Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Barry Barish Interviews Brian Keating: Part 2 ​(#194)

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

In February 2021 Dr. Barry Barish, co-recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the LIGO experiment, interviewed me at his home in Los Angeles. The topic was his thoughts and reactions to my book, Losing the Nobel Prize (http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA). We discussed scientific leadership, academic stress, burnout, the role of mentors and managers in science and a lot about my book too. Losing The Nobel Prize By Brian Keating The inside story of a quest to unlock one of cosmology’s biggest mysteries, derailed by the lure of the Nobel Prize. What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they’d glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been deceived by a galactic mirage? In Losing the Nobel Prize, cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment Brian Keating tells the inside story of BICEP2’s mesmerizing discovery and the scientific drama that ensued. In an adventure story that spans the globe from Rhode Island to the South Pole, from California to Chile, Keating takes us on a personal journey of revelation and discovery, bringing to vivid life the highly competitive, take-no-prisoners, publish-or-perish world of modern science. Along the way, he provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation. In a thoughtful reappraisal of the wishes of Alfred Nobel, Keating offers practical solutions for reforming the prize, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may, finally, be able to see all the way back to the very beginning. Audible is hands-down my favorite platform for consuming podcasts, fiction and nonfiction books! With an Audible membership, you can download titles and listen offline, anytime, anywhere. The Audible app is free and can be installed on all smartphones and tablets. You can listen across devices without losing your spot. Audible members don’t have to worry about using their credits right away. You can keep your credits for up to a year—and use them to binge on a whole series if you’d like! And if you’re not loving your selection, you can simply swap it for another. Start your free 30-day trial today:  Audible.com/impossible or text “impossible” to 500-500 Please contact [e-mail] to learn more about sponsoring Into the Impossible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Part 2 of this special two-part episode of Think Like a Nobel Prize winner, featuring Dr. Barry Berrish, co-recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the LIGO experiment. This lively discussion between Dr. Barish and Professor Keating touches on scientific leadership, academic stress, the role of mentors and managers in science and many other topics. Welcome to Into the Impossible Think Like a Nobel Prize winner. Discover how the world's most accomplished scientist, supercharged their creativity and strengthen their most precious collaborations and how you can too no matter what you do you mentioned avi lobe yeah okay i think that situation's much more complicated

it's uh don't don't make him a victim no i'm not i haven't read his book i've criticized him actually i'll tell you my criticism but i heard him on npr okay and he uh basically criticize his critics which I find, okay, so why is he criticizing it? On NPR, what did he criticize them for? Basically not being open-minded, being closed-minded scientists. Okay. I would say the other side of the coin is we all learn in science how important it is to be right. And we learned since Newton's time that we have tried two ways to test whether something is right.

And until it's right, you don't make audacious claims. I believe. So I think he may be right. I don't know. I haven't read his book. I know what the thing is, but I haven't really read the book. But I think the attitude that I'm pure

because I have this imagination and I'm not constrained like my colleagues is very unhealthy. No, and I think he does himself. And I'm a good friend of his. I like him a lot. Personally, I respect him professionally. I mean, this is a person,

for what it's worth, this is a person who's the chairman of the astronomy, Harvard for the longest term ever in history. He actually has a minor role in losing the Nobel Prize because he made the announcement, helped us make the announcement that the waves of gravity have been detected at Caltech, at Harvard rather, even though the work would have been done here, essentially, but he does himself a disservice in two ways. And I have read the book and I've talked to him on the podcast, and I'll send you links to all of those. But one thing is that

he'll say things like in Galileo's time, they would persecute scientists and Bruno was burned at the stake, you know, for an idea. And, you know, but, but how much more so are we open to things like string theory, the multiverse, large extra dimensions, even things that are happening at Harvard, by the way, you know, Cameron Vafa, Lisa Rand. These are all things that are happening at Harvard. So he's not criticizing, you know, people that are distant to him. So he's taking, he's taking, so one thing is that, you know, people say, well, they called Einstein

crazy, you know, I get these emails every day. Professor Keating, I'm not good at math. help me unify gravity with all the force of nature. I'll share my Nobel Prize. They called Einstein crazy. Anyway. But just as that, you should be very careful to invoke Bruno and Galileo. I've told him that. The other thing, I claim that he doesn't believe it because of the following reason. This object, let's just assume he's right. He claims it's 91% chance of being a fluke and 91% chance of being accurate, his hypothesis. I said, Avi, you happen to know an ultra-billionaire by the name of Uri Milner, who's funded the breakthrough Star Shot Initiative, that you are then involved with sending spacecraft

using maybe light sail-type propulsion to another star system, Proxima Centurib, in the span of Uri Milner's lifetimes, 30, 40, 50, I hope he lives in B's as well. But Avi, you think this object you just came through is unequivocally almost evident. Why don't you, instead of sending it to Proxima Century B, why don't you send a satellite, get him to, you know, call up Elon Musk and get a rocket out to Umuamua while it's still relatively close by? I mean, it's only, you know, it's only traveling at the speed of the Saturn 5, you know, plus or minus or something. And he said, no, no, we're not going to do that because of the next generation of optical telescopes will observe many of these objects. And Vera Rubin Observatory, which used to be called the LSST, that's going to come online, that the giant. Magellan Telescope, the 30-meter telescope that you guys in Caltecherva. So we'll discover many of these, so it won't be the last one. I said, you know, I've heard that before. You know, like, oh, let's just push. So I said, Avi, do you really believe it? Because it seems to me if I was not only confident of my science, but I was being assailed from all directions by these, by these

detractors, these competitors, these petty kind of arguments that you're hearing in magazines are all in the world, I would stop at nothing. and it would drive me crazy. And so, Avi, I said, I don't know if you really believe it. And he said, well, let's, no, I'm right. We're going to see it in five years. Everyone will know I'm right in five years. I can wait five years.

So, you know, that, so these are just individual scientists. But the notion of competition, you know, I want to ask you a question. When, you know, let's say, let's say the Americans landed on the moon and you remember this. You were alive. I wasn't. But, you know, and then Neil Armstrong steps out and he's on top of a Soviet flag. You know, I mean, why do we go to the moon? Do you remember the plaque that Nixon signed on the lunar land or the eagle?

It said, we came in peace for all mankind, which is exactly the credo almost of Alfred Nobel's medallion, right? It's for the benefit of all mankind. So in that sense, we never went back to the moon. Like, we still haven't gone back to the moon, right? So in what sense was it for the benefit of all mankind? A lot of it was a competition. And it was scientific.

There were a lot of scientists. You just talk to it. Here's a piece of the moon. Where is it? There it is. There's a piece of the moon, right? So we do things as scientists. And I think they're not always, you know, I would say I now agree with you, but I didn't agree with you.

In other words, competition, I might just be part of my personality. Like, I do, like, martial arts. And I love, like, you know, contact and, and, you know, just kind of testing myself in some sense. And maybe, you know, kind of the infinite game of science, I didn't, I didn't appreciate it as much. Like, do you take satisfaction? Forget about Caltech. Let's say, you know, someone in the University of Nebraska, Omaha, right, and they discover magnetic monopoles. Like, you would be delighted by it or whatever. But, like, if you're building the monopole detector, wouldn't you feel a little bit of a disappointment or a loss?

Well, I went through that. I know. The Valentine's Day, which is coming up. Yeah, the Valentine's Day event. And, well, you know that story. I think I told you that story. And Cabrera is kind of a friend, and I've known him, and I respect him a lot. But I had convinced myself that this Parker bound was important.

That there, if there was too many monopoles, they'd show out the magnetic fields. But since there are magnetic fields, there can only be so many. That's basically the Parker bound. And that's what drove us to make such a huge detector to take to, it was exactly the same time scale as Cabrera. So when he came out with this event, and it certainly looked incredibly convincing,

I was confused first because I really convinced myself, upset, because we were investing a lot and a huge detector. And this was a much more elegant technique if you could see current in a loop. Right. You know, instead of just indirectly do it. So, yeah, I was upset. And it wasn't so much.

See, I'm not sure for myself. It didn't feel like I lost the competition as much as I got outsmarted. That somehow I can use myself to go down a path, but it wasn't the right path. It turned out he was wrong, but it wasn't the right path. But there is a judgment in there of yourself. I don't know how seriously being, but that's a negative assignment of your capabilities as a scientist, which, by the way, I think we identify a lot of who we are.

If somebody wakes me up in the middle of the night, and I think I'm at a mention this year. You probably know it. The word scientist in Russian means a person who was taught. It probably means a man who was taught, but let's just say it means one who was taught literally. So it means to me that our identity is a teacher. as a scientist. And we also have an obligation to teach others. That's supposed to be red.

The red on the camera? Yeah, no, it's fine. When it goes off, it's bad. When the red light dies, then we're in trouble. That already happened. So, in other words, your identity should not be wrapped up, but it was a little bit, and you've got a little taste of it. And let me ask you another question.

Let's say CMS beat Atlas by a year and a half. It was just slam dunk. I'm not saying it. I don't even know if it's physically possible, but let's just say they did. How do you think the people on Atlas would have felt? We know funding is a conserved quantity, even if science is an infinite game. So, you know, there are extra scientific pressures that scientists feel. Oh, absolutely.

And I'm not oblivious to any of that. I mean, in different degrees, I felt it at different times in my life. Neutrino oscillations, which we saw in the Grand Sassau. have the ideal detector for it. But the Japanese clearly did a better experiment, but they also tried to preempt us. It's clear. You don't know that history. But I know how it felt inside.

We had debates in our own group, whether to announce gravitational waves. I was on the side, not gravitational waves, neutrino oscillations from atmospheric neutrinos. I was on the side that our data wasn't good enough. And I don't know if you know him. Giorgio Giacomelli was one of the senior people with me who was adamant that we had to announce it. This is before the Japanese announced it. And he basically got voted down. He played conservative.

And then they announced it. But so our data ended up being confirmatory, but our data wasn't as good as theirs anymore. I mean, ideally, I think... And I know how it made me feel that we could have. You could have. And was I the bad guy in... Because we were earlier than they, but... Right.

Because we went for a different reason that was to look for monopoles, but it was a neutrino detector at the same time. Yes, and there's something, and I think it's okay. And it's just interesting to me to go from, you know, I kind of feel like the born-again people must feel, you know, like it was so important for me for multiple, multitude of reasons to win a novel process. And now I really, I don't think about it really as much.

And part of it is, you know, is the, it's just, it's, as you said, you know, last time we spoke, there's so much luck involved with it. And by definition, scientists should be very wary of luck, although didn't Niels Bohr have like an horseshoe in his office that he hung upside down? And he said, like, it works even if you don't believe it. But I want to get to these topics that involve things other than the Nobel Prize. and things like that, because I think those are the reasons that we became scientists. It is, you know, we should be scientists, rather.

And the question is, when you see a result, and I had this happen with Bison. So we made this discovery. It was literally on the front page of the New York Times. We've now gone into a new era, which didn't exist 100 years ago, 80 or 50, 30 years ago, where we have press conferences. And you guys had a press conference with many, many of my friends. And, of course, what do you make of that, number one? And what do you do in a case like Bicep where the public is still left?

I meet people all the time. You guys designed the experiment that showed the Big Bang happened or whatever. They never find out about it because it's printed on page B73 of the, you know, of the Saturday morning edition that nobody reads. So, yeah, so first press conferences, what's your feeling about that? I don't, I have a, I'm from an old school or idea, which is the most important people to try, most important, the most important thing in proving that your science is right is to have it judged by your fellow scientists. So what I don't like is going to the press before you.

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I'll just plug it into another battery. So when we got these recordings, I'll upload those anyway. These things are hot, wow, this thing needs a lot of, waste a lot of anything. So we probably only get 20 minutes per each one of these. And then eventually I'm going to run that, well, you have to go in a little bit anyway. So we were talking about press conferences. Oh, we have time. Yeah, I want to make sure I don't take up too much of your time.

But this is fun. And I think we're getting a lot of good, good material for the podcast as well. You should start a podcast. You don't have enough to do, your social calendars. And I get asked to go on a lot of these things, but I only do it for people like you or the other Bryant because you're scientists. The other ones, I just turned down. I don't.

A, means a lot to me. And B, that makes me even more appreciative. I'm trying to get Andre Aguiz to come on the podcast. I asked Donna Strickland, and she politely said she doesn't go on any podcast. I asked Francis Arnold, and she said she no longer goes on. She's very polite, but she never goes on podcast anymore. And so I'm trying to get Andrea Gazz to go on who just went on Lawrence Krause's podcast, who played a not insignificant role in the announcement of LIGO.

And maybe we can resume our discussion of press conferences. Yeah. I want to try some of this change. Yeah, go ahead. So press conferences. So the way, so let me start with what I think is important in doing science. We have to be ourselves in some form follow. the scientific method.

That's so that we come out. And that's kind of the problem we have with the public. They don't know the scientific method, which is why the fake news and everything is such a big problem. But for us, we do know the scientific method. We don't do it like Newton did in steps, but we know the scientific method. I think the most important check,

and to me it's crucial because we're all human and fallible is our colleagues. So I have always felt going to news conferences as the what you do as the first thing is bad. Okay. Now people have fixed that because they basically now have been able to coordinate it with journals who come out the same day. Our news conference was the same day as the FISREB letter. It doesn't really fix it because the problem is that assigned reviewers for an article. are not necessarily the critics that you need in complex experimental physics. And so the fact that you can do an experiment,

the classic one that I have watched very closely because I was involved in Italy was the measurement that neutrinos move faster and go faster in the speed of the plop. The opera, yeah, the opera. That followed the rules. The rules at CERN were you had to give a seminar. CERN and you had to expose it to CERN management before it was published, and it was refereed. But it basically hit the New York Times and everywhere else because, you know, going faster in the speed of light and it was wrong.

And it was wrong and it was wrong in an embarrassing way because it was bad experimentation. Blunder basically. Yeah. And of course, you know, like I suffered that we're in charge and everything. But I think in terms of what we're talking about, I think it would. be, I wish there was more scientific criticism is the wrong word, but scientific exposure before you go to the public. I don't think it's healthy.

I know astronomers all the time announce as soon as they see something. I come from a physics background. And I don't think it helps science to say something. It's fine for New York Times doesn't mind. They'll write an article and then a year later say it was wrong. But for science, I think it's wrong to not somehow have built in the system that we at least do our best job of validating or not the science before it goes public in an announcement. That's not the way it's working, but that's my own feeling. No, I think it's a big, again.

So for that reason, I think I mentioned, sorry to interrupt, but that was the reason why when we made the announcement for LIGO, I was not in the press conference. I went to CERN, gave us simultaneous. Did you know that? I know. I know that. So there was a simultaneous seminar, which you can find on the CERN website, which was the announcement exactly at the same time as the announcement of Washington, because I thought it was more important to present it to our scientific colleagues.

Yeah. When I think about what could be done better, I think we're almost victims of our own success. I don't know of too many things. I guess it happens in the soft sciences or biology. I guess there's reports all the time that, you know, pee hacking and all sorts of things that take place. But in the hard sciences, all I know is physics. I'll say, I don't think I've seen something that was unequal in my career, such as it is, you know, 30 years or so in physics. However, I think we might be kind of inuring ourselves to the notion that because we're not ever

unethical, that we are acting, you know, completely in a, I'll say, kosher format. And I wonder, you know, is there a way to do it? So I propose kind of a joke, maybe in the book, maybe not, but, you know, I'm saying, like, you have some budget for public relations. You have to, you know, because the public deserves to know. They're paying our salary, right? Absolutely. So, but you should also have a budget for the, you know, you should have an option. You should hedge. What if you're wrong? So have some budget. And I don't know how, what form that should take. Maybe it would take a full page ad in the New York Times. Like, if you're published in the New York Times, like, and it's on the front page. Yeah. Okay. So you better be, it will make you at least wary. I don't think it'll like, oh, now opera will get scoop by, you know, by Sonata or some other experiment,

no, it'll make you very cautious and it'll make you, you know, have to have some skin in the game if you're wrong. Because right now, it seems to me almost like a ratchet. Like, they could only succeed. If you don't announce it, part of our worry is Plank is going to scoop us. They're going to announce they saw B-Mos

because George of Stadio and others had said, we are going to have the capability to detect the B-Modes if they're at the level that we eventually claimed we detected, which was later retracted. So, you know, maybe having a budget or having some training. By the way, is there training, separate from LIGO, but just like within Caltech or are there, you know,

do we ever learn like ethical best practice? No, that's a book. It's too bad. We don't, other professions learn and study ethics. And it becomes a really important thing. My wife's a psychologist. Oh, right. Okay.

And ethics is very important. It's not just in psychology. It's important. But scientists somehow we ignore it. We don't teach it. We think it's less important, right, than learning quantum mechanics. And I feel like... And that's because we think we don't cheat and so forth.

Like, yes, I don't know. But ethics is important, and we ignore it as scientists. And I think that's bad. In terms of this other thing, I don't have a solution, but I don't like it. I think somehow we should accreditate or validate or whatever you want to call it as scientists, scientific discoveries as well as we can before we expose it to the world at the public. I think it's almost a responsibility. I mean, maybe they don't, it doesn't matter to most people in the streets if neutrinos actually don't go faster in the speed of light, but in principle,

things that you discover scientifically can matter to the public and being wrong. And why scientists have credit is because we're mostly right. We do have peer review, which has Yes, it's flaws, but it helps, but peer review doesn't work very well to judge CMB experiments or LIGO. It's, you know, you have a couple reviewers that aren't the people who really know the stuff. I've been on nature discovery paper review, like reviewers of nature papers that announced discovery of a major scientific event, science. I was the only, I was the only, you know, professor. I was the only, like, you know, not postdoc or whatever. Or maybe I've been on panels.

I've been on NSF panels where I was the only professor. In other words, the professors couldn't be bothered to go to NSF and deal with it because they're too busy. Well, you know, I happen to have a bunch of kids and a bunch of grad students and a bunch of other activities. You know, but I feel that is, we have a privilege as scientist. It's really the best job in the world. I mean, don't you think? I mean, people like us. Absolutely.

And so, but we've act like, you know, because we don't get paid as much and because we have to, you know, sometimes be holding to funding agencies. in the government, political cycles and whims, that, you know, we have it bad. But I don't think we, I think we've had it so good for so long, especially in the United States, that we don't realize how bad it can get. And I do hope that we, you know, it would be a dream if we could look to some people in society and say, these are the truthkeepers. There's a phrase that science should be like merchants of truth. And, you know, I think that's idealistic, but something to aspire to.

Yeah, that's probably the right attitude is something to aspire to. I don't know how to make a set of rules. Yeah. But I think we're on the edge when we go and announce our discoveries to the press so quickly. Yeah, I think it's something I don't like. The press will swallow it and they'll print it. Yeah. If you're reputable scientists.

As I said, that's why I felt more important at the time we announced it to give the seminar, the one seminar that was given. Right. at that time was it, sir? I want to ask you something we had when we first met a couple of years ago over dinner. I asked you, Barry, you know, one of the things I look up to, you know, tongue in cheek, you know, people would say, oh, Barry, he won the Nobel Prize for project management, you know, and in addition to your science, like you had this incredible, you know,

gift for management. I said, Barry, I'm helping to run this $100 million project called the Simon's Observatory. Give me the hacks. Give me the tip. And you were like, you know, there's no tip. There's no book. You said there is not one book. not one book I can give you.

There's resources. So I want to talk in the remaining time that we have together about management and maybe not make it dry, but talk about what attracts you, what made you good at it. And not the hacks and tricks, because now I know they're not possible. But how do you maintain the kind of capability and passion, curiosity, or what have you, about, you know, doing something that's not 100% the science that you got into this field to do. I think I grew into it, so it isn't like all of a sudden I had to learn how to run some big thing. So there was no magic there.

I was curious enough at the time when, let's say, there became, when there became elements of, management in the science I was doing and not just a bunch of scientific colleagues at some point it became a little bigger and I think I mentioned to you that then I basically decided I'd be a student of project management and so I basically learned what they do I understand pretty much how to go about building a bridge or something and the but it was obvious to me that that's not really the way to the best way to approach a complex science project

from the beginning because basically I started early enough where we didn't have a huge management system like now. The problem is we've backed into that being, for example, I don't know about probably in NASA, not NSF, but

on DOE, certainly the levels now. are set up where it's almost a professional management, which I think is the wrong thing for most of what we build because we're not building bridges. And so I have always felt, I mean, I made this simple analogy I may have made it to you before that when you build a bridge, there's all these kind of an organization has to be hierarchical that a person at each level can only have so many people that report to them. There's all a bunch of rules. And they work in building a bridge, but they're not necessarily the rules that we work by to do science. And the simplest way to see that is that a physics department, like at UCSD, is exactly the opposite kind of management. The department chair manages a totally non-hierarchical organization where it's a bunch of parallel things going on.

Now, it's a little easier to do that because the things are complementary and there are different kinds of physics, but they don't depend on each other very much. So they don't interrelate. So you're able to do that. But it says to me that the style that succeeds at doing physics is not a hierarchical style. It's a totally non-hiercical style. So how do you actually do the best of both? And somehow that is, recognizing that is an important element for me. So what I've always done was adapt the things that matter the most from what is done formally in project management.

If you look at a diagram of how LIGO was managed, it won't look like a hierarchical thing. It's kind of a hybrid, frankly. thing. But the important things are how do you control the costs before? Well, there are tricks to controlling the cost. First, you need the discipline that comes with how costing is done when you build a bridge, when you don't, can't easily get more money for it so you know what to do. And that has a lot of elements in it in terms of, I don't know, actually schemes of doing the budgeting and assigning them at certain levels and all this kind of formality. That's okay. That allows you to do the accounting. But the responsibility for the budget levels is where things matter. And somehow you can't do it

without scientists making the crucial decisions. Where do you violate or spend more money or don't? because it matters for science. So for me, I hate to say it, but it's more of an art than a, it's an art, but an educated art, knowing what you, for me personally, I know how to do the hierarchy organization. I know how to do cost controls. I know how to do change control where we change things.

And I know how important it is on the other side to be able to develop and not build the things, that you talked about because we're building a one-of-a-kind something. And if it looks exactly like what you said 10 years before or whenever you started, it's probably pretty stupid and outdated because technologies change, ideas change, and so forth. So how do you incorporate that as you go and even encourage it as you go along without causing cost to go up? And so it requires a hybrid of the two that there's no magic formula for. I mean, we developed it for something like or experimented in Italy or the ILC that basically has the most important positions except for professional engineering done by scientists.

I'll give you a technical example. in most, if you build a bridge, probably if you talk to somebody that's built a bridge or a complicated thing, of tank or something, that the most important job technically is the interfaces. If somebody builds this, somebody builds that and you put it together. Controlling, yeah. Yeah, controlling the interfaces. And so there's a whole profession of systems engineering.

And if you look at kind of the hierarchy and engineering for building things, those are the guys that are the top of the pile, the smart guys are systems engineers. They basically do these interface documents that bring the dimensions together and things together one by one. That's just not the problem in building something like LIGO. Interfaces is not the problem in building the neutrino experiment at Fermilap. It's just not. The problem is that you have somebody at UCS.

that builds this and somebody that builds something else and these things are supposed to work together. One of them are these detectors. There's the cryogenics or whatever. Dax. Somehow. Yeah, or Dax and the right thing. So you need to actually have this stuff work together. And the most important technical position in LIGO was the person who did the, not the interfaces,

but the system engineering, meaning the integration, how you integrated the parts together. And that turned out to be for us, somebody named Albert Lazareni, who's now an assistant director, but he was, I don't know if you know it. I know the name, yeah. He was a nuclear physicist trained at MIT, went to University of Washington as a postdoc, had too many kids, and then went into industry. And he learned how to be a systems engineer in industry, but his background was in physics. The first after, when I took over LIGO, after getting, talking my colleague, Gary Sanders into coming and joining me, the first person I wanted to hire was the person that was to integrate this thing together.

And so I went to JPL. I went to different places. And I get these interface people that would do these interface things. And finally, I had a name of somebody And I called this guy. I don't remember his name, but Albert does On the East Coast And asked him about somebody

And he asked me what I'm looking for Which I should have been smart enough to tell him What I was looking for, but he asked me what I was looking for And I described what I just told you. I want somebody that understands As well as the person responsible to things And make sure they sing together And with some examples of where that matters in LIGO.

And he said, well, I know the right guy for you, but he's not available. So he gave me the name. That was Albert, who I called and said, you're not available, but let me tempt you. And then I talked to him into coming into LIGO. And that was the, after Gary, he was the person that I hired. but it's a philosophy that you're putting these pieces together. There's no magic formula. I think the leadership has to be scientists.

If you're doing something that isn't just putting a lot of pieces together and making it very technical, it's really a job that has to be done by experimental physicists with a lot of engineering. I think I sent you this I-Triple-E link. Yeah, from the other night. Okay, so we've now got the reputation of being, having really super engineering on LIGO.

Can we get this award? I also... From the I AAA, right. From the I AAA. So that's a pretty good statement. I may have mentioned to you that we're writing a history of LIGO. Yeah. Ray told me to you.

Yeah. So in doing that, I interviewed J. Marks. I don't know if you know J. Marks. Again, I know the name by that. J. Marks was a particle physicist. Oh, right. who was the, at Berkeley, he designed and built the photon machine up at the lab, I forget the name of it. And he built a star experiment at Rick.

And he has a long history and basically particle physics. He served on some of our LIGO reviews early, and he was very insightful. And I knew him. And so when I went to do the ILC, rather than, I mean, what happened is the natural person to take over internally would have been Stan Whitcomb, who had been with LIGO a long time. But we did a search, and I suggested Jay, and Jay came. So he was the director of LIGO during the time I was doing the ILC. And we're doing these interviews now, so I interviewed it.

And one of the questions, I didn't make up the questions, one of the others made up the questions, but one of the things, one of the questions we asked is, what surprised you the most during the time you were there? And he said, the biggest surprise to him was the level and the quality of the engineering in life. It was beyond anything he'd seen, even though he was at National Labs. And I think that's true because not only do we attract engineers, but these were engineers that were at the forefront and were attracted to a real physics experiment to do. And some are on the border between engineering and physics. But I think the team of engineers didn't ever feel in LIGO inferior to the physicists,

even though I told you scientists have to be in all these crucial places. And the person who did the cost schedule was a physicist, who basically had built things and so forth, but had learned how to do a cost schedule. And so some of it's recruiting and finding the right people. So this was Phil Lindquist. He had come from J-Lab and was a trained physicist, but as they had to start doing budgets and stuff,

He had learned how to do that. And I had met him in some place, I don't know. And I recruited him. So he was our cost schedule person, but he had the advantage that he could talk one-on-one with any of the people responsible for budget items, and whether they're running over or late or this or that. They were being monitored. So I don't know.

There's no, I think it's more leading. and managing and maybe enough insight to know all the sides of it. So I cared enough to learn all the pieces you want, but I think it's more leading than managing. I think that comes back to very nicely where we started, which is with curiosity. And, you know, if you hadn't been really curious about the project process, the way that you, you know, come to science, perhaps you were the only person that could fill that role at the time. I mean, obviously people have different needs. I remember Ray Rice when I met him 10 years ago at MIT giving a colloquium there. And he said there's only a couple people that can understand all of LIGO from soup to nuts.

And he's like, you. He didn't even mention himself because I said, it must be you. He's like, no, not me. But I think he mentioned some of the people you just mentioned. And that they could not come from a completely different background. It's not just like, oh, you're a physicist. So you know laser interferometry and CMB. No, it's very different skill sets.

there is one unifying commonality. I think that is a passion to understand, be curious, to learn, be humble. And that's the thing I think we're, you know, we're trying to hire a big manager position on the Simon's Observatory. And, you know, we put out an ad and we got a lot of people. And some of the people we got are just so off the charts. And you're like, well, why are you want to, you know, why do you want to work for a team like that? But the reality is they're very passionate. They're very, and I'll let, you know, keep you posted. Maybe I'll pick your brain a little bit and when we get their resumes in, but the point is, you know, what I'm looking for is not like, how did you steer the ship when everything was fine?

Like, it's almost a completely different thing in your past projects where you ran some huge thing and, you know, people that would knock your socks off. I won't tell you because you might steal them. But these people, you know, they all share that trait. You know, they want to know the answer to the, you know, it's not about money. Of course, money plays a role. But they really... Well, that's great.

And you can do well, I think. And unfortunately, in some of the areas, I don't know about NASA so much, but I think it's the same problem as DOE, which has become so conscious of the formalities that they want professional managers. And professional managers can't do forefront science. I just think it's a different problem. It's not good for the managers either because they come into this non-hierarchical, a hierarchical structure with people that are smart. I'm not going to say scientists are smarter than managers, but they'll say, you know, here's how, you know, this top-down hierarchy. No, it's not going to work when, you know, everybody's a chair, you know, everybody's a named chair, whatever. And so you have to maybe forget what you know.

And I guess, you know, I guess you're right. It would probably be hard to teach, you know, a manager, all the science that he or she might need to know. But so that's why physicists can become managers. It's probably a little bit harder for a manager to become a physicist, although, for sure. can happen. So in the last couple of minutes, there are there other topics that we should discuss? Or can I get a tour of the Nobel memorabilia or do you have other things you want to talk about? I will. I'll show you. I'm not going to show you the medal. Okay, fine. Because I don't know where it is. That's right. Well, you have to keep it in some safe or something. I know. All right. I'll wait here.

No, but I do have some. I'll show you the plaque. I'll show you the plaque. Okay. All right. Have you seen the plaque? I haven't seen the plan. They're one of a kind. I want to see it. I'll bring me. I want to see it. I'll enjoy some more cheese. Thanks for listening to Part 2 of this special two-part episode of Think Like a Nobel Prize winner, featuring Barry Berish and Brian Keating.

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