Re-imagining Scientific Culture in a Changing World

Re-imagining Scientific Culture in a Changing World Alexa T. McCray Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School [email protected] Open Science Fair 2025 CERN, September 15, 2025 Scientific Culture Scientific, or research, culture “encompasses the behaviours, values, expectations, attitudes and norms of our research communities.” The Royal Society Ref: https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/research-culture/ Scientific Culture Major scientific advances have an impact on the scientific culture of the time Among the advances in the latter part of the 20th century and the first quarter of this century are: •World War II Innovations •Breakthroughs in Genetics •The Digital Revolution •Innovations in response to the Global Pandemic •The AI Revolution Image source: https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/07/18/537882769/ (1870 engraving) World War II Innovations WWII Major Innovations •Computing: The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) computer, built between 1943-1945, was the first general-purpose programmable electronic computer •Physics: In the early 1940’s, the top-secret Manhattan Project was initiated with the goal of developing and testing atomic weapons •Medicine: Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, who widely shared his Penicillium mold Penicillin was mass produced for the troops during WWII ENIAC computer Site of the Manhattan project 1940’s ad for penicillin Image source: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ manhattan-project-science-at-los-alamos.htm Image source: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/ sites/default/files/2017-07/thanks-to-penicillin-lesson.pdf Ref: https://www.seas.upenn.edu/about/history-heritage/eniac/; https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/scientific-and-technological-advances-world-war-ii Image source: https://www.computerhistory.org/ revolution/birth-of-the-computer/4/78/317 Responsibility to Society •J. Robert Oppenheimer’s speech to his Los Alamos colleagues: “If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.” J. Robert Oppenheimer , ‘father of the atomic bomb’,1945 •A physicist in conversation with two other physicists who all reside in an insane asylum in Dürrenmatt’s 1962 satirical play: “We have to face the consequences of our scientific thinking. It was my duty to work out the effects of my [theory]…The result is –devastating. New and inconceivable forces would be unleashed … if my findings were to fall into the hands of mankind.” Dürrenmatt, p. 75 •After the war, Oppenheimer chaired the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission and lobbied for international arms control Ref: https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/oppenheimers-farewell-speech/; Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, The Physicists;; https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/j-robert-oppenheimer/ Image source: Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, The Physicists (Cover). Translated by James Kirkup, Grove Press, 1964 Seeing an Opportunity •Post World War II, Maxwell, a young entrepreneur, “had his sights set on ‘becoming a millionaire’” •He wined and dined leading scientists and persuaded them to become editor-in-chiefs of ‘International Journals of …’ in newly defined areas of science •He formed Pergamon Press in 1951 •Maxwell sold Pergamon to Elsevier in 1991 Robert Maxwell in 1985 Image source: Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/ jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science Breakthroughs in Genetics •In 1944 Oswald Avery and colleagues discovered that DNA was the material of which chromosomes are made •In 1953 the double helix structure of DNA was discovered •The double-stranded structure of DNA both produces exact copies of itself and carries genetic instructions •The 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins •Rosalind Franklin’s contributions were not acknowledged Genetics Research Ref: https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/spotlight/cc/feature/biographical-overview; https://www.nature.com/articles/171737a0 Rosalind Franklin, British chemist and x-ray crystallographer in her lab in the 1950’s Image source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01390-6 Applications in Many Domains •In 1994, CERN hosted the first international WWW conference (‘Woodstock of the Web’) Showcased applications from Antarctic exhibitions to paleontology to weather mapping •Scientific literature In the early 1990s, Publishers began publishing their journals in digital format In 1991, arXiv, a free online global preprint service was developed by Paul Ginsparg In 1997, PubMed, an open web-based interface to life sciences literature citations, was launched by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) •Clinical information In early 2000, ClinicalTrials.gov, an open repository of web-based clinical trial information, was launched by the NIH Vice President Gore searching the newly released PubMed Web interface at a ceremony on Capitol Hill in 1997 Image source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Web/Newsltr/aug97.html Ref: https://www.w3.org/History.html; https://www.nature.com/articles/476145a; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/about/; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11033590/ •Building on the work of Tim Berners-Lee, Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed the Google search engine •For scientists that meant that, in principle, the scientific literature would be easily available to them •Often when an article would be found via a Google search, the message would come back from the publisher: “You do not have access to this item.” •The only recourse would be to subscribe to the journal or pay a per-article fee to the publisher Image source: https://research.google/pubs/the-anatomy-of-a-large-scale-hypertextual-web-search-engine/ Technical paper introducing Google in 1998: The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine Google 1998 image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_1998_logo.png Innovations in response to the Global Pandemic Messenger RNA •Early methods for delivery of mRNA into cells were developed in the 1970s •mRNA proved difficult to work with, but throughout the 1980s and 1990s, researchers around the world carried out experiments to test its therapeutic and disease prevention efficacy •Nanotechnology advances early in the 21st century enabled the rapid development of mRNA vaccines for use in humans •International collaboration on mRNA vaccine development and policy continues Refs: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10653775/ https://www.science.org/content/article/overlooked-superpower-mrna-vaccines A health worker preparing the mRNA vaccine in 2021 COVID-19 and Open Science •During the early days of the pandemic, COVID-19 research results contributed to a large increase in the use of preprints and other open dissemination practices •The CORD-19 machine learning project was initiated on March 16, 2020 •“Immediate public access to COVID-19 research is a powerful case study on the benefits of delivering research results and data rapidly to the people.” Alondra Nelson, OSTP, August 25, 2022 Ref: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7251955/; https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf Image source: https://www.cshl.edu/covid-19-machine-learning-effort-preprints-are-key/ COVID-19 open dataset for machine learning The AI Revolution AI over the decades •The development of expert systems in the 1980s relied on human experts to supply domain knowledge •Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather of AI’ and 2024 Nobel Laureate in Physics, published a seminal paper in 1984 on statistical methods that can learn about a domain “simply by being shown examples from the domain” •Current machine learning systems rely on massive datasets •Large language models, such as ChatGPT, developed in the 2020s, dominate AI today Image source: https://openai.com/research/ “We believe our research will eventually lead to artificial general intelligence, a system that can solve human-level problems. Building safe and beneficial AGI is our mission.” Statement from OpenAI’s website Ref: https://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~hinton/absps/bmtr.pdf “All things that exist” Image source: https://www.meretsegerbooks.com/pages/books/M0596m/ gardiner-alan-henderson/ancient-egyptian-onomastica-vol-i-ii-text-vol-iii-plates-complete-set Egyptian ‘Universal Catalogue’ •Amenopē(~1200 BC), an Egyptian scribe, set out to catalogue the universe •It was to be the beginning “of the teaching for clearing the mind, for instruction of the ignorant and for learning all things that exist…” •The resulting text, likely compiled over a number of years, consisted of more than 600 entities organized in eight high level categories, including ‘Sky, water, earth’, … ‘Classes, tribes, and types of human beings’, … ‘Parts of an ox and kinds of meat’ Ref: Gardiner, Alan H. (1947). Ancient Egyptian Onomastica, Volume I. Oxford University Press ChatGPT Query: “Describe all things that exist” Ref: https://chatgpt.com/?openaicom_referred=true&model=auto ChatGPT Query: “Describe all things that exist” Ref: https://chatgpt.com/?openaicom_referred=true&model=auto