Cornell University > Fauci, Gates and Rockefeller > Rotary International > Mason Lab > Racine, Wisconsin
”In a whirlwind tour through UW Medicine’s research laboratories in South Lake Union, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), swung easily through a show-and-tell that ranged from a dish full of lab-created beating human heart cells to a gene-deletion step in deciphering how immune systems respond to scary viruses such as dengue and Ebola.
Collins, a physician and geneticist who formerly led the Human Genome Project, had the science stuff down cold — although he graciously insisted that he always learns something new when he gets out of the other Washington.
Murray brilliantly managed to craft a window of relief from the federal budget sequester with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Collins noted, but that will end in 2015.
He pointed to what he called the “deterioration of K-12 education” over the years, with few students able to grasp what it means to develop evidence or having a basic understanding of statistics.
“Talented members of the media” can help bridge the science-literacy gap, Collins added, “but the media is under terrible pressure. A lot of the great science writers are no longer out there anymore; they’re getting squeezed. Nobody’s firing sports writers, but the science reporters seem to be the first ones to go.”
And then, of course, there are the scientists themselves, Collins said.
“It seems to me that we all have to spend more of our time, perhaps, as ambassadors for science literacy — trying to explain what we do and why it matters,” he answered. “Scientists aren’t always as good at that as perhaps we might be.”
Those who work in science may have to think of this as part of their jobs, he suggested — “to take as part of your responsibility that given the chance, you go to a high school and talk about what you do, or you show up at the Rotary club, and we all sort of take this collectively under our own wing. … We all have to be part of the solution.”
They all connect back to the Root -
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/us-health-research-funding-critical-nih-head-tells-uw-meet/
Cornell University > Fauci, Gates and Rockefeller > Rotary International > Mason Lab > Racine, Wisconsin