Nick Dirks (27:00.977)
I think it is clear that, you know, that when it comes to topics like science, people sometimes will say they love it or they respect it or whatever, but they also a little frightened of it. And they're frightened because, you know, they might have taken a physics or chemistry course in high school and they remember it as being really super hard. And there were things that they didn't understand. And, you know, we know about

know, phobias about math. You know, there are many people I know who still have dreams, nightmares at night when they are in trigonometry class or algebra class and the teacher asks them something and they just blank out and they don't know what, you know, they don't know what day it is. don't know, you know, they don't know what a function is. They just, you are terrified by this prospect of being called out, you know, on their math. And, you know, that...

That is a fear that is real and it's perfectly understandable because it is also part of the human condition. But I think what we've really emphasized a lot at the Academy is that the public has to be brought into these conversations. And you almost have to think about it as, know, there's what they call retail politics. Well, maybe there's retail science.

And by that, of course, I mean, you you have to take science out of the laboratory and you have to find ways to talk to people and you have to find ways to connect with people, even if it's a very technical subject. And of course, you know, it can be very technical, but that can also be very immediate for people because, of course, you know, it's what goes into a cancer cure, what goes into some of the new immunological therapies around oncology can be very complex, but they can also

At some point in your life when you get a diagnosis and you go see the doctor, it's the doctor who's able to explain to you what's going on and actually interpret all these numbers. Well, there's a 95 % chance of this and a 90 % chance of that and 85%. But somebody who can interpret all of that in a way that draws you in, where you actually begin to trust them and you will then make decisions in a way that are responsive both to the best knowledge that you can.

Nick Dirks (29:23.505)
a choir, but also a sense of trust, which, you know, obviously that I think is in some ways, you know, doctor friends of mine tell me that's the most important element. It's that human element and being the doctor is the is the capacity to translate medical knowledge into something that is that is actually both comprehensible and usable by a patient and on behalf of a patient. So, you know, if

If we think about science that way, I think we can see that it's going to be a long process. Maybe it's like a political campaign. People talk about citizen science as well as a way of recruiting interest in science. turns out that it's like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is put together by amateurs around the world who are just intrigued at the...

by the process of putting together a comprehensive encyclopedia of information. And they will spend hours on this and they don't get paid for it. It's something they do because they believe that it's important. But if we, again, we realize that science is no different, I mean, yeah, it can be hugely complex. And I hear the Academy, I my own podcast and I sometimes talk to...

to scientists I talked the other day to an astrophysicist, who's talking about galactic time in a way that stretches your head and your brain in ways that you sometimes think your head is gonna explode. But at some point at some level, you just become so fascinated by these things. And then if the stories pull you in,

you stay with them. And then to some extent, you can make them your own. And citizen science is about that too. You participate in that process. And we can learn a lot by effectively doing for science what, as you said, we do for politics. Will this always work? No. But I think it's part of the arsenal that we need to basically restock in order to deal with the current predicament around

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:36.578)
Yeah.

Nick Dirks (31:46.798)
around trust.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:48.546)
Yeah, it's definitely, we need to give it a try to whatever the tools we have, our disposals and processes and ways to try to diversify how the message is translated and is passed on to those that are not scientists in a way. So we can try to connect more with those, right? It's about trying to tell a story. When we are told the stories, we remember and we connect to it.

And I think that's one of the ways that we may be able to improve where we are. But science is also not magic, right? Science doesn't happen just because someone thought, hey, one day this is the cure of whatever they're working on.

Science needs funding, right? The pipeline of discovery is not easy. Sometimes when you look from the outside, people may think that this is something that is permanent, that is happening because it's happening. But it really depends on funding, institutions, a lot of patients, and sometimes public will, right?

The way I see it right now, and I'm sure you have some thoughts about it, for example, we hear in the news a lot about thousands of NIH and NSF grants that were canceled. Science news reported that roughly 5,500 of NIH and NSF research grants totaling billions in unspent funds were frozen or ended in 2025.

So when I listen to this from the outside, I'm concerned as a regular human being because I know science is not magic. It's a lot of hard work. Scientists trying to repeat, put processes in place and a lot of discovery that comes to it. And without funding and public trust, when I look at it from my side, I'm concerned, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (33:57.415)
And I'm curious to hear from you, what do you think this signal to us as a society?

Nick Dirks (34:04.753)
Yeah, no, it's, there's no doubt it's deeply troubling what has happened to research funding in our country over the last year and a half. And the truth is that even before the current administration, you know, the budgets at NSF and NIH were too flat. I think there's been a growing assumption that, you know, private capital can make up the difference.

and that because so much more science is being funded by private sources, that federal funding is less important. But of course, as you know, federal funding goes back to the second World War, to the social compact that was described by Vannevar Bush in his book, The Endless Frontier, his kind of report, that led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation. The National Institutes of Health existed before, but they were

massively increased in size and funding after the war. And those two agencies alone leave aside all the other kinds of federal funding that is provided by funding from the Department of Energy for national laboratories or funding from other federal agencies that support everything from meteorological research to...

geographical, geological, and the like work. They alone have been responsible for catapulting the US to the forefront of scientific research and scientific discovery and knowledge. Our universities became the jewel in the crown. They became the real pride of the United States. And everybody around the world looked at American universities as the leading exemplars.

research excellence. And so that's why people from around the world wanted to study in our universities, they wanted to teach in our universities, they wanted to do research, they wanted to have collaborations with them. You know, before I came to the New York Academy, I was in the university, I was an academic. But my most recent job was being Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. And Berkeley is a great research university. It's a public university, of course.

Nick Dirks (36:28.133)
But it's the place where the cyclotron was first designed and built. It was the place where a whole number of scientific elements of the universe were discovered, one of which is Berkleyum. It's a place that most recently has been the site where gene editing has been developed around the capacity of CRISPR Cas9.

by Jennifer Doudna, who just won the Nobel Prize a few years ago. And countless other discoveries, including in the field of artificial intelligence, semiconductors were important advances in the understanding of and then production of semiconductors took place at Berkeley. Anyway, that's just one university. It's a very good one, but it's just one. But it has been responsible for such incredible scientific innovation.

And we like to think that Steve Jobs built the iPhone and that it was a brilliant entrepreneur who's responsible for these little computers we all carry around in our pockets. Well, he designed the iPhone. He marketed the iPhone. But almost every feature, every major feature of the iPhone, from the chip inside it to the GPS that allows you to use it for directional purposes,

to all the other major features that make the iPhone the iPhone came out of federal funding, out of national labs, of DARPA, and out of university laboratories, which were themselves funded by the federal government. it is simply important for us to understand. And then think about all the different products that we rely upon. People say, I'm not interested in science.

You know, it's very hard to imagine a world in which, you know, the contributions that scientific and technological innovation hasn't made things so much easier, you know, from the automobile to the airplane, from the washing machine to the vacuum cleaner. And our whole nature of work, our whole nature of travel, our whole nature of leisure and play has been transformed. Leave aside.

Nick Dirks (38:53.679)
the fact that vaccines had probably been the most responsible biomedical innovation leading to extended lifespans for human beings who, know, 100 years ago couldn't expect to live over 60 and now can expect to live over 80 often and certainly develop parts of the world. So the list goes on and on, but a lot of it goes back.

to this kind of federal support. So what's the situation now? what is the, know, are we okay as a society? These universities, these national labs, they've done everything they need and everything can happen in the private sector. No, it's still the mix between the private sector and the public sector that has been so productive. And again, you know, federal funding often supports the basic research.

the research that nobody knows where it's going to lead to. It ends up often being the research that leads to hugely important applications and translations, but you don't know it at the beginning. As a university chancellor, one of the things I used to do was to celebrate when somebody on the faculty got a Nobel Prize. So for example, my first year at Berkeley, Randy Schachman, a biologist, got the Nobel Prize. And he told...

in his press conference the story of how he basically discovered synthetic insulin, but it came out of being interested in cell membranes. It was a completely unapplied project that led him to think about yeast and cells and other things and do experiments that ended up benefiting everybody who has to deal with questions around blood sugar and, you know, the need for insulin.

That relation, and now of course it's being produced in the private sector. you know, that handoff has taken place. So what I worry about now is that, you know, there are a lot of damages done by these cuts. You just described some of the overall numbers that are attached to recent decisions about federal funding. But major projects have stopped.

Nick Dirks (41:11.897)
And not just crazy projects that people associate with the eye or whatever. Almost all medical trials are medical trials for particular populations because of genetic, because of genotype differences across the human species. And almost everything there that got cut was critical to overall human health. So again, there's been lots and lots of, I think,

you know, damage that has been done. And to top it all off, my biggest worry is that a whole generation of scientists might be at this current moment being discouraged from continuing on, either because the particular project has stopped and shut down, or because they lost their funding overall as a postdoc or whatever. And, you know, some are going to leave the country, some are going to leave science.

But all told, it's going to have long-term effects because a whole generation gets knocked out.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (42:18.286)
It makes me think of young scientists, right? Those that are just getting started in their career or very early in their career. When they look at this situation, it's...

what would happen to me, what would happen to the field that I'm so passionate about. If the money doesn't come in and these projects are put on hold, what is gonna happen to my future? So it makes me think about how this very challenging situation impacts those that are just getting started in the field, or maybe even stopping people from becoming scientists in the future.

Nick Dirks (42:58.235)
That's, that is the worry. And, you know, it's, it's like everything else. mean, you, you, you, if you're going to do something, you have to work hard at it. Science is really, really hard. You're to do well at it. You got to work even harder, but you also need funding for it. You need to have a career path. And if you don't see that path, you're going to say, well, you know, I'll do something else. but you know, that's not going to be good.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:14.914)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Dirks (43:24.785)
for the discoveries that we're gonna rely on to make our future better. And while we're talking about the benefits of science, we also know that science has brought in its wake some things that need to be cleaned up. A lot of the plastics and chemicals that were designed for use to make life easier and better and so on in earlier decades.

you know, is led in its way to, you know, forever chemicals, forever plastics, potential environmental pollution that can be injurious to not just the environment, but to our health. It's led to overall climate change and, you know, the carbonization of the atmosphere, which, you know, could lead to potentially catastrophic effects on our lives and our world.

Well, you know, the problem is not even that science has created some of these issues, but that science is the only way we know to solve some of these issues. So we're going to rely on science in the future. It's not like you can just say, OK, game over. Let's all go back to our, know, and you can do something else in the future. We're going to need it more and more and more. And look at your world of technology. You know, who do you want to have?

basically designing the next generation of AI tools. You want to have people who are thinking about the good uses that this has to go forward in conversations. And the best uses of AI, as you said at the beginning, are the uses that are going to be put to the benefit of science and human flourishing.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:05.32)
Absolutely yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:19.892)
It's making things, you know, finding greater purpose for the public good, right? And that's the type of scientists, that's the type of science, that the type of, you know, processes that we all need to be looking more and more, absolutely. So Nick, you know, I think we briefly touched on kind of the new social compact that we need, right, for science.

We know that we are kind of in crisis mode right now, especially around trust. But what do you think science owes society today?

Nick Dirks (46:02.501)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that really is I think a critical question because it's not just that we owe, you know science a lot we do But science does have to constantly prove that it is first of all following its own best practices You know, there has been a replication process a crisis and in some aspects of science in particular where it turns out people publish a paper

They're hurrying through their career. They're trying to get another publication, a higher age factor and so on in their publication record. But it turns out they do something that is sloppy. And then somebody else comes along and tries to replicate the experiment. It turns out it can't be replicated. Well, this doesn't help trust in science. And the least that science and scientists owe society is to follow their own best practices.

with respect to absolute scrupulous care in doing an experiment, then in representing and publishing and communicating the work that's been done and being clear about what has been proved and what hasn't yet been proved. So there's that part, which is a contract is two-sided, We talked about a social compact or a social contract. The point is that there's two people who are gonna shake hands.

And they each have to be able to get something out of the deal. So, so first of all, you know, best practices, but secondly, you know, we do have to ensure an AI is a good example that it is benefiting us. And right now, of course, I think there is growing concern. We haven't talked too much about this yet, but, you know, it's something I'm, I'm sure you're thinking a lot about. lot of people are really nervous that AI is going to take their jobs.

all of our jobs. Is it really possible that we might have, as some of the titans of tech in the Silicon Valley say, 25 % to 40 % of current jobs just disappear? And if that happens, and even if new jobs come, there's going to be a long period of time in between of transition.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:25.486)
For adjustment, exactly. It doesn't happen overnight, yes.

Nick Dirks (48:28.657)
It doesn't happen overnight. You have to create new kinds of opportunities and then you have to train people for them and so on and so forth. So what's going to happen then? And does science have an obligation and does technology have an obligation to try to think about the impact and effects of its discoveries as well as the potential uses that it might have down the line? So there are real questions about, I think, the reciprocity that is needed in this.

in this context, if it is to be a proper compact and a contract that both sides are going to want to shake hands on.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:07.18)
What about we as a society, what do we owe science?

Nick Dirks (49:12.389)
Well, you know, the first thing I would say is that.

And I alluded to this before when I said science is hard, Scientists don't actually live usually very spectacularly glorious lives. Scientists I know, they go to their lab, they go to their bench, they work long hours, lot of experiments fail. They spend two, three, four years doing one and then they say, well, we

figure this out, but there's this other thing that we have to figure out. And then they spend another three or four years working on it. I mean, it can be very painstaking. It can be very frustrating, but it can also be hugely time intensive in terms of just, you know, a long timeline to get to the point where you feel like you really made the kind of progress that you feel you can use to justify all the work that went into it. And I think we need to recognize that.

You know, it's not like, you know, a startup in San Francisco where, you know, you become a billionaire in three years if you get it right. If you get it right, you get another renewal of your postdoc, you know, $65,000 a year. That plus I don't know what is going to give you a million dollars. It's not a, you know, it's not a life that is easy.

And it in some cases of course will translate into personal success and and fame and sometimes wealth But more often than not it doesn't so I think we just have to recognize that you know the whole scientific establishment Is is deserving of our respect?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:06.164)
Absolutely. It's a mutual obligation that we have, right? In a way, as we try to build more trust and we try to build a better and brighter future for all of us. And Nick, you know, we have been kind of focused on...

especially on the situation here in the US around science, right? But you have also mentioned at the beginning how some of these problems, they really cross border, right? And in the international arena, because science has always crossed border in a way. But also the way I look at the world right now, I think the world is becoming, has become already more fragmented in the way more nationalistic, right? In a way.

And I think it's important for us to look at things when you're looking at that type of situation and how we can expand and rebuild also trust on international collaboration.

Nick Dirks (52:14.245)
Yeah, one of the things about science is that it doesn't really know any boundaries or borders. We actually have a trademark here at the Academy, which is Scientists Without Borders. And we developed it around a particular initiative. it turns out scientists don't have borders. They really don't. And if you look at some of the great scientific papers, know, the participation in that scientific work.

both directly in terms of who gets listed as an author, but indirectly in terms of whose work is cited in the footnotes and references, span the globe. And some of the best work is being done by teams that are generally multinational teams. That's one element of it. I've also mentioned this before, but the American university system has become

you know, so attractive to people from around the globe, at least until recently, that, you know, the best scientists from all over the place want to come and either spend some time here as a student or a faculty member or a researcher. But, you know, they come, they establish relationships, and they continue to work together. And that's one of the things that, you know, is so remarkable about the movement of scientists. They widen their networks.

They establish new collaborative relationships and they do better work as a result. And they do better work as a result for all of us. And then they publish. And they publish the work openly. We advocate for open science at the New York Academy of Sciences because we want as much of the work that's being done to be shared because we think only then can it go out and be useful to others around the world who are working on other kinds of problems who can then...

see this and build on it. That really is a deep commitment that we have. But we also just don't believe that science can be nationalized. Each country should feel proud of its scientific experts and its scientific institutions. But all of them will be better, including in countries like the US and China, if they work across borders.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:09.198)
That's great to hear.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:34.87)
It's amazing to hear from you as you were saying how much of a benefit for us, for our country, for our university is to have people from other countries and nationalities part of this ecosystem that is just trying to make our future better, right? And sometimes we hear in the news how some people are against of others coming to our country

and studying our university, when at the end of the day, the pros are more than the cons, in a way. So it makes me think about so much good that having people to interact with our scientists can benefit us all when we remove the rhetoric from what we hear in the news, for example.

Nick Dirks (55:29.841)
Totally, totally. And the thing about scientists is that they themselves, they can be patriots, they can be very deeply proud of their own nations. But they're also members of an international community of chemists, physicists, biologists, cancer researchers, and so on. And the US has played an enormously important role in that ecosystem. But it's also been benefited enormously.

by that ecosystem. And, you know, at the end of the day, American science is as good as it is, not just because of federal support, not just because of homegrown talent, but because of the international relationships that have been fundamental to our university and research system in this

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (56:21.172)
Awesome, Nick. I know we're closer to the end of this conversation. This 60-minute has really gone very fast. It feels to me like I would have more time talking about all these topics that are very so passionate about. to finish things off, at least today, I have one more question for you. And it's about AI.

So what would you tell policymakers and governments about what type of safeguards do you want governments and policymakers to focus on when discussing things about AI?

Nick Dirks (57:08.763)
So that's an enormously complex question, as you know. And we're still figuring out what some of the safeguards need to be. One of the challenges is that even the people who are making AI, even the people who writing the algorithms, even the people who are designing the training sets or supervising the reinforcement learning and human feedback kinds of

training protocols for AI. They don't fully know how AI works. They don't fully know how even the Bayesian predictive mechanism that AI uses to come up with the next word, the next sentence, the next paragraph, how it really produces what it produces. And so in that context, you realize that we're all trying to figure this out together.

that you need to have a certain amount of technical knowledge. But that doesn't mean that the people who have that technical knowledge or the people in the frontier labs who stand to benefit enormously from the market potential of new AI products and systems should be the only ones to do this. So, you know, once again, I think there has to be broad participation in this process. I think the government needs to take on board the concerns that the public has.

But I also think that this is a role that we at the New York Academy of Sciences think we can help to play, that neutral organizations like ours, nonpartisan organizations like the Academy, should also be helping to devise what the minimal set of safeguards might be. And of course, we know that even in the news this morning, there was something to the effect that one of the recent mass shootings

shootings that took place was devised in part with advice from one of the CHAT GPT models. This is obviously a major problem. It wasn't designed by the people who were creating CHAT GPT that this should happen. But there needs to be a response and a very, very fast response as we learn more. And we can only have those and have the reassurance that we're going to get those kinds of responses.

Nick Dirks (59:33.815)
if we can join with the labs that are producing, the frontier labs that are producing this, join with the government that has the capacity to regulate across the board, but also bring in the general public and also some neutral institutions that can help adjudicate different interests to come out with the best negotiated settlements for how to try to do our best at least to ensure that AI is as safe as possible.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:00:03.636)
Awesome, Nick. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today. Thank you for taking us a little bit closer to science during this conversation today. It has been a pleasure to know about your leadership and the work that you guys do at the New York Academy of Sciences. So I do appreciate very much you being with us today.

Nick Dirks (01:00:23.141)
Great to be here. Thanks so much for a terrific conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:00:26.794)
Awesome, and if this conversation challenge how you think about truth, science, AI, share it with someone who cares about the future of society. The code may change, but our humanity is the constant. Thank you all, see you next week.