Stop & Talk

Welcome to Stop and Talk, a podcast about connection and building a more vibrant region together through creativity, health, and community. This is your host, Grant Oliphant, the CEO of the Conrad Preppice Foundation. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Doctor. Svasti Haricharan, an assistant professor and principal investigator at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, an extraordinary place where some of the most groundbreaking research in the world is being done and it's being done right here in San Diego.

Svasti is a a medical researcher who has focused on breast cancer and has taken a deep dive look at how cancer plays out for our society, but she's also recently begun looking at how the dynamics of who gets to be in the sciences, who gets to stay in the sciences, and what gets studied as a result play out in terms of the caliber of science itself. It's a fascinating connection that, too often gets lost in conversations about diversity and inclusion. It's an argument the argument that she makes that is based not only on a concept of creating a better society, but also creating better science for everyone. She briefed, my board at the Conrad Prebys Foundation about this earlier this year and she just held the room in sway as she walked us through the details of her research. And as a result of the studies that she shared with us, what she shared was how she had begun a deep exploration into the for greater inclusion in the sciences to improve outcomes for her patients, the people who drew her into this work in the in the first place, the cancer patients who needed the attention of the medical research community.

And ultimately what she's fighting for, she made it clear, is the health and wellness of San Diego and of the rest of the world. So it is my great pleasure to bring us doctor Swasti Haricharan. So Asti thank you so much for being here, I'm just tremendously excited to have you as our guest. And I wanna talk with you about your work, and why you think San Diego is a great place to do it, and also what you think the challenges are. But let's just start with a simple thank you for being here, and we appreciate having you on the program.

Yeah. Thank you for having me. I mean this is one of my favorite things to talk about, so

Fantastic.

Always happy to show up.

Great. Well, you know as I've learned, you're just incredibly dynamic talking about your work and about the field that you're operating in and the opportunities that exist for San Diego. Let's talk about science first though. I I wanna know how you ended up being a scientist and why medical research in particular is so important to you.

Yeah. I actually, you know, I feel like it definitely so much feels like serendipity. Right? Because when I was in high school, I really wanted to become a marine biologist. I grew up by the ocean.

That's what I wanted to do. And my dad said, you are not allowed to make any decisions about your life until you are 25. So I said okay. 25?

I love it.

Yeah. So I ended up doing a really basic undergrad degree in biology just to sort of explore my options. And it it sort of leads one to the next. And when you start off being very naive and, you know, I think science really enriches for idealists. The people who wanna become scientists are the people who wanna change the world.

Right? And not in front of the TV screen or or something like that, but, like, change it materially from within. Understand how it works. Pull it apart. Put it back together in a way that makes sense.

And the problem with that is that you come into it with naivete and realize that science has to operate within the real world and the rules of the real world. And so as a as a as a student that trained me, I was so lucky because I had the best mentors in the world, and they had nothing but great things to say, ways to push me up, make me a better scientist. Do not say they weren't critical. All scientists are critical. There is no such thing as a noncritical scientist.

But it was all done really well to help me become the best scientist I could be. And so I started off working with East, which is also how I learned to really like beer because, I did my master's in the UK in an east lab.

And This is something I don't know about you.

Yeah. We I started in an e slab and our lab meetings were every Friday at the university pub, and you weren't allowed to present your research unless you drank a beer. And I hated beer. I don't know if you know, Indian beers, but IPAs are not my favorite thing. But then it was just the rule.

So I had to drink beer every time I was presenting my research, and I grew to love it. I mean, I really love beer now. So I don't know if that's a pro or a con of studying in the UK.

I I genuinely can say that isn't the answer I was expecting.

Well, and moving on from that, I started working in, Baylor College of Medicine at Houston. And I was working on mice to understand pregnancy and what it does to the breast and breast cells. And as we were working on it, the direction my project went in ended up getting picked up to be part of a clinical trial for women who get breast cancer right after their pregnancy. And that seriously blew my mind. That's something that I was doing in the lab looking at mice could be changing people's lives.

I felt like it was the embodiment of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So for my postdoctoral training, I picked labs all run by MDs that were really asking questions about breast cancer and how do you prevent it, how do you treat it, etcetera, etcetera. The very last year of my postdoctoral training, just before I took on an independent faculty position, I ended up, my boss asked me to help him write a grant application on cancer disparities and how race affects cancer outcome. And I told him race does not affect cancer outcome because I had no idea. Because in spite of having, I think at that point, 12 years of training in cancer research, no one had ever brought up cancer disparities.

It was not it's not part of any grad school curriculum. No one talks about it. And this was actually a special funding opportunity that the NCI had floated to make most models that represented breast cancer and black women and Hispanic women. And so I started doing the research to write this grant application, groaning the whole time and complaining that this isn't a real thing and why am I being asked to look at this. And then I started looking at the facts and the statistics associated with disparities and cancer outcome and how race is one of the biggest determinants of cancer outcome in the US.

And I just I couldn't believe that I had had so much intensive training in cancer research and had never learned this, which seemed to me like a really shocking fact about cancer and cancer outcomes.

Well and we're going to spend most of the program talking about that, and I I just I love the story of how you came into the work. I'm, you know, obviously, today, you're a, a principal investigator, an assistant professor, at Sanford Burnham Prebys.

Yes.

You hold a PhD, obviously, to then to be doing your work. I even noticed that you have volunteered at an animal shelter, according to your online one of your online profiles. So you've got this really interesting background, but when you describe yourself, how do you introduce yourself?

That's a really interesting question actually. I always used to introduce myself as a scientist. When I was doing my PhD, my, dorm roommate was was was an anthropology major, and she was running the survey where she was asking all of us how if we could describe ourselves in one word. And I said scientist. And she said I was the only one who described myself by my career rather than by any other attribute of myself.

I like to think that I've grown beyond that. And I I don't know. I really I really describe myself as a global citizen.

Before we dive into the deeper research that you've done, I I am curious about your perspective on San Diego as a place to do science. You know, I I've only been in this town a relatively short while, but my observation about San Diego is, like you, an extraordinary breadth of people who live here. Many of them just really excited about whatever it is that they're pursuing. And San Diego is known as a great town for science, especially in the life sciences, but I think generally. And I sometimes wonder if people here appreciate what an incredible rocket ship of opportunity that is.

But that's me as a non scientist coming into town and observing the work that you and others are doing. Why do you think or do you think that this is a great town in which to do science? Yeah.

I think I actually do think it's a great town, and I think it's a unique town, to do science. So I've done science in big sort of liberal arts university settings, for instance, which has its own very different flavor. I've also been in the Texas Medical Center, which is one of the biggest research communities, around the world, and it feels very different. And I think it's because San Diego really has a mix of everything. So we have our liberal arts universities.

We have state universities. We have a UC. We have places like San Fernando Prebys. And they all coexist in the most harmonious way that I have ever come across. Like, I can walk across the street to UCSD to one of the labs and chat with people, and everyone's open to collaboration.

Everyone comes at it from very different perspectives. I've now started collaborations at SDSU, which is a big state university. And, you know, for me, having always grown up in a very, research resource rich environment in most of the institutions I've been at. By which I mean, there's so much access to technology, the latest and the greatest. There's always new equipment.

You're given extra money just to use that equipment because that's how innovation is sort of pioneered in places like San Fernando Prebus. And then you go to places like SDSU where it is resource poor. I mean, it's a state university, so it has to work within its budgets and how the state lets it lets it operate. But you see really amazing science done there and amazing research done there. And because they are much closer to the community than a lot of scientists at a place like Burnham, it means that they ask different questions.

And often I think maybe those are the right questions to ask. And I think people like me should be listening to figure it out so that we can bring our perspective and our technology to bear on those questions. So I think it's great because you have all these perspectives and because they feel like there are very few barriers to communicating and collaborating between researchers

here. Well, let's let's, let's build on that notion of collaboration because then the flip side of that is the research that you sort of fell into reluctantly from your description about the the impact of demographics on and and race in particular on the caliber of research, that can be done. And you actually, along with a couple of your colleagues wrote an opinion piece recently for the San Diego Union Tribune. The title of it is Including Researchers of Diverse Backgrounds Make Science More Accurate and Applicable. For those who are unfamiliar with that article, can you recap the the analysis that you shared there and the point you were making?

Yeah. So we we shared different analysis and different points. So I'll I'll talk about the ones that resonate with me. And if I leave something out, you can ask me, and I'll I'll I'll pick up on that.

Okay. I'll try.

But, fundamentally, what it comes down to is that we have in science what is called a leaky pipeline. The leaky pipeline is that we start off at the undergrad level with tons and tons of really talented individuals from every sort of background that you can think of, whether it's racial or ethnic or, socioeconomic. Just everyone's there because you know what? Everyone wants to do work that changes the world, and science is such a fundamental way for you to do that. So I think, you know, wanting to be a scientist makes sense.

We don't have to inspire more people who want to do science. There are so many people who want to do science now at the undergrad level. But as they move up from there, so they go from getting their undergrad degree to getting a master's degree, to getting a PhD, to doing postdoctoral training. And then finally becoming a principal investigator, running their own research program, which for a lot of scientists is what we work for because it means taking ideas that are in our head and making them a reality. And as we move from each step forward, we lose people.

And the thing is, it's we don't lose people equitably. We lose people who are women, and we lose people who are from historically marginalized groups. So why is that? Right? And that's a question that we all ask ourselves and I don't want to I don't want to seem like I'm being facetious about it.

But a lot of people will say, oh, it's just because people from those demographics are not a are not able to cut it. They're not able to compete at the same level because it is hypercompetitive the higher you go in science. And so, you know, if you're a woman and you have childcare responsibilities, you're taking care of your aging parents or something like that, which women tend to do more than men, then you're just not able to compete at the same level as a man who's not doing that. In some ways, shifting the blame on to the person who's being excluded from the carrier by saying, well, you just can't keep up. And similarly for people from historically marginalized communities, for for example, people who are the 1st in their family to get a higher education, right?

I mean, that's a huge step and it's such an integral part of the American dream that you can start from anything and you can become anything you like. And education is is a great path to becoming anything you like. And the problem is though, it's like if you don't know the secret handshake. It's because no one else in your family has done this. You are the first person.

You don't know the secret things that help you get ahead. And that basically means you will not get ahead. So you fall through that leaky pipeline and you don't make it through to the next step. You can think about what an awful waste of resources it is in terms of people we're training who are so intelligent, who have such differing perspectives, have such unique ways of looking at life. And instead of giving them a seat at the table, we're excluding them from the room.

And that is a huge problem in terms of how we sort of pioneer the scientific enterprise in the US.

Yeah. And let's let's delve deeper into that, and in terms of why it's a problem. I think some people hearing your analysis would say, yeah, that isn't fair, and clearly there's a problem where women and women of color are not being given the same opportunities, same level of support, or because of life circumstance not having that taken into account in a way that science should be. Other people might react and say, well that's that's unfortunate, but what does it mean in terms of science? Why, you know, does it does it really matter in terms of the caliber of research that, happens?

Does it really matter in terms of the innovations that flow from that? So when you talk to people, tell me about why, beyond the simple question of justice in a society where we believe everybody should have the same opportunities and a chance to succeed, Why beyond that does it matter?

So I teach a class on this to the grad students at Sampo Bonapraburst. Oh, whole class. So I do have I do have some great examples of why it's important. The one that most people love because it really exemplifies why you need different voices in the room is seat belts. So because most engineers when we were designing cars were men, all seat belts were engineered to fit men properly.

And it fit across their shoulders and across their chest and exactly where it should go. And then we found that women were disproportionately dying in car accidents, and we couldn't figure out why until women started becoming engineers and they realized that all the crash test dummies were modeled with men in mind because men were the primary drivers, I guess, at the time. And so seatbelts didn't fit women. And so when they were in an accident, the seat belt just didn't work as well with women as it did with men. And we would never have figured this out if we hadn't had women engineers coming in and being like, well, maybe here's the problem, fishbowl.

You're just, you know, you're just not modeling the right people for the question that you're asking. And we see that same example over and over again. It's people like to ask questions about themselves that fit their life experience. And scientists are the same. We're interested in the things that affect us.

But we also have this great power that we can actually do something about it. We can test it. We can make a drug. You know, we can save lives. But if the questions we ask all pertain to us, then we're only saving people like us.

Right? So you need to have everyone in the room so that we're saving everyone in some ways. COVID is a great example too. Vaccinations were mainly tested on men. We do this often in clinical trials as we pick a very uniform demographic because that gives the pharma company the best opportunity to get a successful clinical trial result without any confounding factors.

If it's all one population.

If it's all one population because you don't have any variability. And so then when you start giving it in real world scenarios to real people who are obviously not all from the same patient demographic, then you end up figuring out that it doesn't work as well. So COVID vaccinations were all, much more harmful in women and that there were much more severe side effects. One of the even funnier parts of that story is that they figured this out in Europe because when they did, surveys after taking the vaccination, women were consistently reporting more pain and reporting more adverse effects. And the conclusion drawn from that was that women tend to complain more, not not that there was potentially a problem.

Seriously.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So when when we think about this as a general research challenge, then the argument is, ultimately, that what you're advocating is a different approach that will produce better research, period. Is that correct?

Yeah. And, I mean, I there's a lot of less amusing anecdotes, but more solid facts showing that the more diversity you have in a scientific team, the more likely it is to produce something patentable, which is a way of measuring how your research is contributing to technology and innovation. You're more likely to have a finding that results in a clinical trial. Again, suggesting that it has more applicability in the real world. So if you think about it in terms of are we losing out as a society by excluding certain demographics from the table?

Yeah. We are. And and I think that's problematic because I think I don't know. That doesn't seem not only is it not just, but it doesn't seem useful either, right, to have this resource and turn our back on it.

Right. You know, I I really wanna pick up on the point that you just made about what is patentable because when you spoke to, the Conrad Prebys board as we were thinking about this problem, alongside you and learning from you, One of the points you made is that diverse groups of diverse researchers also produce more innovation, and that there is a correlation between, including, or having more diverse researchers and producing more more companies as a result of that. Theoretically, more drugs, more solutions for society. Is that accurate?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not just tangible outputs like that. Like, those are things we can tot up and even put, like, a dollar value on it. But even in terms of whether people are scientists, the most important thing you can do as a scientist is find something new that no one else has ever found before.

That's sort of the the gold standard for being a scientist is to discover something. Right? And what they see is that the more diverse a team of scientists is, the more likely they are to connect concepts that have never been connected before. And you can see how that would make sense in any setting. Like, if you bring together people with different life experiences and you have a conversation, you're going to find so many new connections that you would never have thought of before because you haven't had that person's life experiences.

Right? And it's the same thing in terms of science. It it's it's almost like the more people you bring in, the more perspectives you can get, and at least one of them are going to be right. And the more we limit ourselves to how many perspectives we get, the more likely we are to just be wrong or get a negative result that cannot be moved further.

What was the reaction like to your article? To do people understand the argument that you're making, or did you get pushback because our society right now is on such a hair trigger around these messages that the core notion that you just described, which is that what you're proposing produces better science, was that lost?

It's a very mixed bag.

Mhmm.

And I think one of the problems, which I think places like Conner Prebys Foundation really can make more of a difference than anyone else, is in making people understand the value of diversity or inclusivity. Because, unfortunately, in the society that we're in, money speaks for a lot. And a lot of the value that's brought in by having a more diverse community or a more inclusive community is intangible in the, benefits that it provides. And so it's much harder to convince people this has intrinsic worth unless someone can put a dollar amount on it and say this is how much it is worth. And then everyone knows and everyone And so typically, the reaction we get, like we got for the Tribune article, is that the group of believers who have already been convinced will, you know, be like, yes, amazing piece.

You brought out some really good points because they're just I mean, I'm preaching to the choir there, so they're not gonna say anything else. And then you get pushback in terms of there are ways to explain away these benefits that you're talking about. Or the old argument that I mentioned before that it's not that we're not wanting to increase diversity. There just isn't diversity out there because we've lost it all in the leaky pipeline. So there's no one we can include at the table, although we wokeness gone mad.

So I think it's a mixed wokeness gone mad. So I think it's a mixed bag, and I think it requires a lot more open minded conversations between all three groups without making people feel ashamed for not believing or not understanding, but just explaining and articulating your viewpoints so that they do get it and they do understand the intrinsic value of DEI in academia.

Yeah. And you see this ultimately, again, the message is this produces better science and more prosperity coming, more jobs, more companies coming out of the research that you and others are doing.

Yeah. I mean, I can't I can't overemphasize that. That is exactly the output that we should be getting.

So, when I think about this from a regional perspective, you know, it's, the the answer in a way seems intuitively obvious. We have these incredible strengths that you described earlier about medical research and science in the community, and we we, are known as a region for having those strengths. But is this a challenge that faces science nationally and internationally and that has to be solved at that level? Or or can it be solved at a regional level in a way that strengthens us? And what benefit does it bring to San Diego if we do?

So I'll say one thing. I think California in general, San Diego for sure, is, we are pioneers. We have been at the forefront of innovation. And I think the next big innovation really is going to be diversity. And that seems like a weird thing to say because it's not some technology or robotics or AI or anything that people are talking about.

I think really it is diversity that's gonna be the game changer is creating environments that are inclusive. But California being a pioneer is true. And I think the US being a pioneer is true because I think this is a global problem. But one of the things I love about the US, which is similar to India actually, is that we wash our dirty linen in public. So whenever we have arguments, whenever things are going badly, whenever one group feels hurt, it's it's in the press.

It's everywhere. Everyone's talking about it, which is healthy in my opinion. And in a lot of other places around the world, there is not that heterogeneity that you see in the US with all of these different demographics and people living next to each other. And so because of that, they may not face those problems daily. They do have marginalized communities, but those communities don't have a voice in other places in the world.

So in some ways, the US is speaking for all of those marginalized communities and in some ways, California is speaking for all of those marginalized communities. And as such, I feel like the responsibility is great because you you have to think about it as you have a voice that's being heard. For the millions of people who don't have that voice, you are speaking up and it makes a difference. And San Diego, you know, obviously research hub, biotech hub, were at the forefront of innovation in so many different ways. But I think if we achieve this as the next frontier, if we sort of showed the way for how this could be achieved in a regional level, I feel like it would inspire much bigger global change.

Can I just tell you how much I love that answer? And I, I love the optimism of it, And I also appreciate what you said a moment ago about the importance of getting there through a conversation with the various viewpoints that may agree with us, and folks who don't see it the same way, and I I love that notion that we can have that conversation. Are you confident we can?

I I have this almost every day with people, And I think I've had so many people tell me, I'm scared to ask you this question, but but I feel there should be no fear here. I'm not judging anyone based on how they feel. My husband is a white man and has comes into this with a lot of historical privilege and has a lot of the feelings that I think other white men have of feeling sort of assaulted, of feeling pushed into a corner. And if they didn't, that would be really unnatural and weird, frankly. And so how could people not have really differing viewpoints on this?

Right? And and the question is, how do we build consensus? Only by having open minds and willing be willing to listen to where the other person's coming from. Because my firm belief is almost no one wants to be horrible or mean or evil, you know, except I mean, I I guess I shouldn't say no one, but in my experience, no one does.

Most of the people we're encountering in

their life. Right? Yeah. And so, so I think we make we can make people villains by assuming the worst motivation for the things that they say or the feelings they have, or we can just talk about it. But I mean, Americans are good at talking about it.

This is our this is our super power. Right? And I feel like, yes, if anyone can do it, we can.

Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate the sentiments that you've put on the table. The hard work that's gone into it. The deep research that you have brought to the table, and the and the arguments that you're making on behalf of really San Diego and the rest of the country and the world. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Alright. Well, I thought this was a terrific conversation with a lot of important ideas, but for me the big takeaway, the big idea is about the connection between who's doing scientific research and the caliber of scientific research that comes out at the end for the benefit of the rest of society. So what Swasti laid out for us is that who's in the room when scientific research is being done influences the type of research that's being done, and I just loved her seat belt example, that was fantastic. And the more perspectives you have in the room, it's logical, the more you're going to learn about potential solutions and the more ideas you'll have about the range of solutions that will work for everybody. That's basically the crux of our argument.

And then it also has an impact on innovation, patents, and company formations. So ultimately it has an impact on jobs, and who gets employed, and how many people get employed, which really means that what Swasti is laying out here is a notion that benefits San Diego as a center of medical research, and this is why I, and in my role I'm so taken with the research that she's done in this because I think what she's pointing to is helping to unlock a key next innovation in our strength as a region, as a leader nationally in medical research. So it's just it's, it's a powerful idea and, to solve it we don't have to invent anything new, we just have to include people differently, which I love. I think it's also important and she was honest about this that not everyone agrees, and people see these issues differently especially now because in our culture we're having such a hard time talking about how to include more people at the table and what that looks like and how to do it in a responsible fashion. And I love that her answer was to acknowledge the different points of view and to engage everyone.

It was not to say the other side was wrong, it was actually to say there are 3 sides, and to, to suggest that we have a conversation with each other where we ask the questions that are uncomfortable and we make room for that. I asked her what was an honest heartfelt question for me in that moment which was, can we have that conversation anymore? And I I think the most powerful thing she said, maybe out of a lot of powerful things was I do it every day. And I think if there is a takeaway for the rest of us in this conversation, it is to think, the the very deeply about the challenges that that face us and also to be willing to have honest candid conversations even with people who don't agree with us. Thanks for listening.

Join us next time, and please be sure to subscribe, rate, review, and share this podcast. Stop and Talk is a project of the Conrad Prebys Foundation. It is produced by Crystal Page and Adam Greenfield. It is engineered by Adam Greenfield and recorded in the voice of San Diego Studios. Thanks again.