In this panel discussion, the speaker joins a conversation with three Nobel Prize winners: Donna Strickland, Rich Roberts, and Saul Perlmutter, exploring the themes of truth, trust, and hope in science. The discussion highlights the collaborative nature of scientific discoveries, the historical relevance of scientific advancements, and the need for science to bridge communication with the public. Each panelist shares insights into how scientific processes have been part of historical shifts and how they contribute to building trust among communities today.

The Nobel laureates discuss the changing dynamics of science communication, emphasizing the importance of engaging with a broader audience. They reflect on the role of failure in scientific studies, how public communication can foster a better understanding of the scientific method, and suggest incorporating critical thinking and scientific discourse into education at a young age. The panelists argue for more interactive and participatory approaches to science communication, stressing the importance of open conversations in society.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. kernel [ˈkɜːrnəl] - (noun) - A central or essential part of something. - Synonyms: (core, essence, nucleus)

They actually discovered a little kernel of truth.

2. prism [ˈprɪzəm] - (noun) - A transparent object that separates white light into a spectrum of colors. Metaphorically, it can mean different perspectives. - Synonyms: (perspective, standpoint, viewpoint)

...from the perspective and the prisms that they bring to the table as Nobel Prize winners.

3. disheartening [dɪsˈhɑːrtənɪŋ] - (adjective) - Causing someone to lose their enthusiasm or morale. - Synonyms: (discouraging, demoralizing, disappointing)

This was also disheartening to me as a scientist...

4. deliberative [dɪˈlɪbərətɪv] - (adjective) - Involving careful consideration or discussion to make decisions. - Synonyms: (thoughtful, reflective, meditative)

...in deliberative democracy, deliberative polling is the kind we're doing tomorrow.

5. facetious [fəˈsiːʃəs] - (adjective) - Making humorous remarks that are not meant to be taken seriously. - Synonyms: (flippant, glib, joking)

I'm being a little bit facetious, but...

6. participatory [pɑːˈtɪsəpətɔːri] - (adjective) - Involving participation by a community or group. - Synonyms: (inclusive, collaborative, cooperative)

I'm very interested in these issues of participatory democracy.

7. subtle [ˈsʌtl] - (adjective) - Making use of clever and indirect methods to achieve something. - Synonyms: (ingenious, shrewd, stealthy)

Very subtly done.

8. polarize [ˈpoʊləˌraɪz] - (verb) - To cause a division into opposing groups. - Synonyms: (divide, separate, alienate)

But I don't think we had it that polarized up here in Canada.

9. sphere [sfɪr] - (noun) - A particular section of society or an area of activity or interest. - Synonyms: (domain, realm, sector)

...get it out there in the global sphere and maybe start changing the dial.

10. consensus [kənˈsɛnsəs] - (noun) - General or widespread agreement among all the members of a group. - Synonyms: (agreement, accord, unanimity)

...that Nobel. And I think this would be the real moment for us to start teaching how it is that you do all these different steps and different processes so that the students feel they're part of the activity and that they are able to use it.

Truth, Trust & Hope - Nobel Prize laureates - Nobel Prize

Wonderful. Thank you. Well, what an exciting day. I mean, I flew across the country to get here for this because I could not miss it. And one of the reasons why is because I wanted to impress my kids. I said, I'm going to be on a stage with three Nobel Prize winners. I thought that would impress them. And what they said was, what are you doing up there?

And so what I'm doing up here is I'm going to ask the question that I hope that you want to ask. So that is what we're going to do. So on the screen, we have a Nobel Prize winner in physics, Donna Strickland, joining us from. And then joining us also is Doctor Rich Roberts, Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology. And then finally another Nobel Prize winner in physics, Saul Perlmutter. And so what we're going to do, I love the title of this. It's called the, you know, it says the truth, trust and hope. But then there's a subtitle for ours, which is the truth is out there, and it is, it is out there. And, you know, part of one of the things that's exciting about being with Nobel Prize winners is they actually discovered a little kernel of truth, a little kernel of truth that excited everyone and in some ways, turned over something that was thought before.

And so we're going to go through a discussion about what we've seen and heard today and our reactions to it. And so a little bit of it will be covering some ground that's been covered, but from the perspective and the prisms that they bring to the table as Nobel Prize winners. And so we heard a bit about the historical context of the times in which we live. You heard about it from many of the speakers, including our magician, and from the perspectives of Nobel Prize winners in astrophysics, optical physics and molecular biology. Saul, why don't you start by giving us your observations about the history and what that history has in terms of relevance for today.

I guess earlier today, we heard a little bit about the moment where people started printing with vast amounts of information coming out and how we overcame that. But it was current to me that in some sense, science was dealing with this problem of how do we find the truth and how do we trust what we are discovering together way before. And really, I think one thing that's important, probably for a group like this, is the idea that science itself offers us ways to try to build trust together. And it's been very much a collaborative, interactive activity for all of its history. Newton wouldn't be Newton if he didn't have people to write to and to hear from. In some sense, we are now able to use, and we should be teaching each other how to use all those techniques to deal with the current crisis. That's great. Thank you. Donna, I was going to turn to you next. It's wonderful. You're actually on stage, and it's like you're here.

So, Donna, what about the. How does today fit into the context of history? How does today fit into the context of history? Yeah, well, I think what we're talking about is trust. And I think in the past, we've had more trust in science than we do now. And as Saul was just talking about, you know, scientists always have this peer review process that we go through and go through and go through when we try to write the proposal, to get the money to do the idea, to publishing the idea, and in every step in between, and we go to conferences and. And have conversations about what we do.

And so I think this is a time where scientists are actually being asked to do more than just talk to each other. I think that's probably one of the biggest differences between now and before, scientists mostly spoke to each other, and now we're being asked to speak more broadly. That's great. Thank you. Rich, you have a joke that's along these lines. I promised I wouldn't tell it. I would say. Laughter I think is really important, and I think the audience has really come apart, if you like, as soon as anybody says something funny.

So I think the illusionist was really good. But just to get a little more serious for a moment, I think one of the things that I've gotten so far from the meeting is the importance of communication. I think not just communication among ourselves, but to the general public, but also teaching our kids from a fairly early age about science. Because one of the wonderful things about kids is they're very open to science. They're open to new ideas. They're not coming in with a bias point of view unless their parents gave it to them. But most of them, they really want to know about this. And I think we could do a much better job of teaching kids at a younger age about this. This would be good. I also think one thing that came up recently because of COVID is that zooming, which we do more and more all the time, is not like person to person.

You cannot beat in person communication because Saul can be talking and I can interrupt him, but it's considered very doygo not to do that. If you're on a Zoom call, you have to wait until you're asked. But I like the person to person. So I take you're planning on interrupting, Saul. All right, possibly to add on to what you're saying. I think this idea of education and what we teach the kids, often we think of science education as being teaching biology, physics, chemistry. But I think so much more should be taught about how science works. We have, I think, a real opportunity to be teaching of critical thinking, which is essentially what science consists of. And that would be powerful for everybody, whether or not they plan to become scientists. It provides them a route to grappling with this world that we live in.

Right. And I think most kids start off being scientists. They're creative, they ask questions, and we tend to put them into schools and not the science and the creativity and the curiosity out of them. And I think we need to flip that. We need to let them blossom, let them question the teacher. There's nothing wrong with questioning the teacher. And I speak from personal experience. I got into a lot of trouble when I was a kid. Donna, please. Donna. Donna's gonna interrupt us cutting in. I also think that the one thing that we lose in our education system is that we spend most of our time in science, teaching them what science has already known. And then when we become scientists, our job is to figure out what we don't know. And so it would be nice if we introduce that concept. I think this goes back to what rich is saying.

They should learn how to ask the questions, why? In a critical thinking way, through the education system, and understand that there's far more we don't know than what we do know. I think it's really exciting. That's worth applause. I think it's really exciting that each of you, in winning the Nobel Prize, you changed the way we think about something. And that was because there was something that was we thought we knew and or we had some ideas about. And it turned out it didn't work that way. That's the scientific process. We argue with each other. We have disagreements, and then we test it, but we don't shoot one another. That's good, and I'm glad for that. Would one of you want to speak to what that's like? Well, I will say that I think it's one of the real.

I don't think most people realize that in the general public that the thing that really pays off for a scientist is when they get to say, oh, I was wrong. The world is completely different than I thought it was. And that's where the excitement comes in. So that sense that you often get asked by reporters. So what did you set out to prove when you started working on this, on this project? And I keep thinking, well, if you set out to prove it, you probably weren't really doing science. And that's the real fun of the game, is to find out something that you didn't expect. Yeah.

You know, I think one of the important things is that very often you're doing experiments and they don't work and they fail. And you thought that you knew exactly how they were going to work, but they don't, and you look and see why did it fail? You do a postmortem on your experiments. This is when you make the big discoveries. This was certainly how it was for me. Failure is a good thing, I think. We don't do our kids any favors when we tell, oh, you're a failure, you failed that exam. Failure is great. Failure is terrific. Let me add my example. So many people make such a big deal about. I won the Nobel Prize for my very first paper, but I also point out that I was in my fourth year of my PhD, I had had that many failures getting to finally a really good success, so kind of averaged out, but I had so many failures before I ever got to my first success.

I don't know whether you guys have that experience, but my sense is that one of the things as a professor you are often trying to teach the upcoming generation is that they should not lose hope along the way and that basically things are going to go wrong most of the time. And it's only the very, very end that if you're lucky, something will work out. And maybe in some sense, that's really one of the lessons for all of us. Facing misinformation in the current whole story that we're worrying about. This is going to be a long process. We'll get things wrong and we'll try lots of things, but that's how it works. Eventually you get somewhere, is it in telling these stories of failure or in attempts and trying, by telling those stories, do we build trust for the scientific community by telling the truth about the way that science works, the scientific process?

I would say yes, I totally agree. Truth is something that is really very valuable. And I think when people start lying about stuff, all that happens is they become politicians or they do something else. I think there should be a law that says if politicians lie, they can be sued and sent to jail. I mean, these are the people who represent it. Also, I think one of the first speakers today talked about how we can't just say science says we have to explain. Yeah. And so we have to become good communicators, but also we live in the world of the sound bite, and it's very hard to explain. To explain science in a sound bite. Right. And also going back to the idea of explaining the scientific process, this was one of the concerns I had through Covid, is how many people got upset about the masking. No masking. What kind of masking?

And they threw up their hands and said, you know, sort of thought scientists were wrong. And really, I think what was happening is that they were watching the science experiment in real time for the first time in their lives, in that something was tried, it was tested. People figured out what was right and what was wrong, and they changed it. And this is what goes on in science. And usually we have time to get to the final answer before we broadcast it. But because scientists were trying to save lives, they were broadcasting as we went. And I think there wouldn't have been the frustration if we'd had the chance to explain. And also, people already understood the scientific process and why failure is a big part of it. But we learn and move on.

Right. But you had the advantage that you lived in Canada, where you had much better information coming your way, so. Or we listened better, one or the other. I don't know. So what does that say about the state understanding of the scientific process in the United States and Canada and around the world that we went through this test and maybe we didn't do so well? I think it certainly showed something that we have a lot to teach now, that this is a real opportunity for us to get into the schools. In fact, there's a presentation coming up on the last day of this summit about an approach to teaching critical thinking in the schools that Nobel. And I think this would be the real moment for us to start teaching how it is that you do all these different steps and different processes so that the students feel they're part of the activity and that they are able to use it.

It just makes the case for more education. I think kids, if they're educated well from a fairly early age, and I would say 910 is a good time to get started. If they learn what the scientific process is, they can understand what people are saying to them, provided you don't have different people coming. The surgeon general in Florida thinks that vaccines are bad. I mean, where on earth did he get his degree? I do not understand it. Maybe we should close that university that educated. Very subtly done. Very subtly done. Donna, was there a difference I mean, in Canada, in terms of the reaction because of education or was it similar? I don't know if it's education. I think politics came into the us system far more than other places. And this was also disheartening to me as a scientist that somehow people put their medical health information with some kind of political blinders on.

And so, I mean, maybe it's education, it's communication, it's a lot of things all at play. But I don't think we had it that polarized up here in Canada. And so that was a little bit easier to deal with. But it's unfortunate when politics and science collide this way. And it's interesting because the fields in which you all worked and did your award winning work were perhaps not as out in the open at that time. So if there were folks who were spreading disinformation about supernovas when you were doing your work, would it have been harder? I'm being a little bit facetious, but on the other hand, what I'm saying is there's an active combatant here. No, I always felt that one of the big advantages of working in cosmology is that there's almost no political position about whether the universe is slowing down, speeding up. So you're able to actually talk to people, and their immediate reaction is pleasure.

They really actually enjoy joining in. That's one of the other aspects that science helps with if you're in one of these areas. I thought everybody was against inflation. Come on, give me something here. That was a really good joke. There was this period before the big bang. We'll explain it later. If you're explaining, you're losing. Right. So tell me about the. Saul, you had one suggestion about things that we should be doing for the future. What should we be doing in this moment as a community? And we've heard several prescriptions about it today. And which of those, if they caught your eye or if other things that you've heard from your own experience, should we be doing as a community to help bridge this gap of trust?

Personally, I'm very interested in these issues of participatory democracy. And what does it take to bring people into a conversation together so that the scientists are not in the position of being these sort of sages telling everybody else the answer? The scientists know something, and as Donna pointed out, they don't always know something about the current states of the facts that we have to live with and that we're trying to work around. But the scientists are not the experts in the values and the choices that need to be made once you know the facts. And that's a place where we. I think we'd do much better if we were part of a two way conversation rather than talking to the public as scientists.

So I'm very interested in these techniques. Like, we're doing this experiment tomorrow here at the summit in deliberative democracy, deliberative polling is the kind we're doing tomorrow. And the idea being there, you can have a public that's informed by discussion with the experts, but then they are the ones who deliberate and help come up with what does a representative population think about the problem? Co construction. And it seems like it's really the place to build a sense of shared belonging and community that we also heard is so important. Yeah, rich, same question. Yeah. So I've been impressed by people who are good at communicating with the public, who really take the time to learn a language so that they can explain what they do in ways that the general public can understand.

And there's a couple of cities in Zurich, they do a very good job. They have one day every year where a whole bunch of scientists from the at Ashen go out and talk about their science. They sort of set up little stands on the streets and do it. In Exeter, in England, they do the same thing. The universities send out students, they send out professors and talk about the work that they do, but in language that can be understood. And one thing we might think about doing when it comes to education is to make sure that science students are taught how to talk to the general public, how to use language that the general public can understand.

I have something that I call the grandmother test. And the grandmother test is a student is doing something in the lab. They go home and they explain to their grandmother exactly what they do to a point where she actually can understand it. And the test is, can she then go and talk to all her friends and tell her how smart her granddaughter is? That's great. Donna, from what you've heard today, or from your own experience, what should we be doing in the future? Well, this is. I mean, here at the University of Waterloo, we are trying to start a trust network. And following along both what rich and Sol say, we do think it's gotta be a two way conversation.

And I think this has already been said today in the talks, that scientists can't just really go out and say, this is what science says. And also, I think what rich is bringing up is that there are different groups of people who all have different reasons for whatever their culture is, or whatever. We're not trusting in some area of science, and so we have to start not only communicating better, but we really have to start listening to the communities to find out what it is that makes them not trust us. And then we're going to have to have our social scientists and psychology colleagues start figuring out the ways around this. And I hope to really do real science experiments, you know, try something. Does it move the needle? Does it not move the needle? And does it work for a number of groups of people or just a certain people? That's great. Thank you, Donna.

In the final couple of minutes that we have, the last part of this is hope. I want you to just in a couple of words, and we've got two minutes, a couple of words. Say, what is it that you're hopeful about in the next few years, either in the scientific realm or in the relationship between science and society? What are you hopeful about? What's got you excited? I think this meeting is a great opportunity for hope. It seems to me that once you've identified a problem, then you have a fighting chance to do something about it. And that I think that as experimentalists, we'll figure it out. And I think we just need those multiple tries that Don is talking about until we. Until we start getting it.

Rich. I think it would be very good if we, as scientists and the scientific societies could set up a factual database that people could trust. If you want to know whether something is true or false, you go to this gold standard database and know that what you read and what you find out about is true. It's factual, and the evidence is there, leads to the evidence, to the papers and whatever you want. That, I think, could make a huge difference. And it's something that the AI community could use productively, much more so than the way they're using the rubbish that goes into cheat. GPT. I thought we were going to go 20 minutes without saying AI.

All right, Donna, sorry. I think what I'm hopeful for is the fact that right now this is a global problem. But I also think globally, we're looking for solutions. And so certainly here at Waterloo with our network umpteen, others have reached out to us to say, how can we network together? And now, even though rich doesn't like Zoom, luckily, because we have Zoom, we can have global meetings and start talking together and each doing our own types of experiments and finding out what works. Just like all other science, we can get it out there in the global sphere and maybe start changing the dial. So I am hopeful it's going to come together. Thank you, Donna.

As you can see, one of the speakers before said that one of the solutions was wisdom. There's a lot of wisdom on the right of me on this stage. So thank you. Thank all three of you for the panel. Thank you all. Thank you.

Science, Education, Communication, Innovation, Technology, Trust, Nobel Prize