Name: 【TED】Kirsty Duncan: Scientists must be free to learn, to speak and to challenge (Scientists must be free to learn, to speak and to challenge | Kirsty Duncan)
Uploaded: 2018-06-06T15:32:36.000Z
Duration: 13 min 56 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

has been studying a type of algae that grows on rocks.

Now, the very unscientific term for that algae is rock snot,

But scientists also call it Didymosphenia geminata

and for decades, this algae has been sliming up riverbeds

is that it is a threat to salmon, to trout

The problem was, Dr. Bothwell wasn't allowed to speak to the reporter,

because the government of the day wouldn't let him.

that climate change may have been responsible

But who the heck would want to stifle climate change information, right?

We know that climate change is suppressed for all sorts of reasons.

I saw it firsthand when I was a university professor.

We see it when countries pull out of international climate agreements

like the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Accord,

and we see it when industry fails to meet its emissions reduction targets.

But it's not just climate change information that's being stifled.

So many other scientific issues are obscured by alternate facts,

fake news and other forms of suppression.

when our very survival depends on discovery,

that our scientists are free to undertake their work,

free to collaborate with other scientists,

science is humanity's best effort at uncovering the truth

adds to the growing body of our collective knowledge.

They must be free to challenge the thinking of the day

to present uncomfortable or inconvenient truths,

because that's how scientists push boundaries

and pushing boundaries is, after all, what science is all about.

because even a failed hypothesis teaches us something.

And the best way I can explain that is through one of my own adventures.

But first I've got to take you back in time.

and Claire and Vera are roommates in southern Ontario.

One evening during the height of the Spanish flu pandemic,

The end of the evening, they head for home and for bed.

and the scientist in me wanted to know why and how.

My curiosity would lead me to a frozen land

to uncover the cause of the 1918 Spanish flu.

I wanted to test our current drugs against one of history's deadliest diseases.

that would be effective against the virus

【TED】Kirsty Duncan: Scientists must be free to learn, to speak and to challenge (Scientists must be free to learn, to speak and to challenge | Kirsty Duncan)

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【TED】Kirsty Duncan: Scientists must be free to learn, to speak and to challenge (Scientists must be free to learn, to speak and to challenge | Kirsty Duncan)

critical

pandemic

applause

develop