Peter Doherty: Public Science Communicator

A lecture series can promise much. But one run out of a corporatised university comes with its own burdens and blemishes. There is the stifling sense of brand and name that hovers over proceedings. The logo is everywhere, a permanent reminder about the role of the chief donor, sponsor or name of the individual associated with the event. Then there is the risk of who will be the first speaker to smash the bottle against the ship before embarkation.

For the Peter Fensham AM Lecture Series (AM is not to be confused with a radio frequency), few finer choices than Professor Peter Doherty could have been selected. The immunologist and Nobel Laureate was intended as the glittery introduction to a series named after the inaugural chair of science education at Monash University’s Faculty of Education from 1967 to 1992. The lecture topic: The Challenge of Public Science Education.

Before the glitter comes the dross. Introductions must be made by the current Dean of Faculty. Acknowledgments made. Paralytically boring jokes delivered with the skill of a suffocating goldfish. The audience is also introduced to a perfect, waxwork figure behind the lecture series. As with eulogies, juicy flaws are never mentioned, off colour jokes rarely entertained.

When it finally comes to Doherty’s turn to speak, one is immediately disabused by the image of a tyrannical professor lording over labs, staff and students. With mischief, he enters, unevenly, that treacherous field of educating the public about science. In a sense, he assumes a role more popularly associated with the celluloid astrophysicist, the species of character that has colonised television and screen with their searching, almost scolding gazes (Neil deGrasse Tyson), or drawn out walks upon the earth’s surface (Brian Cox).

What the audience gets is a healthy, even bawdy dose of stories, anecdotes and analogies. Having made his name in a field, Doherty has every right to be dull. Instead, he is self-deprecating and mocking. Wit sparkles. “I miss the obituaries. The most interesting people are in the obituaries.”

He refuses to punish his listeners with elaborate details on work that won him the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1995 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996, along with Rolf M. Zinkernagel. The Nobel Prize committee offers a summary: “By studying mice, Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel proved in 1973 how the immune system recognises virus-ridden cells.” The white blood T-cell eliminates virus-ridden cells, but only “if it recognises both the foreign substances, viruses, and certain substances from the body’s own cells.” The result: vital work in vaccine production and the production of medicines against infectious diseases.

Doherty prefers to muse about the endless dining in Stockholm following the ceremony, and the taxing of his prize money by the US Internal Revenue Service. On being made Australian of the Year in 1997, he acknowledged criticism that such a figure would be expected to be in the country rather than domiciled or resident elsewhere.

Sensible points are made. With the huge literature, often of a specialist type, in such areas as virology and immunology, a modicum of scientific knowledge and literacy is needed. School curricula should accordingly be shaped to reflect that focus. The logic here is unimpeachable, but for a country like Australia, the shift towards what are called the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – has become the hijacked province of warmongers, militarists and panic merchants. The AUKUS agreement between Australia, the UK and the United States has made the Australian Commonwealth eager to fund “student pathways” to recruit graduates for the military-industrial complex.

He also makes a point made trite by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Sicilian epic, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard): “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

The audience audibly gasps at Doherty’s observations on the US scientific-industrial base. Unlike Australia, which sports a much leaner foundation from which to pursue research and innovation, one verging on a starvation model, US scientific industry thrives on what could be described as industrial socialism. Forget notions of free standing, pioneer scientists operating with funding drawn exclusively from the fruits of free enterprise. Much of it has come, at least initially, from government sources, with the intention that the investment will eventually make a return for the US economy. Australian scientific endeavours, in contrast, must migrate and exit their country of origin, often finding richer soil in the United States.

The immunologist does, however, seem short on how to convince those hermetically sealed from scientific reason to open their minds. Resort is made to Max Planck’s observation (Doherty misattributes the remark to Isaac Newton) that new scientific truths do not prove victorious by convincing opponents “but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”. So it follows that science advances one funeral at a time.

He also admits to suffering various maladies, Trump Derangement Syndrome being the most prominent of them. In doing so, he struggles to be consistent with observing one of his own lessons: avoid belittling sceptics and conspiracy theorists.

While Doherty is faultless in noting the former US president’s breezy tendency to mutilate science and its strictures, he is optimistic that the Democratic hopeful, Kamala Harris, will be a shining light in the field.

With the address delivered, an appropriate sense of bonhomie established, the session moves to questions. While the lecture is advertised as both an in person and online show, it is clear that the digital elves at the back of the room are guarding the gates and sifting through what Doherty might or should answer. The Dean shifts and twitches nervously, hoping that no question will court controversy. Monash Education is, after all, logo and brand.

Up rises a man dressed in bright emerald, his shirt promising informality with menace. He takes the mic, speaking in broad, disarming tones. The issue: “I represent a group fighting for truth. I heard you attack conspiracy theorists. But we are out there seeking the truth about COVID-19.” Doherty, with magnanimity, admitted that the study of COVID-19 was a constantly evolving one, and initially poorly understood. No longer could it be seen as merely a respiratory virus but a coagulating one. Corrections would have to be made overtime. The fires sadly doused, the formal end of proceedings was announced, leaving Doherty hostage to a gaggle of mobbing questioners.

A bit of wisdom from Doherty lingers as the lecture hall empties. “I did become more known with the Nobel Prize. But I found that I became only as famous as a person in a coffee advertisement that had not been shown for three months. And that’s how it should be.”

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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