Scientific progress underpins innovation from understanding the cosmos to powering grids; this session tackles how research can stay credible and forward-looking
At Davos 2026, leaders from academia, industry, publishing, and behavioral science argued that “protecting science” is less about saving an enterprise that will disappear and more about safeguarding the conditions that let it remain credible, useful, and free. Ocean advocate Sylvia Earle framed science as innate curiosity—“scientists are basically kids who never grew up”—but warned that disinformation, ecological degradation, and “the magnitude of our ignorance” demand humility and a precautionary mindset. European Research Council president Maria Leptin emphasized that frontier research requires freedom: “no top down programs, no strings attached,” plus time, stability, and relief from bureaucratic pressure; blanket geopolitical restrictions “are not wise.” Eli Lilly’s Daniel Skovronsky argued trust grows when people feel science working in their lives, citing rapid advances in obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, gene therapy, and gene editing—and insisting transparency about “both the good news and the unknowns” is essential, especially after pandemic-era missteps. BetterUp CEO Alexi Robichaux described science as society’s key “autocorrect” mechanism, but called trust a communication challenge: scientists often score high on “ability” and “integrity,” but must improve “benevolence” by connecting evidence to everyday life. Panelists urged open science, clearer explanations of how conclusions are reached, and encouraging audacious research without rewarding corner-cutting.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this morning's session entitled Can We Protect Science? My name is Magdalena Skipper. I'm editor in chief of Nature, which is a journal that publishes science across the disciplines. So science and innovation are really the reason why we lead the lives that we lead today. Why we are healthier than ever before and why we live longer than ever before. It's the reason for mundane things that we take for granted, such as the fact that we can read by light when it's dark, that we can drive cars, increasingly. Electric vehicles, of course. We have internet. And of course, the modern medicine is molecular medicine, and that's thanks to science. Pretty much any poll that looks at levels of trust that you look at has scientists at the top of the hierarchy. And incidentally, journalists and politicians tend to be on the opposing end of that, least trusted in the rankings. And yet, science overall, is losing trust today. And today we find ourselves needing to discuss this topic, why science needs protecting and how it can be protected. So, to explore this topic with me, I have a really terrific panel. I'm going to introduce them to you first, and then we'll kick off the discussion. There will be time for questions from you as well. So from my left to right, first I have Sylvia Earle, who's a former and first chief scientist of NOAA. She's the National Geographic Explorer at large and creator of Mission Blue Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting marine ecosystems worldwide. Next to her, we have Dan Skovronsky, who is chief scientific and product officer at Eli Lilly. Next to him, we have Maria Lipton, who's a developmental biologist and immunologist and president of European Research Council. And on my far left is Alexi Robichaux, who is co-founder and chief executive officer of Betterup, the digital coaching and human transformation platform. Welcome to all of you. I'm going to start with a really fundamental question. Given the introduction that I gave to this session, the the impact that science and innovation has had on our lives throughout. Why do we think that science needs protecting today? Sylvia, I'm going to start with you. What's the problem?
Well, I actually am optimistic about how society views science, and an ever growing base of would be scientists, because there'll always be kids. And scientists start out as kids. All children are curious. They ask questions. They want to know who, what, why, where, how, everything. What's this world about? Which is what scientists do. Scientists are basically kids who never grew up, never stop asking questions, but they grow up into a world. The world we have in the 21st century where science has become. Almost what's the word? Elitist? Everyone is a scientist at heart because we all want to know everything about everything, and we have better access to information than we've ever had. Not just access, but there is more knowledge. When I think about the children of today, what they know, because the information is there that nobody could know not so long ago. I mean, the smartest people who ever lived before that first view of Earth from space, the 1960s. Einstein was really brilliant, but he never got to see Earth from space. He did not know about DNA and RNA. He I mean, there's so much he did not know that children grew up knowing. So I'm pretty optimistic in terms of the level of acquiring and distributing knowledge, but trusting science because there's so much disinformation. But it's not the first time I think about it's still going on. The origin of us going back to this scorn that so many people. Raised about. We aren't related to other primates that we just arrived, not related to all the rest of life on Earth. Despite the clear evidence that we're all connected, the elements of the universe are in microbes, and they're in us to, and that we have learned so much about the history of life on earth. So I worry about some of the things that are happening now the disinformation, the scorn that some heap on science and scientists and some of that's our own fault to.
But your message is overall optimistic, which which is really great. I think you're right to to emphasize the need to stand up for facts, especially in the face of, of disinformation. And I loved your comment about, children. I often say this, that each one of us is born with a scientific inquisitiveness in mind. Think back to yourselves or your children, how you ask why all the time. And if you're anything like me, you tend to dismantle things that you're given because you want to find out how they work. So that's really a great reminder. Dan, what is your perspective? Why does science need defending?
I'm also an optimist, which is great. And I think as a scientist, I really believe there's never been a better time to be a scientist. And actually, there's never been a better time to be a human on this planet benefiting from science. So, so just in the field of medical science, which is my chosen field, three years ago, we didn't have medicines that could effectively treat obesity. Today, for most people, we can offer them a life without obesity. And we've discovered that we can eliminate nearly all 93% cases of type two diabetes. We don't have to have anymore. Two years ago, we didn't have drugs that could change the pathology of Alzheimer's disease in the brain. Now we can remove it completely, slow the disease course. And I think within a year or two, we'll be able to prevent people who don't yet have any symptoms of Alzheimer's from ever getting it, that that's what science is delivering. Last year, we showed that for certain children born with a type of deafness, and these kids, they grew up never hearing a sound and injecting a gene therapy into their ear. We restored that gene, and we have a little boys and girls walking around now who've, because the science heard their parents voices for the first time in their lives, it's amazing. It's not just rare diseases. Many of us live with high levels of cholesterol, which causes heart disease, and we take medicines all the time for it. We did an experiment just in the last couple of months, where we edited the genes that cause high cholesterol and people's liver, and with one dose of a medicine, probably they'll never have high cholesterol again in their lives. This is the kind of stuff that science is bringing. Do we need to protect science? Probably, but science is protecting us. And science needs ambitious people. I spent a week here in Davos. I've met a lot of ambitious people. I think we're good. We need funding. And that's something we should surely talk about because that builds on on trust. But probably the most important thing that science needs is the ability to translate those advances that I talked about to people. And when people experience the benefits of science in their own lives, that's, I think, the magic. And I've spent my time here at Davos trying to to work with governments and non-governmental organizations to make sure that these amazing medical advances can get to people around the world that need them.
That's great and wonderful examples. In many ways, the so far we've had great examples. So it's almost seems like it's self-evident that science is great. Whether it's because it's awe inspiring or practically changes our lives. For example, in disease, the examples you gave. And yet here we are discussing it. You mentioned funding, which takes me very neatly to you, Maria, from your perspective as a leader of a major funder, arguably the most prestigious funder, certainly in Europe, why do you think science needs protecting or defending?
Yeah. So you mostly listed the benefits and the innovation that comes from scientific research. Except for Sylvia, you mentioned curiosity, but I would also like to take that step back and say it's innate. It's human curiosity. By the way, I think children ask why only because they want to hear more, not because they really want to understand just it's a way of needling you to keep talking anyway, which is a good thing.
He's a he's an insight to a scientific discourse. There's always a slight difference of opinion. Right.
Thank you. Yeah. Anyway, so, I think people are curious and they don't care only about the benefits. For instance, when a Higgs boson was discovered, that was front page news. Now, don't tell me that the famous person in the street understands what Higgs boson is, but they loved it. You know, I mean, the physicists were great in inventing the term God particle, but also the black hole front page news. No benefit to anybody except that there's this amazing thing out there in space that we can now see, and it goes on and on. We don't need to go to astrophysics. We can go to history. You know what's coming out of Pompeii now? How we're understanding what people did then, our history, or how the paint in the in caves of Lascaux was made, how it was put together that people drew these things. So I think, citizens actually care about research as such. And I want to take that extra step back and, extend it to scholarship altogether, which I've just mentioned. And so the not the English science, but the German Wissenschaft, I just think it's innate and it can't be killed, which is a good thing. So even under regimes that will not allow one to talk about ribonucleic acid, fortunately they can't pronounce that. So they say RNA and then we're not allowed to work on it, but it eventually it needs protecting. But I think even it is impossible to kill because it is so deep and so innate.
That's that's a lovely thought. By the way, is it possible to translate Wissenschaft as knowledge craft, or am I making something up on the fly?
Not a bad thing. Not a bad term. Maybe I'll use you.
Hear it? You heard it here first.
Knowledge, craft. Except craft. I'll think about it. Okay. Perfect. Good.
Alexi. Your perspective.
Yeah, I am a non-scientist. So I feel, particularly qualified to answer this.
But that's why your perspective is so important.
As well. They're like, we have to have one of you. No, I mean, look, I think science is everything everyone said, but I think one thing is, it is one of the few human societal mechanisms we have to autocorrect as a society. And if you look through human history, it's often science that has said that was wrong. And we have to change our perspective. And it's very basic, but there's a lot of other human institutions that do not self-correct over time. And so if we really think about why do we protect science, we're really protecting our ability as a species to approach truthfulness and to approach reality. And I think that's the wonderment you all were talking about. That's the I have a three and a half year old, one and a half year old. I hear why 4000 times a day. That's a real citation. And it's, it's it's incredible. Right. But what they're trying to do is construct reality. They're trying to map the universe around them. And I think as a society, we're trying to map the universe around them. And so I think science needs protecting in one sense. I think it will always go on. I don't think you can snuff it out because it is the human spirit of inquiry. But I think as we'll discuss, there's also how do we, as scientific institutions communicate and build trust around science? And I think those are meaningfully different things from science itself versus the stories we tell about science.
I think these are very, very important point. There's a really interesting message, I think, emerging from everything each one of you have said, and that science needs protecting because it's really important and it's something innate that we as a species will always do in order to to understand ourselves and the world around us and then have the outcomes that you spoke about. Dan. So, Sylvia, I want to come back to you and build really on the theme that first you started and then Maria picked up, and that's really this fundamental discovery. So of course, ocean that you have dedicated your life to and climate science depend on long term, curiosity driven research. Often there's no immediate economic payoff. So, these are these are long funding cycles, that are, that are required. And these are not compatible with political, short cycles. So how can we better protect funding of this type of science? Is it a matter of communication? What are your thoughts on this? How how to safeguard this type of work?
Well, fortunately there's geology that nature has been recording changes over time. And the ability to read rocks, read ice, read the past to understand the messages that fossils give us, to realize that we are newcomers on an ancient planet, and that everything that we benefit, that we value has a very long history. And a real ancestors are the microbes that existed billions of years ago, that we're just part of the fabric of life, and we're all connected to the present, to the future, perhaps, but certainly to the past. Funding is required to really discover some of the answers we need. The network of scientists to find the science, the answers to the questions. I mean, having the technology that enables us to go high in the sky, deep in the sea, to gather information, whether it's with a telescope or a microscope or with your own eyes, the ability to not only have that in individuals, but to share that across the planet. It's enabled us to literally go from where we were, let's say in the year my father was born, 1900, to where we are today. I mean, it just what we did not and could not know because we did not have the technology to get answers and share discoveries the way we can today. It's accelerating so quickly. As you point out, we're getting answers to big questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where could we be going if we keep our heads straight and at the same time, the thing that really worries me most, I suppose, is at the same time that we have learned more than during all preceding history, I think you could say the last century into the current one. We've lost more than natural systems that maintain our existence. You think what we've done to nature, in trying to make a better world for us? I mean, 1900, when I was born, there were only 2 billion people. Now we have eight. That means 8 billion brains. That's good news. The bad news is we have 8 billion appetites, 8 billion needs. And the costs come from taking from nature. Whether you're building a business or feeding your family or taking bites out of the systems that keep us alive. But if we did not know that, that would be a problem. That's the value of science. Knowing is the key to caring and then behaving in ways that it's not just about us. Now. We're the beneficiaries of everything that's gone before, and it's our privilege to be able to make sure that we don't leave a world that our kids can't, that it's as least, at least as good as we found it. But we're right at the edge. Science tells us of pressing the boundaries, the planetary boundaries that make Earth habitable for us. Microbes will probably get by one way or the other because they existed long before multicellular life, let alone humans existed. So.
And they'll adapt more quickly, right?
Yes, beautifully.
Beautifully put. And, I just want to repeat just one thing that you said. Knowing is the key to caring. Very, very beautiful thing to remember.
Oh, and what we know that is taking us a long time to to grasp is the magnitude of our ignorance. I mean, it's so easy to think we know all that is needed to know, and we can make decisions based on this massive amount of new information. But we've only mapped about a quarter of the ocean floor. That's the surface of the earth covered with water. The deeper we go in the ocean, the more new discoveries we're finding, including the magnitude of what we don't know. That's right. So the precautionary principle is, okay, we can make decisions on what we know, but we better hold right here in front of things the concerns about the need to keep exploring this planet. When we look at the universe beyond and our role in making sure we do that, we don't do so much damage that we can't exist anymore. We're pretty close to tipping in the wrong direction, but we have the ability to go in the other direction based on not only what we know, but what we don't know exactly.
So that that knowledge, that that discovery, the fundamental knowledge and discovering new things, discovering the boundaries of our knowledge and then going further, you advocate for this very beautifully in, in and of itself, but also for it for a specific reason. I'm going to continue with that question with you, Maria. Obviously, European Research Council funds fundamental research from a perspective of a funder in the context of geopolitical pressures and questions over, the need to do science. How do you see your role as a funder in safeguarding what Sylvia argued for so beautifully?
Yeah. So, really research of the kind that you've described, requires freedom. Freedom to ask any question, freedom to pursue that question. And the way the ERC, protects that freedom and allows that curiosity is by funding people and projects or that combination a person for a project, selected by that person only driven by their curiosity. So no top down programs, no strings attached. If you get your money, you're free to do with it whatever you like. There are a few other organizations around the world that do that, and not request any impact, any political relevance except scientific impact. So, you know, you have to, push the boundary of knowledge. So, that's one thing. There's another thing about freedom. And I think that also is reflected in what the ERC does and others like Howard Hughes or Wellcome Trust. There is freedom to and freedom of and being free to pursue your curiosity also means you have to, actually be free of pressures. And for instance, many funders, demand constant reports, yearly reports, or they even only provide, very brief funding two years and one graduate student or so. So that does not allow you freedom either. So you really need space and time and funding. That's what the ERC does now. Risk, security. I think, fear and that maybe fear of competition, fear of others stealing your ideas, fear of finding out something that you don't want to hear, is of course, stands in the way of, of of, discovery. And, governments may be fearful and put in restrictions and that's of course, anathema. Of course, there are things you might not want to do. I'm thinking of mirror life. You know, we all know that life is made out of chiral molecules which turn one way or the other. In theory, life could go the other way around as well. It could be that DNA would turn the other way around and amino acids would have another chirality. It's possible you can make those molecules. You could, in theory, create life that was chiral in the other way around. People have started doing that. That is massively dangerous. So there are dangers. Fortunately, the scientists themselves are careful, so. But what I was getting at. There are dangers, but blanket restrictions are not wise. So let's look at it case by case. There may be hostile countries. Blanket restrictions are not wise. So building walls is not the way.
That's a that's a great point in the context of that freedom of inquiry that that you support. Also pointing out that there should be boundaries because, for example, of so-called dual use of, research outcomes or for ethical reasons, there may be some things, some places where we do not want to go and we make that decision consciously. So that's a really important point. Dan, I'm going to come to you because your research and discovery happens in a slightly different environment. That's a proprietary environment. Can you give us your perspective? Maybe contrasting some of the comments you've heard about the freedom of inquiry, the sort of intellectual pursuit of knowledge you are more focused, but especially I'd like to hear your comment with respect to something that we haven't touched on explicitly yet, and that that is scientific collaboration and exchange of data or information. How do you see that in that proprietary context?
Yeah, it actually, it may be a misconception that that pharmaceutical companies like mine, that we want to keep our science secret. We don't actually we're protected by patents. So when we make a medicine, people can't copy the exact same exact medicine, but they make similar ones. Because we've broadcast our science, we publish it, we stand on rooftops and talk about it. We want everyone to understand the science because that's how it gets translated into medicines they use when we do that. Well, when we're transparent about the science, both the good news and the unknowns. And there's always unknowns in science. That's when we build trust. When we do the opposite, that's when trust is eroded. I think the pandemic was an example where many well-meaning people did it the wrong way around. And, people with credentials speaking from podiums and in paternalistic ways, telling people what to think and what to do backfired. And it wasn't out of ill intent that people did that. But I think, and you do it so beautifully, we just need you talking more about science, Sylvia. But if we can treat people with respect and assume that people are intelligent and try and explain the science and share the wonderment and share the unknown, that that's the way to rebuild trust in science. And, I think pharmaceutical companies can do that. And we're trying to do that better. And political leaders and scientific leaders and spokespeople can can do that better as well.
That's great. So so you brought us back. You brought trust back in, which I mentioned in the introduction and that communication and engagement and openness, absolutely. Really important what I'm hearing from you, it's sort of it's sort of about partnerships, but not necessarily, active partnerships in terms of, you know, working collaborations, but also partnerships with with those who listen to us. So partnerships, in my mind, is a sort of a level.
We can't be elites. Scientists may be sometimes feel elitist, but but connecting with the people for whom we're doing the science, that's the key part of it and the beauty of it.
Yeah. So that actually takes me very nicely to the question I have for you, Alexei. You you said you're not a scientist, but, the business that you lead, it my understanding is, please, please tell me if I'm wrong. Of course, part of its foundation is sort of behavioural science, understanding of how people interact with one another and leadership. What can your experience teach us when we talk about protecting science, building trust, those collaborations, interactions?
Yeah. So maybe it's context. So, betterup, we are a mobile based upskilling leadership and mental health platform, and we have an institution, quite a few research institutions at Betterup where we collaborate with over 300 academic organisations and research, including our two biggest collaborators are Stanford University and UPenn. And we fund for being a startup, we fund a fair amount of science. We're about 500 employees. I think 50 of them are researchers or scientists. And we publish usually a peer reviewed journal article in our, our research once a quarter on average. And so in behavioural science, we've been really fortunate to build really productive collaborations with postdocs, students, universities. I think, you know, building on what Dan said, you know, the generally from behavioural science, the generally accepted like formula for trust today is from a researcher named Mayer. And it's the Abi model, it's ability, benevolence and integrity. And I think what often in the scientific institutions storytelling science, you know, if I used a computer analogy, I don't have a lot of worry about the logic or programming of science. Like I think the work itself, there's a replicability crisis in social science. But I think the counterargument is social science discovered its own crisis and it's autocorrecting around it. And I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater on that, so to speak. So, you know, it's really like a UI UX problem. And I think that is that collaboration interface level. And I think what often gets overlooked in that equation is the benevolent benevolence, which is really about what Dan said earlier. How does this relate to your life? It's not more data to communicate our point. It's not better data to say that we're more right. It's actually saying, okay, how does this connect to you and how do you collaborate? And so as we've partnered with organizations, we've really tried to focus on giving freedom to the researchers to study what they want, but also giving the real world applications to businesses and people and focusing a lot, not just on the production of knowledge, but on the communication of knowledge and the connecting of knowledge into the real life of workers and people today. And I think that's like if we had to focus as scientists or as a scientific community on one of those letters, it's the B, I think is where we are the most lacking. And you started by saying politicians are the lowest rated. I mean, if we rated politicians as a group on a, B, and I, you can probably see why they might spike lower, right? As a general statement, if we rated scientists, I think in general science would be really high in the A and really high in the eye, and the opportunity is around the B when we're talking about Covid, when we're talking about climate change, these are massive behavioral interruptions to the average person, doesn't mean they're not true, by the way. But are we helping people bridge that? And so where we've tried to focus our science collaboration is how do we bring this in an actionable, practical way into people's real life in the workplace so they can actually take advantage, take take advantage of 4 to 5 decades of behavioral science, which otherwise just lives over there and doesn't impact their life.
That's a couple of things that I really liked about what you said. One is this demonstration that in the sciences we really need this this cross-fertilization across disciplines. You said behavioral science is somewhere over there. It's really important to integrate them actually in our everyday lives. And then the other thing, if I may point out, is the way you articulated the fact that scientists might score low on the B, you said there is an opportunity there. I thought it was a very diplomatic way of describing.
I use coaching language. Yes.
I noticed, I just wanted to emphasize that that was that was perfect. I wonder if there are any comments or questions from the audience. I will pause. There's a question if you could microphone there and please stand up when you ask the question. Just wait for the microphone.
Thank you for your wonderful talk. I have one question. So I, I noticed that recently the AI is developing with a very rapid speed. Do you think in the future the AI can do science itself? And as a scientist, how do you, how to do to avoid being replaced by AI to do science in the future?
Very timely question, Dan. Go ahead.
Yeah, we use a lot of AI in our research. I don't see it at all as a replacement for scientists. You don't have to worry about losing your job yet. I do see it as a really important tool that helps scientists. And the interesting thing about there's many interesting things about AI, but of course, as everyone knows, it needs to be trained on a lot of data. In many fields of science we don't have, we just know a tiny fraction about the ocean of what there is to know. That's it. So they're not that many places where we can train good AI models, but there are some places. So we we've made millions of different chemicals and studied their properties so we can train AI on that. That's kind of a crown jewel for a company like us. On the other hand, we've decided to make those AI models public, and so any biotech company can use them. And our idea then is that as AI tools for science get developed, if they can be shared, we can just raise the tide of scientific discovery for everyone and we can all benefit. So I think there's tremendous promise here, but we're going to need humans to to point it at the right questions and understand the answers.
That's great. Sylvia, you want to.
It's partly a communication issue that I've grown up in, a culture where for scientists to share knowledge, share what they know with the public at large has been considered. You know, it's almost a sin. You speak with your learned colleagues using the arcane language of science, number heavy with terms that scientists developed to explain. But most people generally don't use that language in their everyday lives. So Carl Sagan was really condemned when he did the cosmos series, for example, for television, so everybody could share in that information about what astrophysicists knew in a way that people could integrate into their own lives. Like where in the universe are we? Who are we anyway? If you discover something and you keep it to yourself or a very small club of like minded people, you might as well not have discovered it at all. Unless you can get it out into the minds and hearts of people, as broad an audience as possible. We need to know what Earth looks like from space. But if astronauts came back from that experience and didn't tell anybody what they saw, didn't share the view, or if those who go deep in the see, that was nice. I really had a great time, and I saw so many things that nobody's ever seen before, but I'm not going to tell them about it. Great. Why did you go so with AI? I mean, it's another tool to gather information, look for patterns, and then share widely. But with a caveat. The magnitude of what we don't know.
Yes.
What we don't know about the ocean. We're like the early days of aviation and going up in the sky. And I mean, it's exciting to be an oceanographer right now. But again, if we have to share not just what we know, but the magnitude of what we don't know, so that we can keep getting everybody engaged to answer questions.
This is really, really great points about about sharing something we haven't really teased out in the conversation yet. So I'm really glad it's coming out and sharing in so many different ways. Right. Sharing, the tools we develop, the data we, we generate in a sort of open science shared setting, of course, publishing. I would say that as a, as a journal editor, you know, for me, sometimes publishing is thought of as something that is done after the research is done, but I really see it as part and parcel of that, that process. But then take not stopping there and taking it, sharing it with the widest possible community. So you share that or that sense of discovery. And, you know, you were saying that, you know, high tide raises all the boats that that sharing just just helps everyone. So really, really timely question. There's a question here, the front and okay. Over there, if you can stand up as you ask the question and then we'll come to you.
Thank you very much. It's a very interesting discussion here. I would like to a little bit follow up on this question, and also on something that's been mentioned already. There are certain risks to the credibility of science and the trust that people have in science. And some of them were mentioned, for example, the reproducibility crisis also publication bias, that the positive results tend to be more published than negative results, and also increasing now emerging risks with the AI with papers being completely generated and AI hallucinating certain results and certain conclusions. So I would like to ask, as a publisher, as a also funding body and, as, as, as a companies, how do you mitigate those risks and how do you tackle, emerging risks as well? Thank you.
Great question. I'm going to go last. Because I'm a moderator. Otherwise I'll speak all the time. Who would like to take it first? Maria, do you want to start with this? Well.
I think we've heard many times that science self-corrects and this, credibility crisis or a liability crisis, it may have been exaggerated. It. I'm not denying it. And people are under pressure to publish high to publish fast. That leads to cutting corners, and in the worst case, leads to lying and fraud. Nobody is going to say that scientists are saints. And and don't do that. They're just like everybody else. And, you know, their unethical behaviors. But in research, they're going to be discovered. And let's remember, frontier research is bloody bloody difficult. You know, I mean, anybody who's run a lab and had to move their lab from one floor to the next will know that their own experiments on the top floor don't work anymore. When they worked on the, on, on the second floor and, you know, you even know it as, as as people. So I say, science is very difficult. It's bloody hard. We're working at the forefront. And so reproducibility is not always easy. It's not a cake recipe that hundreds of people have done. And even those of you who try and bake a cake and follow the recipe, it's not easy. It's not reproducible. So even that isn't so. I think it's a little bit exaggerated, but ultimately it autocorrects and we have to rely on that. And the openness we've been hearing about here, the sharing is an essential part of that. That's why open science is so important. That's why it's good you share your algorithms, other can, others can build on it and others can find flaws. So we and actually that is something we refer to the Covid, communication. That is something that needs to be understood. I think that is the most important thing about truth is that people must learn the scientific method. When I say I found this out, this is my truth right now, I know it's only my truth right now. It's the most likely interpretation. And that's where scientists with their patronizing attitude went wrong in, in maybe they didn't even know wrong went didn't even go wrong because we know that's how we talk to each other when we say this is so, we mean it's the most likely within risk.
If I can come in on this and then I'll go to Aleksey. I think where the scientific community could do better. Thank you. I'm using your language. Learning rapidly here is to talk about more, how research is done and how they arrive at their conclusions. Sometimes we forget that, and we just focus on the conclusion itself. And that would to a large degree address what you were just talking about. Maria, I think that's another opportunity for us. Alexei, you want to come in on.
Yeah. Well, I was just going to say I agree with with what you said. And, you know, I in preparing for this session, I reached out to some of our more prolific researchers that we work with in academia and got their take in one gentleman who in his field is, I think, the most preeminent scientist in his field. I think, you know, he would build on what you said and I think would even was coaching me which which I thought was really special in that with the replicability crisis, there's actually like and the pressure to publish, I think what we're actually in risk of is encouraging young scientists to be less audacious, which is right. The safest thing to do is publish something very straightforward and simple and easy to replicate that is like the antithesis of what we want science to do. We want science to be on the edge, to be taking big, daring, audacious bets and like that's the messy business of finding truth. And I think behind that you need very patient capital. And I do think we're finding that in many ways, companies can be very patient capital compared to some public fundings due to just incentive structures, politics and these things like that. And so I think like we're at this special moment where, you know, in my world it's like I want bolder hypotheses, I want riskier hypotheses. I want science to be done right, to find, to to validate those. But what I don't want, like academic researchers to take away from all this is like, I got to play it safe. If we start playing it safe, then we're just going to see innovation taper down over time.
Really important points. You raised the issue of the need to have different sources of funding to support that risk taking. In, in discovery, which I think in my mind at least links with what you keep saying, Sylvia, about that recognition of what we don't know and the the courage to go and explore that, I mean, just very clearly to emphasize that we do, in the end, want our facts to be robust, robust and replicated. And when you first mentioned replication crisis, you referred to social sciences. Absolutely right. That's where it was first identified and of course, extended to aspects of biomedical medicine. But in some circles, replication crisis is talked about as if it pertains to the whole space of science, which is most definitely not the case. Dan, you want to.
Come in? Yeah. Well, I think also maybe sources of authority are changing, for better or for worse. And most people don't go to nature, although it's a great journal to to find the answers. They they go to the internet. And social media has been a place that untruths have have fomented. But also truth can be shared. And we're seeing that more and more. Maybe it's easier in applied sciences like I'm in, but when people take our medicines, they write about it on the internet and they share it with their friends, and you can look for a cure for cancer on the internet and find snake oil salesmen and quickly find out that it doesn't work from people who not used it. And you can find out about great cancer drugs from people whose lives have been saved and they're writing about it. It's not perfect, and we haven't figured out how to sort out the good news from the fake news on the internet, but I think that this is going to become more of a source of authority. People talking to each other about their own experiences with science. And probably we need to spend more time figuring out how to use that.
Thank you. So just as we were warming up, we basically ran out of time. I think what we have come. We've covered a lot of ground. And thank you for the questions that you've had. I would say that to protect science, we have to be open. We have to be honest. We have to have these kinds of conversations across a number of stakeholders. We have to find allies. I think what Dan was talking about actually engage as many people as possible in that conversation to fly the flag for science, because, if anything, we discussed here at the beginning that, that inquiry, that that thirst, hunger and thirst for knowledge is fundamental to us as human beings. Thank you very much to my panel and thank you to all of you. Thank you.
Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much.