Bruce Stillman - The art of being a scientist

Bruce Stillman, Oliver R. Grace Professor and CEO of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, discusses the highs and lows of life as a scientist.

About Bruce Stillman

"I’m a biologist and biochemist, and President of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

I’m a scientist who works on the inheritance of genetic information, the inheritance of DNA and how the biochemistry of that process works, to understand how our genes are inherited from one generation to the next."

Key Points

• One of the great things about science is the constant influx of younger people who bring new ideas and challenge the status quo. • Like a good chef, a good scientist doesn’t stick to one “recipe” but is constantly experimenting with different methods and ideas. • Science needs people who have the tenacity to keep attacking a problem and the good sense to know when to change direction.

The thrill of experimentation

One of the fascinating things about science, and the reason I pursued a scientific rather than a medical career, is the scientific process. When I was an undergraduate, I worked in laboratories and was exposed to the daily life of a scientist. That is, you can go in, design experiments, get the results, look at those results and start to think about their implications. You’re the first person to see those results. This generates lots of ideas in your head, and you have to then come up with different ways of testing those ideas.

A critical component of being a great scientist is choosing which ideas to pursue, because you can go down the wrong path very easily if you’re not smart enough to figure out what the data is telling you and where to go with it.

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