“Farting around in the dark” is one of the ways Dr. Stuart Firestein describes science in his short talk on ignorance and uncertainty in the pursuit of knowledge while he advocated that scientists’ communications of failures would improve the public’s understanding of the scientific process.
Dr. Firestein is the former Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biological Sciences where his laboratory studies the vertebrate olfactory system, possibly the best chemical detector on the face of the planet. Aside from its molecular detection capabilities, the olfactory system serves as a model for investigating general principles and mechanisms of signaling and perception in the brain.
Dedicated to promoting the accessibility of science to a public audience, Firestein serves as an advisor for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program for the Public Understanding of Science, where he reviews scripts for the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Science and Technology Program, and for the Tribeca and Hamptons International Film Festivals. In 2011 he received the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for excellence in scholarship and teaching. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, an Alfred Sloan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. At Columbia he is on the Advisory boards of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination (Paris), The Center for Science and Society (CSS) and the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience – all centers devoted to interdisciplinary work between the sciences and the humanities.
Firestein has written two books for general audiences; Ignorance: How it Drives Science (Oxford Press 2012) and Failure: Why Science is So Successful (October 2015).
This October 24, 2017, science cafe program was the third of a series funded in part by a National Science Foundation grant (#1611953) whose principal investigator was Karen Rader, historian of science Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Humanities and Sciences in Richmond, Virginia.
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