The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : You cannot do science unless you are an optimist: David Baltimore

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You cannot do science unless you are an optimist: David Baltimore

Staff Reporter

Science is only ever exciting if the problem is challenging enough, says Nobel laureate

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Interaction: Nobel laureate David Baltimore (left) with students at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Bangalore: “You cannot do science unless you are an optimist.” This is the advice that Nobel laureate and noted biologist David Baltimore loves to give his students at his laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, where he is President Emeritus and the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology.

Prof. Baltimore offered the same advice to a question posed from among a gathering of students at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, at a rare private tête-À-tête with him on their campus on Wednesday: “When does a scientist give up on a subject he has been researching on for months?”

Much of what determined that decision was psychological, Prof. Baltimore said. “I have to often advise people in my lab about this question. I tell them, you’ve tried hard, you look tired – it might be time to pick up something else.”

Science was only ever exciting if the problem was challenging enough. “If the answer is obvious, it is just not worth devoting all your time to it,” he said.

How did Prof. Baltimore figure out what he wanted to do himself? asked another Ph.D. student, who admitted to being at a research crossroads. “Well, I was always fairly clear about what I wanted to do. Mammalian biology always fascinated me. But until the 1960s it was considered a dauntingly complex science, with no imminent way of simplifying it. And so I chose to look at animal viruses.” Curiosity-driven research must not be dismissed as a waste of time or money, he said, when asked if taxpayers’ money should be used on research that may not have a foreseeable outcome. “That question has never really bothered me. Look at the other ways in which taxpayers’ money is spent! Curiosity-driven research, even if only to get answers, will ultimately have an effect on human medicine. Molecular biologists doing entirely curiosity-driven work on recombinant DNA led to technologies whose impact on human medicine is unbelievable.”

Collaboration between research institutes and industry was vital, Prof. Baltimore said. “The impact on medicine and health of such collaboration is enormous. Labs cannot develop drugs. Technology transfer is an integral part of science.” His ambition to set up a larger lab for practical applications has been realised with the setting up of a programme that focusses on developing gene therapy methods to treat HIV/AIDS and cancer.

So what would Prof. Baltimore do if he had to start all over again? “Neuroscience is the biggest unsolved problem in biology, and one of the most daunting problems in neuroscience is consciousness. In fact, it is the most daunting problem that a human being can conceive of: we are conscious – but we do not know where consciousness comes from. What could be a more exciting challenge to science?”

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