The Problem in Biomedical Education

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00:00:06.20 My name is Henry Bourne.
00:00:08.13 For more than 40 years I taught
00:00:12.22 graduate students and postdocs
00:00:15.02 in a biomedical laboratory
00:00:18.06 and had a wonderful doing that.
00:00:21.27 Today, I'm going to talk to you about
00:00:26.00 graduate education and the fact that
00:00:28.09 it needs to be changed.
00:00:29.29 And I'm going to tell you
00:00:33.01 that we, meaning PIs and the students,
00:00:36.19 have to change it because the NIH
00:00:39.02 will not be able to and won't.
00:00:42.28 And I'm going to also
00:00:45.21 suggest that we do this
00:00:47.27 first in a set of small experiments
00:00:51.03 that are very local,
00:00:53.00 in a few high quality new graduate programs formed
00:00:58.15 for this experimental purpose,
00:01:00.03 with really high quality professors
00:01:02.28 and high quality students.
00:01:05.03 And the premise will be
00:01:08.05 that if they succeed in making
00:01:12.20 better graduate programs, just a few of them,
00:01:15.21 others will follow.
00:01:18.05 So now, why do we need to do
00:01:22.08 anything at all?
00:01:23.24 What's wrong with PhD education
00:01:27.18 in biomedical science?
00:01:29.03 In fact, it's been a huge
00:01:31.01 success for six or seven decades.
00:01:35.27 It's produced wonderful scientists.
00:01:38.07 The graduate students have, during their
00:01:41.21 graduate school, produced wonderful science
00:01:43.27 themselves. Many of them have
00:01:46.17 gone on to great careers.
00:01:48.25 So, what's wrong?
00:01:50.07 The problem is really not
00:01:52.25 so much the graduate program
00:01:55.14 themselves, as that the world has changed
00:01:59.27 in a major way.
00:02:02.17 That needs to be dealt with.
00:02:06.05 And if it's not dealt with, it will cause
00:02:08.24 disaster. The first and the biggest and the worst
00:02:12.01 change is the dreadful feedback loop
00:02:14.13 that you've read about or heard about
00:02:17.07 from Michael Teitelbaum and these
00:02:19.01 lectures -- this series of lectures.
00:02:21.19 And from Bruce Alberts and his colleagues
00:02:24.04 on the printed pages of PNAS.
00:02:26.27 And from many others.
00:02:28.19 And that feedback loop
00:02:30.17 works like this.
00:02:31.25 There's huge competition
00:02:33.23 nowadays, among PIs and institutions
00:02:37.10 to get papers published and to
00:02:41.05 get more dollars from NIH and other
00:02:44.07 private donors. And that means more labs
00:02:49.18 and bigger labs. It means more graduate
00:02:52.22 students in each lab and more postdocs.
00:02:56.07 And it does produce more papers
00:02:58.12 per lab, in better journals.
00:03:02.17 And that ratchets up the competition still further.
00:03:06.17 Now, there's a thing it doesn't do
00:03:08.21 and that is, it doesn't produce more research
00:03:12.01 jobs -- except for graduate students
00:03:14.09 to be graduate students and postdocs to be postdocs.
00:03:16.16 And that's not the purpose
00:03:19.26 of research. The purpose of training students
00:03:25.04 is to allow them to become researchers,
00:03:27.07 not to allow them to fill laboratories
00:03:30.27 and do the work.
00:03:31.12 So, there's a second problem associated with
00:03:36.23 this, and that is the context
00:03:39.06 in which the problem has occurred.
00:03:43.04 The feedback loop cannot be fixed
00:03:46.23 without big changes in the actual
00:03:49.24 texture of graduate education,
00:03:52.07 the substance of it.
00:03:53.10 And we can't make those changes
00:03:56.03 without changing laboratories.
00:03:58.04 We have to deal with the issue
00:04:00.14 of getting the work done
00:04:02.08 without having zillions of graduate students
00:04:05.03 and postdocs all the time to do all of that work.
00:04:08.21 And so it's a critical problem
00:04:12.29 and the experiments are the best way
00:04:15.26 that I'm going to describe,
00:04:17.05 are the best way to deal with it.
00:04:18.18 All of those experiments
00:04:21.06 should deal with yet another problem,
00:04:23.18 and that is, the huge length of time,
00:04:27.00 six and a half years on average,
00:04:30.02 that it takes to get a biomedical PhD.
00:04:31.27 That length of time is closely
00:04:35.06 intertwined with the conflict of interests
00:04:37.24 that PIs find themselves in.
00:04:40.24 On the one hand, they want to teach
00:04:43.21 students how to do science,
00:04:46.07 but on the other, they need to get their work done.
00:04:49.02 And those two are not
00:04:51.13 strictly compatible with one another,
00:04:54.00 unless students stay in the lab a long time.
00:04:58.18 So, exploitation? Yeah, that's a problem.
00:05:04.15 We do need to spend more time thinking
00:05:08.02 about actually teaching. But it's not
00:05:10.11 just evil exploiters. It really is the fact
00:05:15.04 that the mentor/student relationship
00:05:17.19 is so satisfying, that many PIs
00:05:22.23 and many, many students
00:05:24.19 get enormous satisfaction from it and
00:05:27.27 want to keep it going.
00:05:29.25 And that's the real underlying
00:05:32.16 human problem that we have to deal with.
00:05:34.03 Now, on top of that, what's happened
00:05:36.24 is that the competition derby
00:05:40.26 has put the squeeze on both students
00:05:44.12 and PIs, because they both are now
00:05:48.09 convinced that a blockbuster paper in Cell,
00:05:51.12 Nature, and Science is necessary
00:05:53.10 for a PhD to succeed in life.
00:05:56.08 And necessary for a postdoc
00:05:58.24 as well, another such paper.
00:06:01.12 And what we do is, we tell ourselves,
00:06:03.24 "Well, students are very young.
00:06:06.10 And so they should have long PhDs, in order
00:06:09.05 to grow up." But that is balderdash and
00:06:13.08 the reason is that those long
00:06:16.02 PhDs, and longer postdocs sometimes,
00:06:20.01 produce people who are ready to
00:06:24.05 run a laboratory when they're 40 years old.
00:06:28.06 After their most creative and energetic
00:06:32.23 years of their lives, which they have spent
00:06:36.14 working for somebody else.
00:06:38.14 That's not a good idea.
00:06:40.29 So I've said that the NIH can't
00:06:44.21 and won't fix these human problems.
00:06:46.28 The reason is that the NIH it will be
00:06:50.10 opposed by many PIs, by institutions,
00:06:54.21 and it'll find itself in a fix if it
00:06:57.14 tries to do something. This is a problem
00:07:01.00 that humans need to deal with,
00:07:02.16 because it's a human problem.
00:07:04.13 And the first thing is not to
00:07:06.23 do what NIH and many PIs
00:07:09.01 are doing right, which is to paint
00:07:11.00 the problem over with lipstick
00:07:13.12 and makeup, and to pretend that
00:07:17.05 a lab PhD is a glitzy thing
00:07:19.11 that opens vast gateways to huge numbers
00:07:23.20 of jobs, not just to be a professor,
00:07:26.19 but to be almost anything.
00:07:29.00 Well, it was wrong, and it is wrong
00:07:32.22 for us to continue to push students
00:07:35.09 on to qualify for non-existent academic jobs.
00:07:39.25 But it's equally crazy to pretend
00:07:43.16 that those other jobs will magically appear.
00:07:46.23 We don't see a huge clamor for entrepreneur
00:07:49.13 for venture capitalists, for science writers,
00:07:52.17 for editors in journals, for policy mavens,
00:07:56.03 who deal with the minutiae of science and its funding.
00:08:02.06 What we're doing is pretending
00:08:05.07 that those exist, in order to allow
00:08:07.14 us to continue ourselves with dreams of
00:08:11.13 blockbuster papers and unlimited future NIH dollars
00:08:16.22 to pay for things and trainings.
00:08:19.06 Now, to deal with these,
00:08:23.00 we need to set up carefully designed
00:08:25.14 experiments on a human scale.
00:08:28.06 That means a small number of very
00:08:31.21 local first rate PhD programs created
00:08:36.12 for this experimental purpose
00:08:38.08 that have top quality professors,
00:08:41.06 students, and environments.
00:08:44.09 And those programs should share
00:08:50.00 certains goals, although they can achieve them
00:08:52.09 in lots of different ways.
00:08:53.27 First goal is that they must first
00:08:56.29 teach students how to do research,
00:08:58.26 that's their primary goal
00:09:00.15 or allow students to actively learn
00:09:04.02 how to do research, is another way to put it.
00:09:06.02 They should also shorten their time
00:09:08.07 to degree to somewhere between 4-5 years.
00:09:10.29 And they should also work to defuse
00:09:14.05 the major context issue, which is
00:09:18.01 the equation of laboratory workers
00:09:21.17 with students, and the fact that we need
00:09:25.24 to have somebody to actually do the work in laboratories.
00:09:30.06 Now, by the way, if this works
00:09:32.18 we might be able to stamp that dread feedback loop.
00:09:36.10 But these programs by themselves won't do that.
00:09:39.19 Now, the experiments will not be lots and identical,
00:09:44.10 but they will share certain qualities.
00:09:47.01 One is they will have to define the purpose
00:09:50.22 of training and then design their programs
00:09:53.22 to achieve that purpose.
00:09:55.23 And the purpose is that students learn
00:09:58.07 how to do science. But to do that,
00:10:01.09 they need to do three things, and only three things,
00:10:04.03 the first one is to be able to identify
00:10:06.11 a really good question, the second
00:10:09.23 is to design and perform really good
00:10:14.19 experiments that shed light on those questions,
00:10:18.04 and the third is then, after those early experiments
00:10:23.01 are done, to decide which ones to follow up
00:10:25.25 and which ones can be put aside for later.
00:10:28.15 Now those are not easy lessons to learn.
00:10:32.18 Let's recognize it.
00:10:34.11 But teaching them and learning them
00:10:37.05 will require big changes.
00:10:39.22 The first one is, that we need to stop
00:10:41.22 pretending that blockbuster papers
00:10:44.27 are evidence that these lessons have been learned,
00:10:47.25 because they're not.
00:10:49.15 Now, other necessary changes
00:10:52.27 to make this happen will be
00:10:54.18 these programs will have to attract top candidates
00:10:57.19 and those candidates should all have had
00:11:00.07 experience in real laboratories, so they know what a lab
00:11:02.22 is like before they come.
00:11:04.14 They should know what is ahead of them,
00:11:07.24 and when they arrive, their courses
00:11:10.28 should be short, sweet, and a little hard,
00:11:14.27 sort of like a boot camp, but not lectures,
00:11:17.08 and they shouldn't last for longer than 3-4 months tops.
00:11:20.21 Second, every student who comes in
00:11:24.28 should have a mandatory Masters degree
00:11:29.00 exam at 18 months and at that point
00:11:33.11 the decision should be made by the student
00:11:35.28 and the faculty whether that student should
00:11:40.09 go on to finish this particular PhD program
00:11:44.11 or whether they would be better
00:11:47.28 suited for take another task on
00:11:51.15 that involves knowing about research,
00:11:55.08 but not necessarily doing it.
00:11:57.12 If so, then they should be helped
00:12:00.05 to find that route and to do that.
00:12:03.26 Now, they should also,
00:12:07.27 if they do complete the PhD,
00:12:10.16 they should complete it between 4-5 years.
00:12:13.07 Now what do we do about the blockbuster
00:12:15.09 problem? Do we decide no they don't need
00:12:18.25 to publish any paper at all? No!
00:12:20.11 They should publish a paper that has new knowledge in it.
00:12:23.09 But they need not publish something
00:12:26.07 that's going to knock the socks off of everybody
00:12:28.11 in the field. If the work, now you need to deal with if
00:12:34.24 they do, supposing a student makes a discovery with
00:12:38.18 real blockbuster potential, do we get rid of
00:12:41.15 that student and let the next student
00:12:43.25 get the credit for that work? No!
00:12:45.29 Because if we have staff scientists in our labs
00:12:51.02 they can continue that work and do the last
00:12:55.09 set of experiments necessary to get
00:12:57.10 the work published and let the student
00:12:59.27 go on with her life, but still be the first
00:13:03.19 author on the paper.
00:13:05.07 Now, is this all a pipedream?
00:13:06.25 No, it's not.
00:13:09.10 The reason is one place
00:13:12.03 that is the Watson's School
00:13:13.24 at Cold Spring Harbor has solved
00:13:15.18 the time to degree problem
00:13:17.14 for 15 years worth of graduate student admissions.
00:13:22.21 The average time to degree there
00:13:25.04 is less than five years, and
00:13:27.01 the careers that these highly qualified
00:13:30.29 students go on to are excellent.
00:13:33.28 They're almost all in research,
00:13:36.17 sometimes in academia, often in
00:13:39.22 biotech or big pharma, and sometimes in government.
00:13:47.12 But they're satisfying careers
00:13:50.28 that do exactly what these students learned
00:13:55.17 how to do. Now how do they do that?
00:13:57.27 They did that with short courses,
00:13:59.06 they did that with very strong faculty oversight,
00:14:02.07 and by sticking hard to the short time to degree
00:14:07.18 as a goal, and they also did it because
00:14:10.21 Cold Spring Harbor itself
00:14:12.10 paid the stipends and tuition
00:14:14.14 of the students after fellowships and training grants
00:14:18.20 ran out. That meant that a big impetus
00:14:23.24 to the PIs conflict of interest was done away with
00:14:28.02 at a stroke, and that is very important.
00:14:31.17 So, we mustn't ignore that context.
00:14:34.18 Enlightened institutions will have to help
00:14:38.07 with these experiments, they will
00:14:40.06 have to pay the stipends and tuition
00:14:43.00 of a few students in the program,
00:14:45.23 as we described for Cold Spring Harbor,
00:14:49.19 it won't cost a lot because it won't be for that many
00:14:51.29 students. They will also have to give incentives
00:14:55.28 to the PIs to hire staff scientists,
00:15:00.04 a staff scientists cost maybe twice
00:15:05.00 what it costs for tuition and fees of a graduate student
00:15:08.08 every year, that are paid now out of research grants.
00:15:11.24 So, economically it can be done
00:15:15.02 and that staff scientist, if they're good,
00:15:17.24 can do just as much work
00:15:20.28 as two graduate students,
00:15:22.22 even if the graduate students are really good,
00:15:24.29 first rate and the top of their form.
00:15:27.23 Now these experiments may work,
00:15:30.22 they may not, but it's a very important to
00:15:33.24 realize that if we don't try, we won't know.
00:15:37.00 But they're not easy to do.
00:15:40.07 It should be said straight out,
00:15:43.09 that it's hard to work to start a new graduate program,
00:15:46.12 it's hard work to attract the students,
00:15:49.17 to select them, and then to allow them to learn
00:15:53.17 in a new way. PIs will need to buy in
00:15:57.15 at the outset and the institutions will need to pony
00:16:01.25 up some dollars. But if these experiments
00:16:06.09 are undertaken, we will have already done
00:16:08.06 something that's very important,
00:16:10.07 which is to rethink how PhD training
00:16:13.07 might be. That is very important.
00:16:16.07 And if two or three or four or five
00:16:20.06 of the different experiments work
00:16:22.29 other students will flock to those programs.
00:16:27.05 And other programs will emulate
00:16:29.26 their innovations and NIH will
00:16:33.14 start the flow of dollars towards those
00:16:37.10 programs and scientists will be made faster
00:16:41.03 and a much lower costs.
00:16:43.25 So, it's crucial to realize that
00:16:48.25 if we don't undertake these experiments
00:16:52.23 and if they don't work, the dollar costs
00:16:56.24 of graduate training and the pipeline
00:16:59.18 that overload that we create will cause
00:17:04.00 severe damage, not only to graduate
00:17:06.01 education, but to biomedical research itself.
00:17:08.19 And I leave you with this notion,
00:17:14.15 after all, the experiments that I propose
00:17:18.01 are much more likely to work
00:17:21.00 than anything else we have
00:17:23.16 before us. It's certainly more likely
00:17:25.27 to work than waiting for the NIH to do something
00:17:29.09 on it's own, because the NIH is not capable
00:17:32.29 of doing this kind of human experiment
00:17:36.20 in a thoughtful and effective way.
00:17:39.24 It's capable of adopting it if it works
00:17:43.00 but not of making it happen.
00:17:45.06 Thank you.

This Talk

Speaker: Henry Bourne

Audience:

Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: August 2015

Talk Overview

Dr. Henry Bourne has trained graduate students and postdocs at UCSF for over 40 years. In his iBiology talk, he discusses the imminent need for change in biomedical education. With times to degree getting longer, the biomedical education needs to create experimental graduate programs to find more effective and low-cost ways to train future scientists and run successful laboratories. If we don’t start looking for solutions, the future of the biomedical enterprise will grow increasingly unstable.

Speaker Bio

Henry Bourne

Henry Bourne is Professor Emeritus and former chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California – San Francisco. His research focused on trimeric G-proteins, G-protein coupled receptors, and the cellular signals responsible for polarity and direction-finding of human leukocytes. He is the author of several books including a memoir, Ambition and Delight,… Continue Reading