From the course: DJ Patil: Ask Me Anything

Why is the march for science important?

From the course: DJ Patil: Ask Me Anything

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Why is the march for science important?

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(upbeat music) - [Interviewer] What are your thoughts on March for Science? Do you think it's important? How do you think it adds to our notion of what science is, and can do? - Yeah, well, my speech that I was fortunate enough to give in the March for Science is online at LinkedIn, and part of the whole argument is, what does it look like, not just for us, but to make sure that we're building the right type of future for our kids and our kids' kids? And what does that investment need to be? I think it's critical that the public votes with their feet. What I mean by that, it says, this is important. These issues are important, science is important, because, if we don't do it, how are we investing in our children's future? You know, there's a letter that I received from, well, President Obama received, from a woman named Jennifer Bittner, and she wrote in about how she had stage IV metastatic breast cancer. It's a death sentence, and she wrote in about the cures that are out there for those types of diseases, and how there's a pace of science, and she said, you know, the pace of science is one in which, if we follow that current pace, she is not going to be around to watch her kids learn how to ride a bike, be in a play. Just pointed out, like, this is amazing country of innovation, this is the most powerful nation in the world, so why can't we do better? And I remember thinking, jeez! What if we were in that position and we had a family member that was like that? And you had the entire power of the United States. What would it look like if we brought the full force of the entire United States of America to that problem? How fast could we change it, what could we do? So, we literally got the team together that evening, and we kind of just said, what would we do? And it turns out there's a lot you can do, but fundamentally, what you have to do is invest in science, and luckily, Congress agrees. They invested nearly a billion dollars to go after this, and they're not the only ones that agreed. There's now treaties that share data around cancer research from Australia and others, but that's not enough, 'cause it's not just investing in the basics of biology. We have to invest in the AI, in the machine learning and the other data sets and nanotechnology and next generation ways to look inside the body, all of it has to come together to make a cure for Jennifer. If we think about a world where just the amount of fundamental innovations that have happened in the last few years, it's astounding. We now know there's gravity waves. We are seeing incredible new ways of potentially working with computers through quantum computing. Most of the universe is dark matter we don't, can't see! (laughing) You know, we're finding that there's ways of thinking about particles at the subatomic level are not what we thought, and how do we make sure that that's happening? We all have to stand up collectively and say, this is important, and that starts with getting out there and marching and telling everyone that, you know what, science is cool. (upbeat music)

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