A Monsanto Scientist on What It Takes to Make a Real Scientific Discovery

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] This is the, is

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:00:00] The Man's Crow podcast. What's up guys? Today's interview is with a guy named Dr. Doug Salmons. Now, I don't know what you think of when somebody says world renowned chemist, but this guy is going to stand out to you. And I think you may hear about some ideas in this interview that will help you understand what does it mean to discover something? How does it feel? How does one do it? And then to look from the other side when somebody else says, Hey, I've discovered something that has upended what we knew before in science. How can you check to see whether or not what they're saying is true? This was a fascinating interview from start to finish. I am so deeply grateful because Doug actually really opened up and said some pretty personal things that I didn't expect. I think you'll enjoy this. And at the very least, you'll learn a lot about the mind of a brilliant chemist that actually discovered things that no one knew before he went to study. I hope you enjoy it. So the very first time that I ever knew who you were was in St. Charles, Missouri. And I was at the very back of an enormous conference center. It held 1300 seats, and I was sitting with a couple of my buddies all the way in the back. Mostly the whole place is filled with PhD and master's level scientists. And all the way at the front of the room is a man standing up on stage and he's giving a speech.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:01:33] He's the first speech of the day. He's enthusiastic, he's clearly been selected out of all of the other people to be the guy giving a talk. And we are getting close to the end. And my buddy that I'm sitting next to, elbows me in the side and he says, Hey, you see that guy all the way over there? And he pointed at a person that would be quite obvious, he was wearing a flannel shirt with big suspenders and a handlebar mustache. And he says, you see that guy? And you could see him from all the way across this huge conference room. He says, if that guy during the q and a walks up to the microphone, like he's going to ask a question, don't look at him. Look at the face of the guy on stage because he's about to be asked the one question he does not want to be asked. And so everybody around me kind of chuckles, right? They, they, they're hearing this and they, they maybe have heard of who you or who this person was. I'm clearly talking about you only I was not chuckling because I knew that in two hours I was going to be the guy on that stage. And I was sitting there thinking, oh shit. What am I going to do now? And so that was my introduction

Vance Crowe [00:02:51] To you. Yeah. Ask you a question. I,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:02:52] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:02:52] I think I did later. Yeah.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:02:53] Oh, you did. You did. And I think it was actually a very good question. And that is my lead in to introducing one of the most disagreeable people I've ever met. And I mean that in the, in the most wonderful of ways, and a highly respected scientist and good friend of mine, Mr. Doug Salmons. So thank you for joining me.

Vance Crowe [00:03:13] Well, thanks Vince. And that's quite an introduction. You know, I, my wife asked me what I was doing, and I said, well, I don't really know. Vance wants to talk to us. We've been been talking several times. And she said, yeah, but what about, and I don't know. I said, he thinks I'm a disagreeable person. She was rolling on, okay. So trying to explain what that really means to her. And, and then of course, my daughter shows up today and what are you doing? And then so mom tells her this, and she's rolling on the ground, okay? And I have to tell you that when you first told me this moniker, I was taken back because nobody had ever told me this before, that I was disagree.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:03:58] Oh my God, are you serious?

Vance Crowe [00:03:59] I'm serious now. People have told me that I am a bulldozer, that I, that I kind of run over people or that I am too forceful. So I'm intimidating. I, I've said, had people tell me that I'm physically intimidating. 'cause just because I'm a heavy, big guy and others that, that when I negotiate that I appear to be completely one-sided. Like there's nothing to give in, you know? And I, and I don't feel that way at all. I just, and so I've talked to my wife about that, why that is the case. But I can tell you, my mother met one of my most favorite chemistry teachers many years ago, happened to meet her. She became a good friend of the family. And she told, my mother, told her Wilma, that I was born with my hand up up here. So it was hard to get out. And Wilma just said, oh my God, it's been like this forever. That he is always guy's hand up. Okay? And then later in college, I had several times I had guys just say, all right, all right, just take a break and stop it with the questions. So, so it's been something that's been with me my whole life. And I decided finally that I had a personality defect, handicap even, you know, I am not really aware of what other people are doing or thinking or watching.

Vance Crowe [00:05:36] I'm just focused on what I'm doing. And the idea that what I'm doing would be obtrusive to other people never, never enters my mind.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:05:49] This is fascinating to me because I would've thought that this would be something that would be very apparent to you and something that is so effective and helpful to you that only someone that could have honed it. And, and it might be worth making sure that anybody listening to this understands what I mean by disagreeable. So there's one thing to say, oh, there, there's people out there, they like to argue. But when, when I'm talking about disagreeable, I'm talking about one of the five aspects of the big five personality tests. And I don't know it well enough to go into the other four aspects, but on disagreeable, what it's essentially saying is, on a scale of one to a hundred, you could be highly agreeable or all the way down. So at a hundred or down at zero, you could be completely disagreeable. And it doesn't mean that you're just constantly fighting with people. What agreeableness is really a measure of is if you're over here on the highly agreeable side, it is, you would rather the group get along than anything else. So you imagine a mother that has a family fighting, right? She would rather calm the fighting down so the baby doesn't get woken up because she wants to make sure the baby sleeps, or she doesn't want there to be turbulence, right? There's really valuable in a tribe to have the agreeable people on the disagreeable side. It's not to say that you don't necessarily care about the group, it's that you would, you would prefer getting the correct answer to a problem or, and not even the correct answer. You would rather resolve an issue over having the group get along.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:07:21] So your intents about, is everybody feeling okay? And can we keep the turbulence from happening? It doesn't even register, right? And so, so I would put you all the way down there on the, on the highly disagreeable.

Vance Crowe [00:07:34] Yeah. We had a team building class many years ago where the guy had a, had a, a ruler, and it was, you know, how candid are you? You know? And so there's a scale from like one to 10. So we'd been having this discussion and everybody filled out a form and they did it, you know? And I don't know, there were five, six and sevens, you know? And so then it was like, oh my gosh, you know, well, so what hasn't been said? And so there was a little bit of a tense conversation, well, how candid have you been? And this time it was nines and tens. So everybody figured out immediately what the consequence of not getting along was. And, and so on that scale, it struck me that one end is candid and the other end is tactful. And so there is a point at which telling the truth is, you know, you think of candidness as being just honest and truthful and transparent, but what is tactful, tactful as being respectful of other people's feelings is trying to word something in an honest way, but sometimes it's not exactly transparent. And so it's kind of like between the lines. So you don't real, you're not really honest about what you mean.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:09:02] Well, there's some level of manipulation involved in, in being tactful now. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:09:06] Yeah. And so in my view, that's just dishonest.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:09:09] Okay? Right. So,

Vance Crowe [00:09:11] So the question is, you know, what, so what does it mean for there to be a measure or a grad, a gradation of honest and dishonest? And if from in my world, it's just definite, you're either on this side of the fence or you're on, so you can be candid and more candid. I mean, maybe there are some things you don't say 'cause they hurt people's feelings. But to be, not, to be candid, is to, is to basically hide the truth. Not to not say things that, you know, will hurt people's feelings. And so I'm not that, and that's a problem on one-on-one conversations. I can do that, you know? And then, so you, you see this with a lot of people. If you disagree on a subject that's really near and dear to you, if we're good friends, then you know, I'll kind of backtrack and soften my my opinion in a way that's not so divisive. Okay? Well, so what you notice is that politicians never, never ever have an opinion. And the reason is because if you have like one person, they can modify their opinion. If there are two people and two topics, it's getting to

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:10:28] Be a little

Vance Crowe [00:10:29] Tricky. You got 10 people, you're gonna piss someone off,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:10:33] Okay?

Vance Crowe [00:10:34] And if you've got a room full of a hundred people, you can't say anything definite without pissing someone off. And if you're a politician trying to get votes, then that's out. And so then you say, well, why don't the politicians ever say anything except apple pie and the flag and stuff? And that's why, because there isn't anything they can express an opinion about that won't upset half the people.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:10:58] Well, and you know, this is probably a good point to, to draw out, is that you are not a politician, right? In fact, you have been in a field that has both very, very clear cut and dry, yes or no answers, like chemistry and then applying it to biology. So let's just take a step back and say, what, what was it that you did over your career? What were the, what were the types of activities you consider yourself a chemist or a biologist or a biochemist? What, how do you consider yourself?

Vance Crowe [00:11:29] I consider myself a biochemist, which is like a jack of all trades in the sense that the field of biology is very, very broad. And so it requires understanding in a lot of different areas, but maybe not real expertise in any one area. So some of the guys I went to college with, graduate school with are physical, organic chemists. So what's that? That's a specialty in an area of chemistry that's very deep. Okay. So can they understand biochemistry? Oh, yeah. Do they, do they study the biology of plants? No, they don't. So in the biology of plants, is chemistry involved? It is. Alright. And so, so biochemistry, you know, is all the stuff that's related to the, the life force, you know, what keeps things alive. So all the metabolism, all the stuff, all the chemistry that keeps that thing alive. And it, you know, has a myriad of forms, but all of them are fundamentally based in chemistry, right? And so then, but there, there's also behaviors and there's all kinds of other stuff that's there. And of course, you can't really talk about biology today without talking about molecular biology and the relatedness of genes and traits and expression of those which are proteins or enzymes, which is my field of study enzymology.

Vance Crowe [00:13:07] So when I first, I didn't know there was such a field when I was a student as a second year student studying chemistry, I had already figured out first year as a biology major that I wasn't gonna be able to make a living though I wanted as a biologist. And so I switched over to biochemistry and

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:13:30] Weren't gonna be able to make a living in the terms of the jobs weren't paying or,

Vance Crowe [00:13:34] Well, biologists in those days were looks, you know, were the people who very rarely got jobs in universities and not much else. And so, you know, what were you gonna do? You're gonna work for the national, the department of natural resources, or are you gonna be a, what are you gonna do? You know, I didn't see myself as a park ranger or a, which my, my roommates were hoping to be okay. So I didn't see myself doing that, right? So there's, there's gotta be a little more to this than that. And so when I started taking chemistry, freshman chemistry, my second year, my teacher invited a professor of biochemistry from Ohio Wesleyan University to give a talk. And, you know, when he started explaining biochemistry and the kinds of things you can do, I just fell in love with it. The whole concept was exactly what I wanted to do, and I've never looked back. I mean, that was it.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:14:32] And so you then finish school or undergrad, then you go on and you get a PhD in, in zoology? Well,

Vance Crowe [00:14:40] There's, so yes, sort of. So I was at a branch campus, which is kind of like a community college. And so I'd gone there a couple years. And so it was time to go to the main campus, which was Ohio State. So Ohio State's a megalithic.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:14:56] I was just there a couple weeks ago,

Vance Crowe [00:14:58] You know, 55,000 huge undergraduates. Yeah. Enormous, 15,000 graduate students and a hundred thousand support people. It's a, it's a city all by itself. So when I went there, I was on work study. And so the first day I was there, I, I went into the work study office and I looked up a job and, and chemistry I wanted, wanted a job. And there was a guy who wanted someone to wash dishes. So I went over to see him and he hired me and I started washing dishes in the lab. But he asked me to come to their weekly team meetings. He was a biochemist and to attend the department seminars and the student seminars. And so even while I was in my undergraduate work, I was sort of getting enrolled in the study and eventually became a more of a lab assistant and did some research there and got to know the people in the department and then stayed there to do my, my graduate work. And that was kind of an accident too. And I was kind of fortunate. I, I had, I was not a good undergraduate student

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:16:12] Really, because you didn't know how to study or didn't

Vance Crowe [00:16:16] Get worked in. Well, that was a, it was a shock to me when I came from my high school. I was a salutatorian, small high school, 70 kids in my class or so, and I thought I was it, you know, football champion and all that stuff. So then when I got to college, you know, the branch campus, I got my tail waxed.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:16:39] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:16:40] I had no idea. And so it became really evident to me that I wasn't educated at all. Okay. And, and so I was immediately thrust into, to trying to recapture, relearn everything that I didn't know with the stuff that I was, because

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:16:59] Your school was just substandard or

Vance Crowe [00:17:01] Oh yeah. It was significantly substandard. I had no idea that I was, that I was basically, it was like, might as well have come from, you know, an inner city school somewhere that, that we think of today as someplace where students would come from that have been passed over or haven't been educated.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:17:22] And so now let, let's fast forward your PhD. When you look back at the time when you were uneducated or, or certainly well behind to now understand, I mean, even going to get a PhD is when you start to realize there is so much more to know about this subject than I even knew possible that that has to be a pretty large delta between those two things. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:17:43] Well, no. So there are a couple different things. One is my lack of education centered around how poor my writing skills were. And, and I just didn't know anything about comparative literature or any of the rest of anything about education. But when it came time to chemistry, I was able to get, a's in my chemistry classes and my, in my biochemistry classes, but it wasn't enough to bring all of my grade point up. So when I went to graduate school, my wife at the time was, was still a student. And so the idea was to be a master student and then we'll go somewhere else. And, and of course I had applied to graduate school at all these places, but my GE scores were so terrible, I didn't even get letters of response. So,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:18:34] And there'll be a lot of people that'd be very, very surprised to hear this.

Vance Crowe [00:18:37] Well, I, I was only reason I got into graduate school at the Ohio State University is because if you had a 3.2 grade point, they didn't have to have your GRE scores. And so I got in, but you know, at those days they had 5,000 undergraduates to teach and they needed TAs. And so they had 80 students, graduate students to help farm all of these undergraduates. And so, you know, I got like the c offer, it was like 300 bucks a month, you know, so you, you know, you had a couple, three recitations in a lab, and then you had to take a full load of classes, but the full load of classes for a master's student was lighter than for a PhD. And so the consequence of that was severe for me because what it meant is I could get straight A's. And so by applying myself, I was able to get a's in all those classes, and then I did the teaching, the undergraduate and, and then, you know, they said, well, why don't you take these monthly exams? And I thought it was a good idea and I passed the first four exams and you have to have four out of 10. So then they invited me to be a PhD student. So I finished my second year. I just had more classes to take. So normally a grad, a master's student would've been finished with classes. But since I was then in the PhD program, I had to finish taking the rest of the classes my second year.

Vance Crowe [00:20:14] And so then I was able to get a's in all those classes, so by dividing the coursework into two years, I could do it. And, and if I hadn't, if I'd have been a PhD student the first year, I never would've made it. There was no way I could have

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:20:28] Do you have any idea what you would've done as a fallback? Had you not gone PhD dug the scientist? No.

Vance Crowe [00:20:34] No. I never even considered the possibility. So it was that or nothing, I guess. So

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:20:42] I guess

Vance Crowe [00:20:43] It was fortunate, it was a fortunate accident for me. So by going slower, I could learn it. Well, and, and that made a big difference. And so then it was just about doing the research and had a difficult problem and it did not go well. But I did finally get it sort of resolved. But as a consequence of all the work I did, I kind of, I noticed something else that I thought was important, kind of serendipity and tallying all my data. And so I wrote an extra chapter for my thesis dissertation and I gave it to my, my preceptor. And he kind of, I remember very clearly standing like this, like you are. And he just kind of, well, you know, it's your dissertation. He said, so,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:21:35] So he didn't think it was a great idea.

Vance Crowe [00:21:36] He didn't think it was a good idea. And he thought it was out of place, but it was not his to say. And so he included it and he let me include it, and we did my defense, and it sort of, it was, it was interesting to think, but I, I passed the, well, the problem was that the work I had been doing was questioned as to whether or not it was already published. And it ultimately turned out it had been, and, and just because of some nuances about labels and who you buy stuff from and so on. But it didn't matter. I had an NIH full stock waiting for me at Penn State. And so I graduated and I went there, and while I was there nine months, my, I get the galley proofs for the idea I had about bond order phosphorus and sulfur that I put in my dissertation for science magazine. So my professor had thought better of it and thought about it.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:22:37] Wow. And

Vance Crowe [00:22:38] Then he wrote a paper that's was accepted and is in science. And so from my perspective, I felt like I passed the test that, that I was able to see something new that other people hadn't seen and was able to formulate that completely on my own without my professor or without anybody else in a way that was, was publishable in one of the leading journals.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:23:03] So that's actually a, a great point that I would love to talk more about, which is the experience of discovering something new. Most people will go their entire lives never having discovered something. And yet you had done this just as you're finishing your PhD and now are on a track to discover many things.

Vance Crowe [00:23:27] Well, that, that discovery observation I made was about details and lining up all the results. And so it was about an isotope effect on a bond length and so on. It's kind of complicated, but it measures the depth of my chemistry training. And, but by that time, I had already discovered two novel chemical reactions and, and had several papers from those that were sort of indirectly related to my project. So the first chemical reaction I ever discovered was a simple reaction my professor had written up expecting me to go and do. And I mixed everything up, and it just changed colors and yellow and yarn, and then went clear. And it's like, holy cow, what happened? And so when I ran the analysis, the reaction wasn't at all what we thought it would be. It was something entirely different. And that led to my PhD project.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:24:35] That's the kind of thing that happens in, in the movies or how people imagine that chemistry was. And

Vance Crowe [00:24:41] It was just like that. It was, it was like you put this stuff together like a chemistry set, and it just got warm and it turned yellow and it turned, couldn't see through it, you know? And then it changed again and became clear. And it's like, holy cow, what ha what happened? You know? 'cause it was visually something there and, and

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:24:59] It was just a coincidence that you were, you accidentally put

Vance Crowe [00:25:03] Chemicals

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:25:04] Together? No,

Vance Crowe [00:25:04] It was, he, he had prescribed the reagents.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:25:07] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:25:07] And so, you know, it was an unexpected reaction and in retrospect, we should have expected it. But, but that then later. And so I pursued that reaction, trying to get control of it in a way that a chemist could use to make left-handed versus right-handed things and, and did to a certain degree to, to a large degree. But, but in the end it was not quite good enough. And so out of frustration, I tried some other reagents and discovered another reaction. And the consequence of that reaction is to discover a new unknown intermediate. So I got, overall, I got about seven papers out of these discoveries that I found along the way to doing my project, which was never published because it was basically already done. All right? So, so it was, it's all about, I guess, paying attention to way things are supposed to be, you know? And when things happen that aren't what you want, it doesn't mean you throw it away. It can be that it's, there's something really important there. So discovery isn't just serendipity. And I would, I had a very important experience with one of my bio biology teachers. So when I was a freshman biology student at the community campus, we went on a field trip down to Florida Long Pine Key, we're doing ecology, looking at all the animals here and there, and the whole place.

Vance Crowe [00:26:43] And we get the Long Pine key, and it's a big park and there's a raised parkway walkway to walk around the water and see all the animals, and there's rainforest around it. And it's pretty wonderful place you haven't been. And it took me all of 20 minutes or 30 minutes to walk the walkway. And off I went and, and made it around. Wow. It was pretty amazing. And I get back, kind of think of the imagery I would have now was kind of like a happy puppy that just ran off doing this. And, and I get back and my, my professor, Ray Nik was still at the entrance, just leaning on the railing. And

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:27:26] Ray,

Vance Crowe [00:27:26] What are you doing? He wouldn't say anything and he's just staring, right? And so I got the idea that maybe I should just look too. And so I started looking and I'm kind of fidgeting and I'm frustrated 'cause you know, I really just don't see it. And then all of a sudden it's like everything came in focus and the ground was just littered with baby alligators and turtles and snakes and birds. There must have been, I don't know, a hundred animals there that I hadn't seen a single one when I went by the first time. And so it became clear that, you know, the prepared mind is what sees things. And until you really pay attention, you may not see things. And so serendipity isn't just about being at the right place and the right time. You have to be consciously aware of what you're looking for. The problem is that we have biases about what it should look like. So it's kind of like when you're doing a, a big thousand piece puzzle and you're looking for that piece and you can't find it, and you finally find it and it fits and it somehow doesn't look like what you thought it was gonna look like. Well, that's discovery. It hap when it happens, it's like that. It doesn't, it doesn't really always appear like it, you think it should.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:28:58] And is it, is it you sitting in your, in your chair and then suddenly you have a flash where, hey, I finally found that puzzle piece. Is it, is it exciting?

Vance Crowe [00:29:10] Sometimes? Sometimes. So for me, it's, it's just making sure that things aren't just almost okay. That they're entirely okay. That, that the parts always add up. That there isn't something missing. That there's not an extra part or a missing part, you know? And so you go on, all right, it has to all be there. And when there's something extra, then the question is, where did that come from? And so then you, you know, it's always about reproducing it, producing it in a different way. So there was this word that I discovered many years later called Consilience. There's a guy in the 18th, 19th century who coined this word, I guess in a way. And there's a definition for it about science. And it's when a concept or a proof of a concept of some evidence, a theory can be determined to be true by an entirely different way. So you can start from a completely different place and get, so it's like the speed of light. You can measure the speed of light this way and come up with it, and then you can go and do it some other way and get it. And so, yeah, because

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:30:32] If it's true, it doesn't matter whether you come from the left or the right or the right.

Vance Crowe [00:30:35] So that's called consilience when you can, when you can prove something is the same from different points of view. And so whenever you have something new, then that means several other things need to be true too. And so you need to be about checking them to make sure those are also true.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:30:56] Well, so, You know, I'm a communicator, right? And in communication, I can't take the level of fidelity that you have on an issue. So as you're describing this and saying, I want it to fit perfectly, and if there are a couple of afraid edges, then that, that's not okay. It's, it's all gotta fit together. And I can remember vividly, you and I one time we're, we're at a conference and I was going to be speaking the next day, and I just wanted to run past you. What I was gonna say, and really a lot of that is around me having a captive audience that's gonna smile and laugh at the parts that I want, see what works. And I mean, it's almost like a comedian working on a set. If I'm working on a new speech, and I couldn't even get past the first 10 words when you were like, Nope, that's you. Stop right there. Right? And, and we came into this impasse, and I'm, at the time, I was very, very frustrated with you. And I think had we not been drinking, I probably would've not had the patience for it. But I, I wonder about in, in this scenario, right? So you are describing the experience that requires no missing pieces, no parts that don't work

Vance Crowe [00:32:08] Well, no, it's just that in, in chemistry is in physics, or at, at some fundamental point, there are rules that, that you can't break. So like there is gravity. Okay? So, so what difference does that make? Well, you know, you can go to a lecture by Simon Gilroy who's telling you why roots go down and when they hit a rock, how they go along the rock and then go down again. So how do they know that? Okay, how do they do that? Well, and the ultimately and the definition is because of little starch granules that are falling across the cell because of gr of gravity.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:32:46] Okay? And

Vance Crowe [00:32:47] Receptors. Okay, so, so gravity isn't just apples falling,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:32:52] It's

Vance Crowe [00:32:52] Everywhere. And it, the rule always has to match,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:32:56] Okay?

Vance Crowe [00:32:57] You can't not have gravity,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:32:59] Okay?

Vance Crowe [00:33:00] And so it is with many, many things. And so being, being intimately aware of those rules has to guide your thinking. So, and, and you go to do a new experiment, there are certain things that it has to conform. And so if you're just gambling, then you're wasting your time. You should, you should know what's going to happen, and you should be able to predict, because of this, this, and this, if I do this, then this will happen. And if it doesn't, it's like, well, maybe I didn't do what I thought, or maybe I did something wrong. And so you kind of fool around there trying to figure out why it didn't work. And, and if then you figure out a different explanation for

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:33:45] What you have,

Vance Crowe [00:33:46] Then you've made a discovery. So we,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:33:48] We spoke about how in the beginning, how you've always had your hand raised from when you were a little kid. So there's something intrinsic in in you that, that goes towards finding the correct answer. But certainly of all the scientists that you've worked with and mentored and been around, they can't all have been this way. So is that something you can learn? Which is because it's not natural for somebody to say, I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep applying gravity to all of the rules, including roots. And that's how that goes with starches. And instead they're saying, I, you know, there's some of the reason, and let's dig around here, is, is that something a person can learn to, to force their mind to constantly apply all of the rules?

Vance Crowe [00:34:34] You know, I think so I think that that's the process of learning how to be a discovery scientist. Not all PhD scientists should be discovery scientists. Well,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:34:44] What's the different, I didn't even, I, you know, my impression even having worked to a great deal with scientists is that they're all out there trying to discover something that's not true. Mm.

Vance Crowe [00:34:53] Well, some of them may be, but the question is whether they should be, I think, you know, dis discovery science means that, that, that there isn't, there aren't always rules to follow. There aren't always rule books that you have to like write your own manual as you go. And that being able to do that requires you to have a fundamental understanding of the individual steps that you're doing and what you can expect to happen. And I think that some people don't really think about those individual things deep enough. And so the manual just says in the kit, just do this. And so then they do that and they get a result, and on they go, okay. And so they're not really, you know, clear as long as it's working, it's okay, but when it doesn't work, then what's wrong? So they just throw the kit out and get another kit and do it again. Okay? And so if you go to the molecular biology group and you start sorting through the people, there are those that throw the kits out and start over. And there's another group, a few people that kind of look at it and say, oh, there was something wrong with this solution of magnesium and I need to make a new solution. And, and they fix it. Okay? So, so not all of them are equal. Some of them can sort out the problem and move forward.

Vance Crowe [00:36:26] And, and so it is in every area, there are some people who can solve the problem because they ask the question carefully. And so it's, so discovery science is constantly trying to match the question with the observation. So what happens is that you can ask a question and design an experiment and get a result. And if it's not what you expect, the question is, is it, are they really linked? Did you really do the right experiment for that question? Or was it, or was that experiment and their observation to another question. Okay? And so that, that's really where the cutting edge of discovery is.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:37:14] And, and you're talking about this, you're not saying a guy comes into work and puts on his lab coat and says, today I'm gonna do this experiment. You're talking about somebody that has planned, bought equipment, spent a great deal of time, worked on something, and then months or even years in, says, I may, I maybe have been going down the wrong path for a very long time. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:37:35] Hopefully you can do it sooner than that. I mean, I, I don't feel like I've failed on a lot of problems, but usually there's a point which you have to, you have to say, okay, you need to step back. And for me, this was really dramatic. So when I took my PhD exam, so there's two exams, right? The one that where you qualify to be a PhD student and the one where you defend. So when I had to qualify, you have to propose a project, and then you have to defend it in my case to five professors. And so you're in a small room, half as big as this room with a blackboard, and there's a table and they're on one side and you're on the other. Okay? And so on the chalkboard, you present your, your project, in my case, it was chemistry, it was entomology, it was the enzyme mechanism. And the enzyme that I chose was EPSP synthesis, the target for glyphosate. So at that, that time, it was not known, okay? Glyphosate had been discovered, but the target for glyphosate wasn't known. And I didn't know anything about glyphosate. So the enzyme was a very unique enzyme in biochemistry. It's a standalone enzyme. There's not another one like it. And the mechanism of its chemical reaction wasn't known. And that's the business I was in. I was learning how to decipher the chemistry of en enzymes. And, and so I had a plan A, you know, we should do this.

Vance Crowe [00:39:07] And so one of the old organic professors said, well, that's okay, but what if that doesn't work? And I said, oh, you mean, well then there's this one. And I went through plan B and he was very patient and let me go through all of that. And then he said, well, that looks good too. He said, but what if that doesn't work? And I said, well, there's not a very big chance, but there's plan seeding. So I had had a plan seed,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:39:36] So you're ready, you're ready.

Vance Crowe [00:39:37] I did that. And so then he said, okay, and so what do you do if that doesn't work? And you know, it's like your whole life flashes before your, so, because, because you have this feeling that you have not thought it through, that there is something loose that you did not consider, and it's laying there in front of you. And so everybody's just looking at you sternly, and it's like, so you feel stupid? What didn't I think of? And so, of course they don't say anything, they just let you stew, right? For like, I don't know, it seemed like hours, but I'm sure it was just a few minutes. And I finally just said, you know, I don't know, you know, I don't know what it to do. And he said, well, it happens that way. Sometimes things just don't work and you have to come back later. And that was a pretty significant lesson for me. And so, and so that happens. And

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:40:43] You know, you, you talk about these experiences where you were on the receiving end, right? And,

Vance Crowe [00:40:49] You

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:40:50] Know, I think about the, the, the experience of going, sitting in and trying to, you know, argue. So you, you deserve the, the PhD behind your name. Are, have you been on the other side of that table then?

Vance Crowe [00:41:02] A couple times?

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:41:03] And what is, what is your thought process? Tell people that, that have never sat for PhD, haven't gone through all the years of that. What is the person that is, are you guarding the PhD label or what is it that you're doing? Why is, why do they sit there with stern faces? Is that what the way they should be? Is that good? Like, help me understand that.

Vance Crowe [00:41:24] Yeah, it's good. Well, so to be a student is to participate in questions that other people have asked. And so most pointedly as you, if you're a student, there's a list of questions. Oh, you are always taking a test and somebody else asks the questions. Okay? So really the dividing line between that and being a PhD is, can you be the guy who asks the questions? So are you, are you do, do you understand the field of study well enough to realize what areas are not firm and are not understood? And what are the important questions in that area? And so if somebody has studied that area for a long time, and I did this in interviews a lot, you know, the question is, can they tell me really what they did? Now I'm, I'm not so well trained that I understand what everybody did in detail, but I am trained enough to know if they know. And so if they can't, if they can't really explain what they did or why it was important, then I start to worry that, that they're not, they weren't really ready.

Vance Crowe [00:42:57] Okay? So part of that exam is demonstrating that you're confident about what you know and what you don't know, what needs to be known and what there is to do and, and maybe how you go about learning that. But it might be beyond the scope of what you are requested to do, but that doesn't mean you're free of not thinking about it. You, you need, you need to know when you go in for your PhD exam, what you did, why it's important and what you didn't do and what could be done and, and how one would go about doing it. And whether it's important to do, maybe it's not important to do, maybe it's better to shift on to a different topic that's related. And so a student who's not ready can't do that. They haven't accepted responsibility for the next step. And so it becomes really clear after you sort of see it and you see what it is and what it looks like, then it's not hard to, to see. And so, and so there are too many people, I'm afraid, that get PhDs that might not have or shouldn't have. And, and these days that's, it seems criminal. It seems like someone could work so hard for so long and not get a PhD. Doesn't seem fair, but, but this is where the candidness and tactfulness becomes really clear.

Vance Crowe [00:44:36] I mean, so people aren't really willing to be candid, you know, that you weren't really doing it. Okay. It wasn't just that you weren't unlucky or that you didn't have the right mentor, or your professor didn't help you or you didn't have the right reagents or there was something wrong. You don't get a PhD just because you put your time in. But there are a number of places where I think that does happen.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:45:04] And what, what then ends up being the outcome of that.

Vance Crowe [00:45:07] That's the worst possible thing. You have a, a person who has earned, they apparently earned their PhD, who thinks they're a PhD, presents themselves as a PhD, but can't do the work at the level that they need to. Now, some of them do later, but it doesn't mean that it's, it's not like a light switch, it's a process. And so there, there are unfortunately people who get them think they are, defend the fact that they are even too often hold it up in front of them that they are and they aren't.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:45:47] So if you have someone that thinks that they have, have the backing of a PhD, that's actually not altogether different than an experience that I probably, I went through, and I don't know if you remember this, but one time we were sitting somewhere and I was telling you, I was basically complaining about how, how come the other side can't see that GMOs are safe. And, and, and you said, well, how do you know that? And I said, well, we, we know that. And you said, no, we don't know that. I know that because I've read the studies, but you have not read the studies. So you are choosing some other reason to believe that that is true. And it's not that you know it, it's that you trust me or trust someone else. And I, I, to me that was a one, a very harsh but candid moment, but also one that, that helped me a great deal because it helped me to really come to terms with just how little I know. But I think about, you know, I have an enormous amount of access to scientists and to research if I want it as someone that knows what the process is to to know what it is, to know something, and to know what it is, to have confidence in the information around it. How should most of the world know what is true?

Vance Crowe [00:47:14] Well, this is, I've spent some time thinking about this when she asked the question, and this is really hard. And I tried to come up with a, a metaphor, you know, a parallelism that's easier to explain that sort of points out why it's hard. And, and then the easiest one to use, which is unfortunate is, is religion. You know? And, and so what I mean by that is, before Gutenberg printed the Bible, all of the people just had to believe the priests. Okay? That was all there was to it. That's what they said. And so they had, they didn't have a choice after it was printed, then there started to be arguments about the translation. And some people had different opinions than others, but in the end it was always pretty simple English. There wasn't any really difficult words or anything. There were difficult interpretations. And as it evolved into, I don't know what 50 or a hundred translations there are today, they're pretty easy. Some of 'em are so easy. They're just written in newspaper language. I mean, you just pick it up. And so a a fifth grade or sixth grade kid can look at it and say, yeah, I understand that. Right? And so I believe that, or I don't believe it, or I think that it means this in my life. And so they are encouraged to come up with an opinion based on what's real.

Vance Crowe [00:48:45] It's real. That's the Bible. And that's what it says. And that's real. And I'm allowed to have my interpretation and then I could hear someone speak about it and I believe him, but this other guy I don't really believe. Okay? And so I get to choose, right? So, so why is that? So there's a, there's an awful lot of human behavior that's uncovered there. There's, there's the, the, the questions that people would ask for themselves and trying to teach themselves and the access they have to that learning. And so when it's written in plain, simple language, then lots of people have access to it. But if you start talking to the theologians, they would say, well, that's not quite what it really has meant. 'cause if you go back to the translation and you look at the Greek words, that's really not what they meant. Okay? And so there's an argument about what it really means and what people wanna extrapolate to, because that's what they want to believe, right? So this is all sort of human nature. So now if we take science, take the science side of it, and so you pick some particular science problem, like GMOs are safe, sounds like a simple problem. Well, you have to know protein chemistry and why protein chemistry is safe, how it's digested. So you have to know the physiology of gut digestion and how that happens. And that some of those are peptides.

Vance Crowe [00:50:16] And some of those peptides can in induce an immune response, which has a whole physiology to it. And then other toxicity studies that there's the, the whole field of toxicity and testing other animals and doses and how they respond. And so how am I supposed to boil that down to my mother and say, well, GMOs are safe. It takes, it takes an awful lot of training. And so the standard person who says, well, I wanna understand this better once I wanna read those, well, they can't read them. They're, they're written in a scientific language that's almost like another language altogether. And it's, it takes even years of, of learning and practice to be able to read it properly, not just extract this sentence because I like that sentence and not the others. And so that means there's a big gap. So we have this group of people who've learned how to educate themselves. Everything is available on the internet, they can pick it up in simple language, they can educate themselves. So why is that science different? I mean, and so I read this book and it says, GMOs are not safe, so why am I not allowed to believe that then? And so it's very difficult to explain how critical all of the other understanding is that came to that conclusion when somebody else can say, but those are, those studies aren't really important.

Vance Crowe [00:51:50] It's really this result that's important and they question it. So then why would everybody believe, you know, they have a choice. They can believe me or they can believe somebody else. And and the problem is that over the, the last century, scientists have made mistakes and they've done terrible things in some cases. I mean, trying to understand syphilis by infecting people, my god, what a horrible thing, right? Not understanding the effects of certain drugs that, that when given to pregnant women caused deformities, you know, and the public trusted people to test that, and they didn't, you know? And so the faith that people had in the scientists to do the right thing was, was shaken. And it's, and it's happened all too often, you know, bovine encephalitis in, in Europe with people getting Crutchfield Jacobs disease, you know, those people trusted their, their regulatory food system to protect them, and it didn't. And so now why should they trust them? I mean, I mean, just because they made one mistake doesn't mean they won't make another, or that they're re you know, they can never be safe again. So I think on, so it's a multi-phase problem.

Vance Crowe [00:53:23] One hand, we've, we've tried to get people to think on their own and to educate themselves. And so look at the source material that they have that they can understand. Secondly, in terms of their belief systems, we've, we've shattered some of the ones that they would've called on to be important. And so now who should they trust?

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:53:48] When you say we've shattered ones that they said would be important, what do you mean? You mean in like, the regulatory bodies and

Vance Crowe [00:53:54] Well, I mean, with drugs that hurt people that, that were, were sold, or plastics that were, that were sold, you know, children's pajamas treated with a plastic that was flammable and kids are burning up in their crib. I mean, so, so we, you know, who would've made those mistakes? Why weren't they thought of? Why weren't we protected from them? And so the scientists are the, they, you guys let us down. You said you understood it all and you didn't, or the big company pushed it through, right? So the conspiracy theory is just too enchanting. It's in too many movies and too many things. And it, and it hails back to, I don't know what you might call the dark ages of kings and things where there were conspiracies and where innocence were victimized, right? And so it's a somehow a willing part of what we wanna believe in our society. And so having confidence and believing that it can't be true is difficult.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:55:03] It's interesting because I feel like there are a lot of people, they don't know how to find the right answer, but I know how to find the right answer. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:55:12] That's the, the bible, that's the religion. Yeah.

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:55:14] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:55:14] Everybody's got their meaning in

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:55:16] It. And, and it's, I think that's a very, very difficult thing for anybody to come really to terms with because it's, it's one thing for me to say, like, yeah, I know I've got my biases, but deep down I don't believe I have my biases. Because if I do, then you have to stand on something. You have to believe something,

Vance Crowe [00:55:36] Right? So, so in science, so firstly, I would just say this, you know, I've told you this before, you know, there is nothing more intoxicating than being right. Everybody wants to be right? And, and every scientist, every person, everybody you meet wants to be right. And what do they want to be right about? Well, this guy that's walking down the street looks like a beggar and yep, sure enough, he is right. Or how they treat them. And, and so every assessment, every, every decision we make, driving in traffic, everything is about being right, right? And we see that was a good decision. We tell ourselves that was a good idea or not a good, that was a bad idea, right? And so we wanna, we want to endorse that notion that we were right. I told you so right is right is the say sentence. But in science, if you, you propose a new reaction, everybody says, that's interesting, but where's the consilience? Did you do it in a different way? And did you do it yet in another way? Right? And when it becomes even more and more important, in other words, it shatters the theory of gravity. It better, you better have a, a whole lot of consilience before everybody believes you, right? You're the outsider at that point. So on the scientific side, there's a not always well trod path, but there is an expectation of reproducibility and consistency that conforms to everything else we know.

Vance Crowe [00:57:15] You don't get to throw out, tear out chapters and start over. Okay? So a couple examples though are the discovery of the effect of RNA on DNA and this whole RNA thing that's appeared in the last 10, 15 years is remarkable that nobody envisioned it much before. If you go through the literature, you'll see a few people, I found a paper, a guy proposing that small RNAs were doing something as early as 19 82, 80, 83 in, in a little dialogue review. 'cause it made sense in the research has explanation, but he isn't credited with discovering it. Nobody, nobody believed anything like that could happen until almost the year 2000, 2001, right? So, so DNA is discovered and understood in 53 or 55, something like that, and it's almost 50 years before people start to think about RNA. And then there's the epigenetics. There's this whole other thing of DNA wasn't that Nobody got it at all. So, so the, this idea that, that we could be sort of, you know, there's this old picture of 10 blind men grabbing onto an elephant trying to describe it, you know, that we're, that we're this blind thing in this myriad of stuff, and we're trying to figure out everything that's going on.

Vance Crowe [00:58:49] And so you have to, you have to have a sense of just what you know and what you don't know, and stuff that you don't know, you don't even know,

Dr. Doug Sammons [00:58:57] Okay? I mean, I'm, I totally think that what you're proposing here is, is very insightful, but there's a real world part of this that I think is very difficult to know where to put your finger on. And a great example is, my wife and I, when we were just dating, we were living in Washington DC and we decided we were gonna drive to the Midwest to come see our parents. And so we drive across the country, and I'm trying to impress her with how, just how worldly I am. So I get the book on tape of the Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan. And doesn't, doesn't really matter what the book was talking about, he's an excellent writer. By the time we get to the Midwest, and then by the time we get back to DC I am so afraid of the things that have been hidden, not just in my food, but all around me, that I have taken it upon myself to start making my own soap, right? Because I don't want we do that. I don't want petroleum in my, in my soap. And if I do, you know, how could we be washing ourselves with these things and bathing in this? And, and, you know, I had a master's degree at that point, but I could look at the ingredients label and it looked like petroleum to me in some way that seemed bad. So there I am with lie, and I'm using giant rubber gloves to pour lie in, which is really dangerous. I hope, I hope you have gloves. Oh, and eye protection, everything. But, but there comes a line when you have to say, wait a second, soaps are gonna be all right.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:00:28] You know, certainly you could choose to make your own soaps, but this is not gonna be the thing that takes you down. How are regular people, a, as somebody that can read the literature, what is your advice to people that are saying, I I don't know, e every, everywhere I turn somebody is telling me that this thing is toxic and that thing's not okay.

Vance Crowe [01:00:46] Well, I would tell them, you know, it's a, it's an educational process, so consilience can happen still. So what I did last week, my father is borderline diabetic now at 89. And so I'm starting to watch his food. And my sister, who's dieting presents him with this package of stuff to use here, eat this. So what is it? It's something called monk's fruit. So what is that? I never heard of it. So I look on the back and erythritol, well, I know what erythritol is. Okay, you might not, but I know. And so on the back of my head, as a scientist, I'm thinking, well, erythritol is a biochemical, but it's probably not metabolized in the body. It's kind of, it's unusual that it's made, it's in a plant fruit. So, you know, is it really okay? Is it sweet or not? So I started searching on the internet and so there it is, and the internet, it's a sugar replacement. And so that's okay. So then I searched it again as, as it create calories. In other words, is it digested? And so there's some papers that N-I-H-N-C-B-I shows a couple papers, topics even on Google Scholar search right there that says it's not just in the abstract without going any deeper. So I see a couple of papers that it's not, so I think, well, that might be okay.

Vance Crowe [01:02:18] So then my mother has digestive problems. She has a, has had to have colonostomy and so she's suffers from this. And so she's obviously going to eat stuff with him. So what's it gonna do to the bacteria in their stomachs? Is it gonna cause them to be fermenting and creating problems for them? So I searched that. So is it digested by the microbiome? And I get just into Google and a couple abstract hits. It's not, you know, the microbes don't react to it. And so it's all, okay. So in the course of about 10 or 15 minutes, having a little bit keener sense of what to look for, I was able to find enough independent references that suggests that it's okay. Okay? And that it's one of the primary offerings at the nutrition store for diabetics as a sugar replacement. And there are some other ones, Stevia and things like that. But this one is, is there. And so, and so what I would tell them is that they have to do that. That they, that there is access to information and to start to look at it, and not just the first one, but to see if there's consilience. Do people agree? And when, if you start finding things that have opposite points of view, that's a watch out, that means it's probably not good, okay? Because there are legitimate ones there.

Vance Crowe [01:03:53] But, but when people are saying that there's a different interpretation, that means that, that it's takes another level of understanding to sort it out.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:04:02] Okay?

Vance Crowe [01:04:03] Okay. And they may not be able to do it. So then you're gonna have to spend a little bit more time. So then you can go to more tried and true resources, you know? And what is the, what is it up in Minnesota, the cancer center, the Mayo Clinic, what does the Mayo Clinic Nutrition say? What does the hospital, what of science, you know, medical that gives advice on the web, say about it. And they'll have a longer essay on it. And if they say it's good or it's bad, then you can say, well, what about another one? And if they conform, then I'm okay with the con with the conclusion. So I think today people have more access to good information. And by looking for consilience, just that there's a quorum of people who believe the same thing, then it's okay. There

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:05:05] Are a lot of people that show up to anti-vaccine conferences and plenty of,

Vance Crowe [01:05:10] Yeah. So there's, there's this thing about, you know, you could say, so and so's famous 'cause they have this idea and, and so they invented something or they have an idea. And so then you look at the literature that they've written. And so who do they reference and is there preceding work that they build their work off of? And then these days when you look at references, there's the references that you made on your paper that build your paper. And there's the references in the meantime that other people have written. Do they reference you? And so you can look forward and backwards. So there's a couple tell, tell, the worst case is that the guy only references himself that all the papers, he's an author in all the papers. Okay? That's a bad sign because that means you've got a guy who's on a soapbox and nobody else has picked up the area of study and he's on it all by himself. Now that just means he's tenacious, right? And that he's gonna do it in spite of what everybody else says. So then you look to see who's referencing him, and if nobody's referencing him, that is not good at all. 'cause what it really means is the scientific community is not accepting that concept.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:06:34] Okay?

Vance Crowe [01:06:36] And so that's, you should be very wary about that.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:06:41] And when people look up your work, you know, would it be our salmon salmons our

Vance Crowe [01:06:47] Douglas Sam, our

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:06:48] Douglas salmons? And have you ever had somebody referencing your work that you disagreed the, with the way they applied your reference?

Vance Crowe [01:06:59] Maybe once or twice. But you know, people can have different perspectives and so you have to have some respect for that. Using it for an ulterior motive is different. And I haven't had that.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:07:13] Okay.

Vance Crowe [01:07:14] Now my, you know, I bragged about my science paper, which I'm very proud of, But you know, after 30 years, so does anybody else think about anything about it? So I looked it up to see how many citations it had, and it has, I don't know what, 35, 40 citations. So other people did acknowledge it, and some even tried to reproduce the work and did, and it's good. And so it's, it's safe. It is a significant contribution and it is referenced that way and that little field of study, you know, that this very tiny area of, of chemistry and, and so that gives me some confidence. But yeah, if you write a paper and you do something and nobody references it, then what was the real contribution?

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:08:02] So maybe kind of wrapping up, I have a couple other questions after this one, but I'm, but I'm interested, you know, you one time told me that you always find a way to sit at the front of the, of the room, or I don't know always, but you said you often sit at the front of a room in a, in a conference and it's kind of a joke that you're gonna ask a tough question. But I, I've come to know you, you are not asking questions to do harm or to, or to poke someone. What is going on in the mind of yours as you're listening to a talk and, and you decide to go up to the microphone to ask a question?

Vance Crowe [01:08:40] Well, there's a couple different answers there. I mean, when I first came to Monsanto, I was already well entrained in asking questions, but I was aware that not all my questions were good questions. And so at that time, Rob Fraley, the biotechnology team group that I was part of in the early nineties, had a weekly meeting every Tuesday morning, somebody in the team group, the larger group of 90 or so was gonna give a lecture. And he expected, expected everyone to be there eight o'clock, whatever it was Tuesday morning to be there. And he was there in the second row and all of his direct reports were in the first and second row. Okay? So nobody was missing, everybody's there and, and 90% attendance of everybody else, the room is full and that person gives their talk. Okay? And what I noticed after six months of being in there is that Rob always had one or two questions, and they were incredibly good questions, okay? He was always exactly right on it, and I was really impressed how he could weaken week out, be on it so clearly.

Vance Crowe [01:10:12] And so I asked him how he could do that, how, what, you know, what are you thinking about so that you could always be on it, especially when it's a topic that you've already heard three or four times and you should be bored by this time. And he said that he always tried to put it in the context of where it was gonna be next and, and how that impacted the rest of the things that people were doing on one hand. And when he was tired of hearing it, he would try to think of it as the way, the way what the competition would see when they were looking at it and how they would see it. Okay? And so I took that to heart and, and I tried to do a better job of asking the right questions. And, and in my way of doing that is making sure all the pieces and the puzzle fit together in the way that the presenter is organizing it. But, but sometimes it happened that at those town hall meetings and in order to initiate the discussion, nobody would say anything. He would call on me. Okay? And, and I did not call

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:11:28] On you to ask a question.

Vance Crowe [01:11:29] Yeah. And I, and I did not have a question. Okay? And I am telling you, you talk about something on the order of panic and the concept of coming up with an intelligent question that's neither going to be embarrassing for him or going to be stupid, but be something that everybody is interested in that's based on what he presented in case I happen to be daydreaming.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:11:57] Okay?

Vance Crowe [01:11:58] So

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:11:58] That is excellent. That is an excellent strategy for a leader, is to ask someone to ask a question that that is, that is brilliant. Well,

Vance Crowe [01:12:06] Yeah, but it can put terror in a lot pretty quick. Fortunately, I grew my education, my professor, my, when I was a graduate student, you know, we got, I want to say, you know, baptism and fire because we would have our team meetings. They were very congenial. And so Lance, you know what happened this week, and that doesn't mean some fumbling around that you did this or that. Go to the blackboard and write out what you were thinking and what you did. And then well, you know, is that really the right equation? You know, it's not balanced. What's missing? You know, what, what do you do? What were you thinking about when you did that? Okay? And so that meant what this meant was what any given time you were expected to be on it, okay? There was no, I'll get back to you tomorrow and get ready. Okay? He's here, he's here right now. Explain to me where you're at and what you're doing in a coherent way. Not just fumbling around. I don't really know what I'm doing. Okay? You've gotta be able to explain it. And so, you know, when you do in that environment, it changes you. And so, you know, so it instilled in me, I think a sense of it wasn't, you weren't just expected to know yours.

Vance Crowe [01:13:48] You were expected to know everybody else's. Okay? So, so when, well, one of my other students gets up and does their presentation, you were expected to be able to explain that to other people too. Okay?

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:14:02] I love this. This sounds just wonderful. So,

Vance Crowe [01:14:04] And so, you know, that's, this is like being present and being accountable and learning, you know, and so making sure you understand. So what that requires is that you don't just take anything for granted that you, you have to understand it. So you have to ask a question if you don't.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:14:23] So I've got a couple of just kind of rounding out questions. First of all, I was there taking the photo that became your Twitter profile. And, and I'd like to have you, you tell what your Twitter handle is, but then I'd also like to tell you how do you think about social media? You know, it was definitely a foreign concept for you. And every once in a while I see you pop on and I love it. I'm delighted by it when I see it. But why don't you, what is your Twitter handle? And, and then how do you think about Twitter?

Vance Crowe [01:14:56] Well, my handle is at wilted weeds, right? Which we made up that night. I think we were on our second scotch. Anyway, what do I think about Twitter? I think I've connected through you and Valerie and others with a, a, a group of people who I think have become dear to me in a way that their presence in global agriculture is really, really important. So the FAO people, the C-Y-M-N-T people and the, their efforts in agriculture in the third world are there. And so I appreciate those very much. I find that some of my friends or people that I would follow use it, I don't know, I'm not on Facebook, but I think a little bit more like Facebook, they have pictures of their dog or some other thing and, and, and those are touching and they're in their relational in terms of the people that are there. But it's not why I'm on there. Okay? And, and I do that a little bit too, you know, but it's, it becomes, whenever it becomes the dominant thing for somebody, then I kind of unlist them because it's, it's not what I wanna spend my time on. Yeah.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:16:19] I always think about if I pull out my phone to look at Twitter, I am giving the most valuable thing that I have my attention. And just like, I wouldn't let somebody come in and whisper in my ear, this is what I had for breakfast, or let me tell you about my dog. I, I don't want that on Twitter. A little bit of it fine, but my margin for error is pretty tight.

Vance Crowe [01:16:38] Yeah. And there are some few people there that I follow that, you know, they're more interested in day-to-day life in a way that's not it. It, it's okay. It's just not where I wanna direct my attention there. And so I, I try to avoid that. But, but the others I think are pretty marvelous contacts. Whether or not it changes anything, I'm not so sure. And so I kind of wonder about that. I wonder lately, you know, there's some stuff about diversity of crops and, and I'm into that. I'm really, I'm really into it. This lady that's in has been sending out some, and she took what a picture somewhere that was rolling hills that are all a hundred percent entirely terrorist and in rice, but it was a biodiversity picture she's proposing. And I'm, I was kind of shocked she sent that because there is no biodiversity there. It was all entirely destroyed. All of the ecosystems that were there are gone long gone for centuries even. And, and it, and it didn't look like biodiversity, but it did look like good agriculture in a way that was feeding a lot of people, which is really important. So it was kind of funny. And another one she sent, I don't want to pick on her, but was when she came home, she took a picture in a, in a French window of a patisserie.

Vance Crowe [01:18:16] And they're just gorgeous desserts there. And they were, they're really gorgeous. And, and, and one, and you glance at it, what you really see is that they're all covered with, with raspberries and blackberries and peaches and you know, and there's snow in the window corners, okay? This is wintertime. I mean, even the kings of old couldn't

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:18:42] Have had that. Yeah. Didn't, didn't

Vance Crowe [01:18:43] Have this. Okay. And so what, and so what you see here is, is the best of global agriculture coming together to create something that's remarkable And what, and so I, you know, I tweeted back to her that, you know, this was remarkable 'cause of the global agriculture that it symbolizes. And I just hope that everybody got paid a living wage to do it. 'cause I'm kind of fearful that they weren't. And, and then the darker interpretation is that we have this reality that we can go to great lengths to send something like that to Paris because people will pay any price. But we can't send a tanker of wheat to Yemen because nobody will pay. And 2 million people are starving to death. So the, the contradiction is too severe for me. And so I don't know what to do. So what do you do about that on Twitter?

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:19:37] Yeah, you know, I've actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about the value of Twitter beyond information. And you know, because I've had such a chance to meet thousands of people out in the real world and then connect with them on social media, I know that it is possible to get an outraged mob to be really upset about a thing and point that outrage at a group and, and try and, and try and get some kind of change there. But that's not lasting change. And really it's, it's destructive as opposed to constructive. And so it's like

Vance Crowe [01:20:15] Inciting a riot or

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:20:16] Something. Yeah. And, and, and so whereas there was a while there where I thought that that was something worth striving for having the ability to do that in case you needed to. Now I think very, very poorly of that. In fact, I I, it it's, it's a level of connection on social media that not only do I wish other people didn't have, I'm, I'm pretty comfortable with even me not having it because that, that, with that sort of power to drive outrage and pointed at people, it's a dangerous power. And, and I don't think that society is ready yet. You know, you were saying the kings of of old couldn't have had those, those berries. You know, there are a lot of people that have social media accounts that reach further than the most booming voice of the most powerful kings and emperors. And, and that's an awesome responsibility. And I don't think that we've come to terms with how to, how to handle that just yet. So I have very mixed feelings about social media.

Vance Crowe [01:21:17] Yeah. I don't, I'm not sure if there's documented cases of success, except for when people were desperate for help and there were other people that follow them that were in the neighborhood and could respond. But,

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:21:31] You know, but on the other hand, I've definitely gotten to meet people and had experiences and learned things. And there are, there is, there's no shortage of disagreeable people on Twitter that'll tell you when you're wrong. And that, that's probably good. Well,

Vance Crowe [01:21:44] That's pretty easy to do 'cause you're not accountable for any of it. So,

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:21:48] So the last question.

Vance Crowe [01:21:49] You stole the words wrong.

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:21:50] I, I, I've been thinking a lot about the topic of discipline and sacrifice lately. You know, what are you willing to put in the time and the energy and the work, and what are you willing to give up to get somewhere else? And I think about the accomplishments that you've had over your lifetime, the, the ability to be able to focus on the details long enough. But I I wonder now, now being at this phase in your life, is there any sacrifice that you wish you would have realized was worth making earlier? One, one that you'd say, I I really, I really think that had I understood the value of making that sacrifice earlier, something else could be different.

Vance Crowe [01:22:35] Well, for me in particular, it's my literary proudness. I am ter I'm a terrible writer. It's, my writing is so bad that it's not funny for me to tell the foreign coworkers that I work with that English is a second language for me. My, my English, my grammar is worse than theirs. Okay? So when I write a paper, the first response I get a hundred percent of the time is, what is this? Okay? This is terrible. And, and

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:23:12] That's an extraordinary handicap.

Vance Crowe [01:23:14] It is. Because when I go all the way back to high school, so I'm, where I was really not educated, I was especially not educated in writing. And one of my teachers had started to give me two grades an A for content, which I thought was what was most important and a D for how I wrote it, you know? And that wa and in my view, at that time, that wasn't important. Okay. Later when I got to college and I withdrew failing from English twice before I finally took it the third time, and I made some progress and I was getting a B by the time I took the final exam. And then I got a D and I went to the guy to ask him why. And he said, well, he said, I thought you were making improvements. And then you wrote this last essay, he said, you haven't learned a damn thing. Okay? And that at the Ohio State University was the only five hour writing class I had to take. Okay. So I never bothered with it. And then when I wrote my dissertation, my professor was very generous in helping me reword it and rewrite it and put it together in a way that was presentable so that I could turn it in. And it was accepted after that, when I worked for him, I got seven or eight papers published in that time period.

Vance Crowe [01:24:47] But he felt that the papers were a reflection of his work. And so he wrote them. And so we just kind of read over them. When I went to work for the, my postdoc parole advisor, he expected the students to write their own papers. And so I had done some nice work there, but it was ended up being part of the work of several of the students. And so they wrote the papers. Okay. So I didn't have to write, okay. So when I came to Monsanto, I couldn't write a monthly report. Okay? So I, I did some nice work in the first couple years. And so we wanted to write a paper to biochemistry. And there, the resounding response from my colleagues was, this is awful. Okay? This is just awful. Yes, there's nice stuff here. But the communication style of it was just not acceptable. And I had to work and work and work and work through a number of reiterations. Since then, I've only written two or three papers myself and I have 70 papers published. Okay? So that is to say I'm a co-author, but I've only written several of them myself. And every time I write something, I have to go through a major editing of, of it to make it presentable. And I've gotten better for sure over the last 30 years. But I am in no way, but capable of writing a presentable document.

Vance Crowe [01:26:24] And so, so knowing that I have this handicap, I can get help and get it, get it repaired. But, but it has been a significant holdback. Now it was interesting to me just as a sidelight that when my, the guy who hired me to wash dishes in the lab was a wonderful mentor for me. And I was trying to decide to get a BA in chemistry, biochemistry or BS degree. The difference was physical chemistry. And he told me that if I didn't take it, that it would always be my limit of my ability. That I would never, ever be able to go in to use those, that learning in my research that it would be the, the dividing line for me. And so after I thought about it for a while, I decided that it was too important. And so I needed to do it. So I needed to stay an extra year just to take two, wow, two, three hour classes to get a BS degree instead of a BA degree. And I'm really, really glad I did. I suffered terribly, they were terribly difficult for me and it changed all of my career, but nobody made me do that for my English grammar. Okay. And so if I had done that early, I almost, I got a good grammar lesson from my German.

Vance Crowe [01:28:00] We had to translate German. And so we had to be able to learn this, read this German essay, a thousand words, and translate it to pass to get your degree. And she would not let me write inappropriate grammar, English, grammar. She made me diagram. Oh wow. Each sentence. So when I took my German translation class, actually I learned more English grammar than I had at all in my entire education. But in the end, it's just still not enough. So that was, that's the one thing that I think has really held me back. I misunderstood how critical it is to be, to write things in a way that other people can accept it and understand it. And you can say, have the same context context, but write it poorly and people will just blow it off. 'cause it's too hard to read. It doesn't make sense to them. It's not logical. And

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:29:12] Well, I think that is a, a deeply important thing. And I would say just as, just as an observation, I think there are a lot of people that can write things very well, but they don't have anything to write. And so you, you, well, it's,

Vance Crowe [01:29:26] So, it is,

Dr. Doug Sammons [01:29:27] Most people deal with the opposite problem, right? They don't have anything to say, although if they did, they could say it very, very pritt may. Maybe that's me. But this has been a true pleasure, thank you for, for joining. You're at wilted weeds and, and been cited hundreds of times in, in scientific journals all over the world. Thank you very much.

Vance Crowe [01:29:49] Thanks. Thanks very much for your comments.