>> rose: welcome to our program. tonight, one of the world's foremost cancer researchers, nobel laureate, sir paul nurse. >> what i quite like being in charge of the institution is not exercising power. because when you're in an academic institution, what you have is-- let's take rockefeller university-- 70 brilliant minds. i shouldn't be exerting power over them. i should be liberating them. >> rose: sure. >> so they can actually generate all their creativity and do everything they want to do. so by being in charge and not exercising power, i actually empower my colleagues. >> rose: sir paul nurse for the hour next. funding for charlie rose was provided by the following:

seven years ago, i had this idea. to make baby food the way moms would. additional funding provided by these funders: in a business like ours, personal connections are so important. we use our american express open gold card to further those connections. last year we took dozens of trips using membership rewards points to meet with the farmers that grow our sweet potatoes and merchants that sell our product. we've gone from being in 5 stores to 7,500. booming is using points to make connections that grow your business. additional funding provided by these funders: captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> rose: sir paul nurse is here. he is a nobel prize-winning biologist. he has been president of rockefeller university in new york city since 2003. he is now leaving that post on march 1 to lead an exciting new venture. it is called the united kingdom center for medical research and innovation. upon its completion in 2015,. will be one of the largest biomedical research facilities in the world. he also recently became president-- get this-- of the royal society of london. who honors. this is great! >> it is great. and it's good to be here again, charlie. good to see you. >> rose: thank you. the reason you have decided to leave one great job for another great job is? >> well, firstly, it's a bit bittersweet because rockefeller university, wonderful institution. i've enjoyed my seven to eight

years in new york-- it's extraordinary. >> rose: i remember coming up to see you soon after you had taken the job. >> and it only seems a few days ago, doesn't it? great institution, great research organization. and so i'm feeling a little sad, quite frankly, leaving new york, and leaving all my colleagues here. but i do think what i'm going to is very, very interesting. the royal society you mentioned, funny, strange name, but it is the oldest scientific academy in the world. founded in 16 sick, so it's been around for -- >> your pret cessor has been on our program. >> martin reese. it's a great institution. one of the leading academies, some say, where the national

academy, the the leading academy and i have a lot of work to do there, influencing government and giving them advice on science and the application of science. that's one job. the institute you mentioned, u.k. center for medical research and ipovation-- which i can barely say myself, will have a real snappier name in a few mongst. >> rose: what will be the snap yerp name. >> i'm not going to tell you that. bring me back. i know what it is going to be but i have to keep it under wraps for a moment. >> rose: will you have time to do in lond? >> absolutely. i manage to jug expel keep my own research, my only scholarly activity going all my life despite running institutions. and it will be possible to do that in london, too. i just won a grant to set up my lab there. i will begin that at the end of this year. and i'll be spending time just like i have at rockefeller running my own laboratory. >> rose: so what is the focus of your research and your concentration? >> i'm interested in cells. we're all made of cells. it's a basic unit of life. i'm interested in rather sichle

problems about cells. i'm interested in what controls their division and what controls their shape. i mean, you couldn't have a simpler set of questions. >> rose: but you won the nobel prize. >> because of my earlier work in the area. >> rose: the division, the decision making of cells. >> exactly. i won it for-- together with colleagues, of course,-- for working out the basic controls. but what i continue to work on there is how those controls actually bring about the process of cell division, and how that actually works in a whole range of different cell types. so that's one issue that i'm really interested in. the cell shape one is newer. >> rose: why is that important? two things. it's interesting-- ever that's biological has a characteristic shape. we have characteristic shapes. trees have characteristic shapes. that's how we recognize what's a living thing. that applies to cells, too.

so it's a fundamental property of life, of how you organize yourself in space. again, waz cell division, you see, which is the sort of basis of all reproduction, in terms of a cell, the shape is the simplest expression of biological shape. so we have a chance in simple systems of understanding it, and that's why i launched that program, just to understand how a cell has a sense of its shape, how it determines its shape, and controls it. >> rose: do cancer cells start out as good cells and then they become bad? >> this is relevant. actually, the cell shape isn't. you asked the question about cancer. and it's relevant to that. let me explain why. cancer cells in a sense do start out being good. they behave. >> rose: right. >> they behave. but then they have 25,000 genes are our human cells do, and a number of them, maybe 500 are, relevant to cancer. when these get damaged, as they do over the lifetime of an individual, if you damage enough

and in the right sorts of ways, those cancer-relevant genes, then the cells begin to misbehave, and they misbehave in several ways. one is they start to grow and they shouldn't. another is they start to divide when they shouldn't, which is one of the problems i am interested in. and another one, when these cells actually start to escape from the original tissue where they form and start spreading through the body-- which is really one of the difficult mestaft sis, one of the really difficult problems of cancer, they have to change their shape? >> rose: ah! >> this is where it becomes relevant to medicine. my basic interest is in how cells determine the shape. also, relevant, however, to cancer. >> rose: why do they have to change their shape as they divide? >> if you're packedding in the a tissue, you're constrained like this, you can't escape. you're suck here. but if you can wriggle out, then you can actually spread from that tissue to somewhere else. to do that you are to undergo a

transforpation that allows to you spread. and part of that involves a change in cell shape. >> rose: it back to you. you always end up running institutions. >> yes. >> rose: what is it? what is your-- why is that? >> you know, charlie, i've thought about that because i'm not even quite certain if i like running institutions. some of my friends, maybe they're my enemies, actually, when i think about it-- they say i'm not running institutions because i can't bear anybody else -- >> i read, that too, in the "guardian." >> there may be some truth to that. i end up doing it but that's partly because-- i'm going to be idealistic. i'll tell you why i convince myself i do it. i get driven to do my research by curiosity. i feel that if i'm going to enjoy my research so much, just satisfying my curiosity, i have

to pay something back. i'm quite good at organizing things. i'm quite good at running things. it's my payback. so half my time i do my own research and i'm happy to do whatever i'm interested in. my other half, i pay back by helping other people, running institutions, recruiting, developing -- >> it gives you power to have an impact beyond your own research. >> no, that isn't quite what i'm saying actually. what i'm saying is i don't feel so guilty because i feel guilty-- if i just did my own research, i'd feel a bit guilty about it. but if i'm paying back to the community, the scientific community, with the other half of my job, i don't feel so guilty -- >> but the reason you ascend to the top of an institution is because it gives you the ability-- maybe you don't like the word "power"-- ability to impact others, and, therefore, pay back. without the leadership of an institution,-- >> you can't do that. >> rose: you can't pay back. >> that's absolutely true. and interestingly, what i quite like being in charge of the

institution is not exercising power. because when you're in an academic institution, what you have is-- let's take rockefeller university-- 70 brilliant minds. i shouldn't be exerting power over them. i should be liberating them. >> rose: sure. >> so they can actually generate all their creativity and do everything they want to do. so by being in charge and not exercising power, i actually empower my colleagues. >> rose: yeah, okay, but the empowerment of something is power, too. i mean, you use power, responsibility to empower someone. not power over them, but are you giving them power. >> i'm hopefully liberating them and giving them power and that's the bit i like sglut. >> rose: but you have to ask v skill at this, too, because people want you to run things. >> they do -- >> the fact that you want to help them-- that you want to pay back does not necessarily make you good. a lot of people would like to pay back. >> and you've got to be subtle about it. ultimately, you're in charge. you have to make the decisions.

but ultimately, i see my role, particularly with younger researchers, i meant to say jr. researchers-- otherwise, the lawyers, of course, will talk to me. junior researchers ultimately i see my role to identify really good junior researchers, get them in, give them everything we can, we can afford to give them, and let them get on with it. that does give me a lot of satisfaction, i have to say. >> rose: but you're not acknowledging skills. you must have the ability to listen, the ability to understand organizations, the ability to motivate. you must have something that you picked up along the way. some core competence. >> you mean something machiavellian? >> rose: i'm putting more emphasis on this than it deserves, but it does strike everybody who knows you that you are asked to lead a lot of important things-- the royal society. it doesn't get any bugger than

that. this whole new institution. paul nurse is our guy. >> let me try and answer that in some way that might make sense. i sometimes feel i operate a little bit like the u.n., united nations. sometimes i'm faced with difficult problems. people are not getting on or difficulty of persuading the government to give money or persuading the government to do this, that, or the other. and what i do try to do is engage individuals and try and find a way through the problem. so i really do focus on that. i'm not confrontational. >> rose: right. >> i am very determined, but i look for a way which allows everybody to feel that they've got a piece of the action and can claim some victory. so i guess that might be a skill i do have. >> rose: there you go. all right, let me move to stem cells. where are we today? >> right. let's-- so, first of all, what are stem cells? let's get that clear. stem cells are a particular type of cell in our bodies that actually in the all living organisms-- including plants,

actually-- and what they are able to do is to keep proliferating, dividing-- that's the process we were talking about before-- and then the progeny of that can turn into different cell types, into different tissues, into the different parts of different organs. so what you have with a stem cell is the ability, for example to generate new nervous tissue, new parts of the brain. >> rose: sure. >> to regenerate different parts of the muscle and so on. and what we found out in the last 10 years or so is the ways in which you can manipulate that. in other words, you start with a stem cell. if you treat with different chemicals or affect different genes, you can turn them into these different cell types. and we are on the brink of being able to use that for medical application. now understand it a lot better than we did even when i first came to this country, i have to say, seven or eight years ago. and we're now on the brink of being able to use that for medical treatment. >> rose: are embryonic stem

cells still the best source? >> embryonic stem cells are still the ones that have the most-- the greatest ability to turn into different cell types. but we can now do quite a lot with cells which are being induced to be able to behave in the way they just described. they're not quite as good as embryonic stem cells, but they're getting very close to them. >> rose: how do you manipulate a certain stem cell to become brain tissue or heart tissue? >> you know, it's not as difficult as it seems. i mean, it seems extraordinary. because there are different chemicals you can add, different growth factors and the like. there are different ways you can manipulate specific genes, and that sort of forces a cell either to going in this direction or this direction. and gradually, they'll become a heart cell or a muscle cell or a brain cell. >> rose: and how far away from being able to create new parts and new lungs and new--.

>> i don't think that is tomorrow, but what we do have is the ability to make tissues, say a heart tissue, and gradually, how i see that going is that we may be able to make primitive organs in culture by giving them a sort of framework upon which to grow-- and that's already happening, too-- so that we can generate primitive organs. i think that's not so far away. but we're not quite there yet. but what we are-- what we are close to being able to do is if you have a damaged spinal cord or other nervous tissue, of introducing cells that could turn into nerve cells and give you repair. we're not quite as far as you said, but we're gradly getting there. >> rose: you said we are on the brink? >> yes. >> rose: what do we need to get from being on the brink to being in the land of discovery? >> as with all biomedical

research, i never use the word "breakthrough." i always use the word "brick in the wall." i always think what we're constructing is a wall, and each of these advances is another brick. what i would say in this area, the potential for therapy, we have a small wall, and we're gradually moving to a big wall, and we'll gradually see one brick after another. it's hard work. it's partly imagination. a lot of it is perspiration. a lot of it is just real grind in the laboratory. it needs money. it needs resource. it needs focus, and i think there are many really good people, including some of at my own institution, rockefeller university, who are doing excellent work in this area. >> rose: where are we in terms of reaping the benefits of the mapping of the human genome? >> ah, switch to the genome? >> rose: yes. >> well, what can i say about that? the first thing is some people have been a little disappointed because they felt, you know, we've got the genome. that was nearly the end of the

story. >> rose: do you understand their disappointment? >> i understand it because in fact we should have made it clear as scientists it's actually the beginning of the story. i have a metaphor for this. it's-- if you were writing a play, the sequence of the genome is like having the list of characters at the beginning of play, and the job you-- you can't write the play without the list of characters. that's essential. but actually, there's a lot of work that has to go on that depends on that human genome sequence but which isn't simply a consequence of that genome sequence. it's a prerequisite. it's not the end of the story. where are we getting? what are we doing? there are some really cool things that have been found out. we have now sequenced -- not me, but other scientists-- but sequenced the neanderthal man in the last year or two. >> rose: and found? >> and found-- first of all, human beings, the neanderthals-- this isn't my area. i think they diverge about

500,000 years ago, something of that sort-- and they are a close relative, but a relative that doesn't have-- or was not thought to have human characteristics like culture or art or symbolism or even language. now we're not sure about that, but that's what we-- that's what we think based on artifacts in tombs. so now you can compare, neanderthal, which is extremely similar to homosapiens, to ourselves, and say what's the difference between these genetically. this hasn't been properly or fully analyzed but there are a few genetic differences and the question is are these important for what makes us human against neanderthal? >> rose: and what are those differences? >> some of them people are speculated perhaps speech, for example, which is one characteristic, but we don't fully understand it. but we have to marvel, charlie. 20 years ago, it would have been incomprehensible to me that we could produce the sequence of

neanderthal. it's completely extraordinary. now, that's just an aside. you asked about where we're getting to. that's one thing. secondly, we now-- the cost of sequencing has really reduced. we can now sequence-- the organism i work on, it took us four years, five years to do it. we can now do it in about a minute on one of these machines in. >> rose: wow. >> it's just--. >> rose: the organism that you work with. >> i organism i work on we can sequence the whole thing in less than a minute, maybe even seconds. whereas only 10 years ago, it took me half a decade. now that raw sequencing power and the ability to analyze it, a number of centers around the world, means, for example, that there's a major project which is called the thousand genome project, to sequence a thousand human beings to get a sense of the whole variety of genetic variation. >> rose: i would have thought

that would have been done five years ago. >> well, only-- think of when we actually sequenced -- >> when we had the first breakthrough. >> we had the first draft, but that, took honest, was a bid crude. you need another year or two to get to it. now we talk about 1,000. and that one took, i don't know, 10 years, or something like that. we are already-- and when i mean "we," i mean scientific community-- we already have raw drops of 1,000 geg.e. noams which now means we can describe the majority of genetic variations in populations. >> rose: the larger the sample the more you can learn. >> and you can take different populations and that gives you the basis for being able to look at association of certain genetic changes, together with certain diseases. this is sort of called association study. >> rose: so if they came to you and said how would you like to have your genomey sequenced, you

would say? i'd be have interested in having my genome sequenced because -- >> but i would think that would be automatic for you. >> yes, i'm really interested in it. i would rather know than not know-- of course some people are worried about it. and i discovered that my parents were not my parent. >> rose: an extraordinary center. >> a -- >> let me just tell the story. you applied for your visa. >> i applied for a green card. >> rose: and in doing that, huto get some records. >> well, i was rejected, actually, by homeland security. and i thought, well, you know i've got a nobel prize, i have been knighted i, i am president of rockefeller university, why on earth are they rejecting my application? and what it was was some bureaucrat did not like the fact that the birth certificate i had did not name my parents.

it was a so-called short birth certificate, and that meant that-- it's a legal document, and i never ever thought about it before. and that meant that they didn't like it because the names weren't there. so i had to write away, get a full birth certificate. i could have done it any times for 50 years before. and when it came back and i looked at it, out of the envelope, actually surrounded by several people in my lab and my family, and they realized there was something not quite right because they were all looking at me. what i saw there was my mother was actually my sister. extraordinary -- >> because your mother had given birth to you. >> when she was 18. >> rose: yeah. >> she got pregnant -- >> she went away and had you and brought you back. >> she got pregnant, she was sent away-- like a victorian novel, 19th senry novel-- she was sent away to her aunt 100 miles away. she gave birth to me. my grandmother came up and--

that distant city, pretended that she was my mother, sent her daughter back at 18, and then came back a couple of months later with me pretending she was -- >> so you lived life thinking that your mother was your sister >> i lived life thinking that my grandparents were my parents. >> rose: right. >> that my uncles were my brothers, and that my sister-- my mother was my sister. so everybody changed position in my family. >> rose: and it also-- this i did not know. i read this just today, that there were pictures, four pictures at your mother's bedside table. >> yes, that's true. >> rose: and three of them were her-- >> real legitimate children. >> rose: another birth child. but you were there. the four pictures included you. >> it did, and i never knew that until after she had died. >> rose: and how do you explain the fact that at no point did your grandparents say to you, "here is the truth?" >> that's interesting. you know, my family-- i was the

only person in my family who stayed at school after 15, and i'm a geneticist. this is the ultimate irony, of course. here's me a geneticist, having my own genetic origin kept entirely secret. and i-- i-- once we got a bit close, when i had my children-- they were 10 years of age-- they had a project at school, a family tree prth. and i said, well, come and tuk your grandmother and grandfather about this, something interesting to do. it's actually dangerous it-- anyway, they got there, and my 11-year-old daughter, 10-year-old daughter, took off my mother, grandmother, and about five minutes later she came out white into the room, okay. and i said, "what's the matter?" and she said, "well, sarah"-- that's the name of my daughter-- "has just asked me about my

parents. that is, my-- and i never told you but i was illegitimate. and i do not know who my father was. and i was brought up by my grandmother, exactly the same thing that happened to me. and after she had said, that she then said, "and it's true for your father, too." it was my grandfather. if you put all of this together-- i can see you're getting confused with my family tree, the only thing you have to take away from it i barely have a male ancestor. illegitimatacy seems to be running in the family. you could ask why do you i talk about it? i thought a lot about that. this all happened because my mother felt the shame and the family the shame, and it's in respect of her that i talk about it publicly. this wouldn't happen today. it happened in the 50s, but it wouldn't happen today. >> rose: okay, but what does it mean to you beyond to know that-- who your mother is? to-- because are you a scientist

interested in biology. >> yeah, i'm a scientist. i'm a geneticist, and i have no idea who my father is, no idea at all. and to go back to how we got into this, if i is a sequence, of course, a dna sequence, it would help in thinking-- if nothing else-- about the origins ethnic origins of my father. >> rose: put those two things together. the renowned nobel laureate that you are, knowing everybody and every scientist. and this very interesting thing that happened to you, this discovery you made. it would seem to me to be-- you would demand of yourself to have that kind of sequencing done. >> well, i have -- >> i mean, it's not beyond the reach of you to do it. >> it is absolutely not. and of course if it was a hollywood film i would sequence it myself. >> rose: exactly. >> i have thought of doing a little bit of againo typing, night complete sequence, but a

little bit. you know, i haven't done it, i think, because i'm just too busy. it's quite a full project. i mean, if somebody else was interested in that sort of project i would be happy to collaborate but partly because i haven't had the time to sort it out. >> rose: so why can't you find out who your father was? >> well, it was not on the birth certificate. >> rose: i know that. but there was no record. nobody ever said anything about it. >> there was no record. a few rumors i did find out somebody who-- my cousin or second cousin-- i get confused about my own relatives now-- who was 11 years of age in the house that i was born, and she said that there was a rumor it might have been an american serviceman for example. and we don't really know. and i have no real way of finding out. except that, you know, this is interesting-- in certain populations, having a sequence of the "y" chromosome, you have a probability of about one in four, one in five of predicting the surname because of

everything is inher ted through the "y" chromosome from the male side. i could get some sequence. if i was lucky i might get some names that would pop up there and i could then dig into some records and see what american serviceman might have been in london at the time, for example, or my real mother was very interested in jazz. so maybe-- maybe somebody she met at a jazz club. i don't know. i think it would be possible to -- >> look, before we close this chapter, where are you now though in terms of this? you have fully talked about this for all the reasons you said. >> yes. >> rose: do you think about it? do you want to take it to another step when you have time or-- >> well, the first thing i have to say is when i first told my internist, my general practitioner here, he looked at me-- this is in new york-- and he said, "i hope you're under therapy," he said. and i had to disappoint him i wasn't under therapy. but anyway -- >> that drives me crazy to hear

somebody say something like that. >> he was being supportive, he was being supportive. >> rose: as if somehow you couldn't handle this without therapy. >> well, some people maybe it would be difficult. i've not found it difficult. i was brought up by loving parents. it wasn't the problem. i'm very curious about it. one day i wouldn't mind doing something if it doesn't happen before. >> rose: how do your grandchildren feel about it-- your children. >> and my sibling. i've now acquired my nieces and nephews. i thought for a day or two that i should let them know, and then i thought i'm writing off for my birth certificate and we'll send it all out. everybody is perfectly at ease it w it. it's just a shame my mother died before i found out about it. otherwise, we could have had a conversation. >> rose: that would have been a wonderful conversation. >> i'd like to have had a conversation. >> rose: brain science, speaking of therapy. is that the most exciting frontier today? >> it's a very exciting

frontier. but, again, we have to really accept-- neurobiology and understanding how brains work is very complicated, very complicated. we've had real advances in recent years, particularly with imageing of the brain. and what's good about that is people can immediately get some sense of it. you speak one thing, you're thinking one thing, and you light up in the brain. it's immediately visually appealing and you get some sense of it. but just because it's sort of easy to see that, it shouldn't be misunderstood how difficult it is to know how we think, how difficult it is to know how we perceive. so these are really big problems and i'm really pleased to see we're tackling them but it's going to be a long haul, i think before we understand. >> rose: i think i may have asked you this before, but what is the question you would most like to see answered? >> that is an interesting question. you haven't asked me it before. and i'm feeling a little insecure in thinking about it. i think about what is the nature

of life. and i think about what it is that makes things living. that's not as complicated as brains, actually. and we go back to the cell again which is the simplest unit of life, which exhibits the properties of life, and i'm interested in understanding what it is that gives you life. and i think the way i'm sort of think about it, and many others, of course, is that life is an information management machine. it's managing all this information. and that's the best way we can think about what life is in defining it. you've got a cell. you've got a sense of the environment. it's taking in what's happening in the environment. interacting different components within that cell. and it's like a gigantic information management machine. understand that, and we'll get a sense of what life is. and i don't say that's the most difficult problem to study but i

do think it's a problem that you could study. >> rose: does this have anything to do with something called the unity of biology? >> sometimes people talk about that, the unity of biology. the unity of physics is where it normally comes from. the unity of biology is trying to find an explanation that would make sense of biology. >> rose: everything, a theory of everything, kind of. >> i would go for management of information, how you manage information. >> rose: it would be the theor of everything in biology. >> correct. that's where i would go. >> rose: where are we at that? >> we are-- molecular biology, for example, has been around 50 years. the-- i always emphasize that those who invented-- watson, brenner, all these great characters-- they focused on how information was managed. dna, the structure of dna, beautiful structure, but actually what's really beautiful about it is when you recognize it's actually a digital memory device. that's what it actually is. you know, the memory of all

those nucleotieds, all the chemicals in a particular order, conveys information. it stores information, if & that's how you should view it and that's what's really beautiful. what i suggest is we need to translate that kind of thinking with everything to do in life work. >> rose: i think stephen hawkins is interested-- >> they're interested in how you can combine qaunt mechanics -- >> isn't your daughter worth hyden collider. >> in genev athat's right. and how you combine the thought there and how that works-- quantum mechanics, together with gravity. and is there some way to-- of understanding that? and there's a theory-- i'm well now out of my depth and i may say something stupid-- the theories, the "n" theory that are trying to put this together, and stephen hawkings is in the

middle of this. >> rose: aren't they in switzerland trying to figure out-- take life to the time of the great-- >> the big bang. >> rose: they want to take it back to that, figure out-- >> enough energy-- they've got these big-- they have about 20 kilometers -- >> jon: 70 miles. >> amazing. and i've been down there. it's extraordinary. and they collide these things, protons and they produce so much energy that they get closer to the conditions that existed in the -- >> looking for what? >> the main object identify and they have several objectives-- the main objective is to look for the particle called the higgs-- higgs is a person, from britain-- higgs proposed, together with a couple of others actually, that the mass of matter was invested in a higgs bossum particle, and it's been very difficult to find and

essentially has been designed to put enough energy into these collisions to generate a higgs bossum particle. >> rose: let me go back to biology. is there anything like that going on in biology? >> it's information stock. that's my guess. not everybody would agree. if you had eric here, he would probably talk more about the brain. it's still a bit too complicated. i'd go for the interactions that you see with information. >> rose: the management of information. >> yeah, that's where i'd go, yeah. >> rose: and the focus is at the cellular level. >> i would because it's the simplest entity that exhibits the characteristics of life. and if you're a scientist and want a cell from its start, start it simple. that's where i'd go. i'd start with the cell. >> rose: science is important because? >> science is important because it's the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about the world and ourselves. there's something about science and the way we do it. it's to do with respect for

observation and experiment. so you don't cherry pick data. half the problem with all the climate change debate is because different protagonists just collect-- cherry pick certain bit of data. they treat it like a sort of debating argument rather than a scientific one. science respects all the data, like on this table, and tries to make sense of all of it. that's one thing. secondly, science is very skeptical when it's done well. you always challenge your own theory. your own worst enemy for your own theory. so what this means is when you construct a theory or an idea that explains how things work, you challenge it. you attack it. you never let it alone. that means over the years, a theory or an idea gets better and better because it's been challenged for so long. and that's why sometimes we think science is very secure, like newton's laws of motion. and sometimes we don't think it's secure at all because it's an early point in the study and

we've not done it. the constant attack makes it better. and the third point, which, again, is something that not everybody understands is there is a community of scientists who are challenging these ideas, challenging the data. and when they come to a consensus about it, you've got many, many minds who have been convinced that something is happening. and that isn't trivial. and it's part of the sociology of the process that actually makes science secure. so science is important because of its very reliable generation of knowledge and, therefore, understanding. >> rose: has the internet been a double-edged sword? >> the internet is a double-edged sword. it allows people to communicate -- >> to say anything they want to. >> but they can say anything they want, and what it means is-- and sometimes i've argued-- it's no longer peer reviewed that's so important but point of view. the internet allows anybody to say anything, and even if they're totally unreliable, and that distorts science, actually,

because they're not behaving in a way-- again, the climate change debate which i've looked at a little bit in recent months. if you read all the blogs, people are-- they use it as a debating trick. >> rose: didn't they take on you at some point in should capacity? >> i was interested and did a program on the bbc on trust in science. and i only uses climate change as an example, if anybody can say anything and treated with equal weight by people who really know what they're talking about. >> rose: somebody once said you're entitled to your opinion but you're not entitle to the facts. >> exactly right. and the facts-- what i think about all these big issues, actually, that we're going to face is you have to treat the science objectively. you have toivate it from the politics. it's no good having it politics and ideology influencing scientific argument. >> rose: did you suggest the piece you did on television that global warming has been damaged by-- >> by exactly that. >> rose: some people believe it

less now because there was a blip in the use of evidence? >> it was so exaggerated it wasn't true. but what's happened here is very very interesting. you see people have-- are very worried about the impact if there's global warming might have before you respond to that on economic growth and on the economy. quite rightly so, because it will have a big impact. but they're so worried about it, i think what they're doing is they are trying it show that the science doesn't actually illustrate that. o so they don't have to take on the problem. and that's because they don't like that sort of interference in the economy. so their political views are influencing the science. >> rose: but you know what's fascinating about this, too, is people you'd be surprised by who you've admired for other reasons you know, have bought into the idea of challenging some of the assumptions about global warming. i mention the late michael crichton as one. he was a novelist, but he had an

m.d. superharvard, a very bright guy. >> we have michael give a talk at rockefeller before he died. >> rose: and diceorn the physicist who came here to talk about it. >> you see, i'm all in favor of skepticism and argument. i think it's good to have a range of views. what i don't like so much is when very small arguments are hugely exaggerated as if they're very, very important, and then when you-- if there's a temperature change here, it's just-- it just counters what one expects. when all a mass of measurements say something else ask you read expwlogz they just focus on this and ignore everything else. that's not good science. >> rose: you're going to london to do this. david cameron, i understand, in a moment of which he's getting significant applause from certain cycles because of austerity budgeting that he and george osbourne have called on britain to make. >> yes. >> rose: to live with.

>> yes. >> rose: is fully funding-- >> science. >> rose: science. what is it about david cameron that made him a believer? >> okay, so he had a science minister, david willets, but a number of us-- including myself, actually-- had a lot of discussion at different levels of government, including with david cameron, and persuaded him that science and knowledge is the basis of innovation, and innovation is the basis of economic growth. >> rose: economic growth. >> and if you switch off the knowledge machine, you will switch off ultimate growth. and they bought into that as they should have done. >> rose: that's part of what the president emphasizeed in his state of the union speech. >> he did. >> rose: what's the difference in cameron and obama? >> well, i think-- i think we-- i think the problem here is you have to have a long-term view. so the obama stimulation money, though very welcomed, was for a

two-year period, and it's not like building roads and keeping people in employment. science is actually best seen as a long-term investment, and really -- >> but the key here is investment rather than expenditure. >> correct. >> rose: it is an investment in innovation, it's an investment in growth, it's an investment in the future. >> it's not simple but it's like this. you have basic science-- discovery science i prefer to call it, actually-- discovery science that gives you the understanding of the world and our cells. we have translation of that knowledge into the potential for application, and then we have the application-- in medicine it would be clinical trial. and what you need to do is invest across the whole spectrum. sometimes people say, "we know enough, we should just invest in what you do is run out of ideas very very quickly. you have to invest across the whole spectrum, and cameron, i think, recognized that.

>> rose: there's a big thing, big subject in america today. it's called america's decline. or america's competitiveness. that's what the president spoke to in the state of the union, and all kinds of people are debating this subject now. it has to do with the rise of china and india and the economic growth of those emergeing nations. it has to do with the fact that technology has no respect for boundaries, which we are discovering in the middle east right now, right? >> absolutely. >> rose: where do you come down on that in terms of america? because you're leaving america. >> america has had great natural resources, huge amount of land, and that's been extremely important in its growth. but it also has respected science and innovation, and we see great growth areas in california and the boston area, in particular. and i think america recognizes the importance of human capital. that is, intellectual capital

and the generation of ideas. but it needs more nurturing. i mean, science education in the u.s. is not up to scratch. and -- >> what does that mean "not up to scratch?" >> it's just not generating enough educated individuals, either those that would actually go into science-- which is what we're mainly talking about here-- but also produce an educated population who can actually contribute to making decisions in democracy that are increasingly going to be based on science. i mean it's going to be no good if we have innovation if we find individuals are so uncomfortable with certain things-- we can talk about stem cell arguments, for example-- that's it's not used. and we need to be able to educate a whole population that they can recognize what science is, and when you're coming to a scientific decision rather than a point of view. that's a little bit of a distraction from what you were asking. >> rose: here's an interesting question, is china better at it

than we are, because on the other hand they have a paranoia about the free flow of information. >> exactly right. i'll tell what you i think about it. china is very large and investing in science in the same way. but in my view, unless you have a free society that encourages free information transfer, free immigration, and the mixture of cultures, you will never get truly innovative science. so i think that what-- what may hold china back is not having enough freedom to allow science to thrive. if you look back in history and see the times when different countries and areas were actually most productive, it's usually when there's a malstrom of culture, and mixing things up and where knowledge is just freely available in exactly the way you're saying. now, america's done that at different times in its history, and i think it has to do it again -- >> it has to recapture that. >> it has to recapture that. it can't be complacent. so it has to encourage the best from the world to come and it

has to allow -- >> and allow them to stay. >> and allow them to stay when they're good, and to actually generate that intellectual excitement. >> rose: when you look at the united states today, and when you travel around the world, what are they saying about us? >> i-- i think that -- >> some of the same things you just said? we may have taken our eye off the ball in terms of the importance of science? we may have taken our eye off the ball in terms of emphasizing scientific education. >> i think "eye off the ball" is perhaps too strong but i think there's no doubt other countries do better with science education. how much, the u.s. does have a real edge. one is, there is a certain optimism that knowledge will generate innovation and improvement. and that optimism is really, really important. and secondly, there is enough capital and a wish to take risks -- >> capital in terms of financial

capital? >> financial capital now i'm talking about. not just intellectual capital. you need intellectual capital but you then need the financial capital to actually drive that. and you have to have people who are prepared to take a risk because you can't say if it worked and who have awe long-term view. there's a bit of a problem with the stock market. if you just look for short-term profit, i mean, that's a bit of an issue because if you do that, then there will be, i think, a natural focus. gosh, you're making me talk about economics now. i'm a yeast biologist. >> rose: i never heard you say that, "i'm a yeast biologist.". >> i work on yeast. i mean, if you were trying to make money how would you most reliably make money? you could make money by mergers and acquisitions. >> rose: transaction. >> transaction. okay, the second thing you can do is incremental innovation.

you have a car, you make it a little more efficient there. true innovation is just completely different. it's much chancier business. and what we have to do is to think, not only in the u.s. but actually in the world, how we can best drive that true innovation, how we can produce the condition where's we can make that work better. >> rose: here is the interesting thing about the united states-- and i don't want to go too far out on this-- but you think about all the things that most discoveries having to do with the internet, most of them happened here-- not all of them, but a lot of them-- facebook is a creation here. >> true. did you like the film? >> rose: i did. did you? >> yeah, i did, actually. >> rose: but i'd love to have a conversation right here at the table with mark zuckerberg as to whether he liked the film or not. >> that may not be so good. >> rose: but that kind of genius i mean, what amazes me is when the president of russia comes to the united states he goes to silicon valley. he wants to create a silicon valley. >> everybody wants to create--

sglut but zen jou goes to silicon valley and stanford before he comes to washington, d.c. there is an understanding of where america built its know iting success upon. >> and let's just think about that because that's really important. we have powerful academic centers, driven by curiosity, to understand the world. interacting with those who are wanting to use the discoveries for human good, and are prepared to invest in it. that's a potent brew, and america does it very well. and we have to support those academic centers. we have to make sure there's enough capital, and we have to be prepared to take long-term risks. >> rose: one of the interesting questions of the future i think is a lot of people went into financial engineering of all kinds-- hedge funds, investments-- and it made tons

of money, more than anybody imagined people making. they got rich, rich, rich, in a shorter period of time than anybody. and it happened not just in the u.s. but china and other plays. what are these people going to do with all that money in terms of their own philanthropic-- you have gates and buffet, not enforceable but a promise you'll give away a lot of money you're making, which is passing it on into a positive endeavor. >> institution like the one i have led, will lead up for a few more days, rockefeller university, has been built on philanthropy. it's been built, starting with the rock fellers, still with david rockefeller, and they have recognized that they are investing in the future, it's investment again. they're investing in ideas, some of which-- all of which are going to enrich culture and understanding and some of which are going to be really value and important for humankind and some of which will make money.

and they have invested in the next generation by investing in that knowledge-generating machine. >> rose: if you had it to do over-- i mean, life has been very good to you, as you said, the first your family to do a number of things-- would you do it differently? >> you know, i don't think i would. i have been extremely fortunate. you're right, because one is i've indulged my curiosity all my life. i sometimes wonder why they pay me to do my job. because they pay me to play in the laboratory. i love it, okay. and i-- whatever i did, i would want to indulge that curiosity of understanding the world. i think-- maybe i didn't have to be a scientist. i could be some other sort of discipline. but i think i would just want to do that again. would i want to make lots of money? i don't think so. would i want to be a politician? i don't think so. >> rose: how about a playwrite? >> do you know, when i was at

school-- no, no, when i was at school, i thought shido science or should i do theater? >> rose: yes. >> some people say i still do theater, by the way. >> rose: i know why. >> and i actually have a great empathy for the-- for theatricality. i -- >> an admiration for it. >> real admiration for it. and i'm a bit of a shakespeare buff, and i think understanding how humans work, i get a different perspective by going to the theater. which complements what we do -- >> which says something also equally important that in understanding the human condition there is a desperate need for science, and there's also a desperate need for those in the world of culture and art to have us see who we in the other dimension. >> it's essential. and sometimes, although -- >> examine human behavior from a different place. >> completely. i couldn't agree more because i worry a bit about the

humanities. because i can always make the case for science because people feel ultimately it increases economic growth and quality of life. but the humanities are there to ill prove the quality of life. we will be incomplete unless we can have both of those areas moving together. >> rose: i close this conversation by saying, first of all, it's so great to have you back at the table and i look forward to you continuing to visit here, wherever you you are whenever are you in the united states or whenever we are in london or wherever we might be-- but also with the idea, it seems to me, that brings art and science together is that at this table, we've had the best scientists in the world, and you're among them. we've also had the best artists in the world. they both utilize the scientific process for creating what they do. whether you're in a laboratory, or whether an artist is working, it is a scientific process for them. and they will always tell you that. it's a series of decisions about

color. it's a series of trial and error. it's a series of being critical of yourself. painters will finish with a canvas and get up in the morning the next morning, and paint over it and do away with it because they're not happy. they made a judgment about the result. but it's a series-- it's a scientific process that is part of art, as well as it is are part of science. >> now i see an infinity. creativity. it depends on really precise logic, but also seeing a big picture of what's going on. you either have both of those, in both great art and great science. >> rose: and in the end it's also driven by curiosity. >> always curiosity. >> rose: great to have you. >> a pleasure to be here again. >> rose: sir paul nurse. thank you for joining us for this hour. see you next time.