Making a Film About the Making of a Scientist on BiotechBlog

Naturally Obsessed Director Richard Rifkind was the guest contributor on BiotechBlog yesterday. Click here to read his article about the making of the documentary.

Naturally Obsessed “SPURS” Minority Student Commitment to Science Career

“Naturally Obsessed: the making of a scientist” was screened on June 10 to a group of New York City college honor students participating in the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons SPURS program (Summer Program for Underrepresented Students). The program is designed to expand the pool of medical and biomedical research applicants from diverse and economically disadvantaged groups whose members have been underrepresented in medicine and biomedical research.  Recruited to the Columbia summer program from various campuses in the City University of New York system, the students also participate in an NIH program aimed at broadening access to research careers at their home colleges (MARC, MBRS, or RISE).

Compressing three years of filming in the molecular biology laboratory of Dr. Lawrence Shapiro into an intense one-hour documentary, “Naturally Obsessed” is intended to convey the realities of laboratory research and the personal side of what it takes to become a scientist. The film was co-directed by Dr. Richard Rifkind, for many years a cell biologist at Columbia P&S, who took up filmmaking upon his retirement as a researcher and Chairman of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.

“So, I’ll bet that seeing the real difficulties of laboratory research changed how at least half of you think about a career in science,” challenged program coordinator Alan Dindas, opening the post screening discussion. But most students disagreed..  “It was a vivid honest view.  This is what it takes. It made me feel more motivated.  I feel more prepared,” said one. “It didn’t scare me,” said another. “It’s what I want to do.” A student who is also a filmmaker was sure that he “could accept the ups and downs” of research,   appreciating the drama inherent in the human dimension of doing science.

On the other side, one female student worried that a science career might compete with the pull of a family, and threaten the personal relationships that she counts on. “How does a professor  feel when a student drops out?” a student asked Larry Shapiro, who had joined the session. “You worry,” he acknowledged. “Could I have done more, or differently? But I have mixed feelings; not everyone should be working in this area.”

The Directors of Naturally Obsessed and featured scientist Larry Shapiro chat with honor students participating in the SPURS program

One student commented on Larry’s cool and geniality. Others noted the friendships in the lab, the sense of common purpose and sharing, and that each of the three students in the film reflected a different personality and a different outcome.

Summing it up, Alan Dindas urged the students to keep the goal in mind. “You need to have a sense of who you are and how it matches up with what you want to do.”

Some Students See Science as “Strictly Business”. What do you think?

At a recent screening of Naturally Obsessed at a southeastern medical school, a debate followed about the state of research funding today.  One junior faculty member wrote to us with the following observation about the difference in his generation’s outlook and students in training today.

The interesting (and disappointing) part of the discussion is that some of the students view science as a business. They are keenly aware of the funding problems and the need for ‘productivity.’ This is different than when I attended grad school or was a postdoc in the late 1990’s to 2006; I think it’s a little odd given that as junior faculty, both my wife and I, with independent labs, have been able to secure federal funding and are beginning to publish our lab’s first papers, all within three years. Perhaps it is the current climate, although all of us (students included) agreed that we are insulated from what’s going on in the ‘real’ world.

Do you feel it’s necessary to use a business savvy approach in your research? Does this hinder or help the process of designing experiments? Let us hear from you!

Photo by: John Dominic Barbarino

Understanding the Scientist’s Obsession

The Directors of Naturally Obsessed, Richard Rifkind and Carole Rifkind

Having retired after a 50 year career as a cell and molecular biologist (Carole lived through it at the kitchen table), we grabbed the opportunity to do something we were passionate about – to help people outside of science understand what I do as a scientist. What goes on in a lab? What is the process of discovery?  How is the skill of a scientist passed down through the generations?  We wanted to do it on film.

New times, new questions
My work spanned the second half of the 20th century: I had seen anatomy grow into cell biology and biochemistry transform into molecular biology, a revolution that shifted the research focus from organs to molecules.  I was intrigued by new technologies that were radically changing the kind of questions that young scientists were able to ask in the 21st century.

Putting it on film
Having made one previous film together, we knew that filmmaking is about telling stories. Excited by the promise of structural biology, we imagined plots showing how the use of x-ray crystallography was making it possible to visualize the atomic structure of proteins, the micro-machines of all life-processes, and so determine just how they work.

We searched New York City for labs where this story could play out and finally selected that of Dr. Lawrence Shapiro of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center. His study of the mechanism of the protein AMPK — pertinent to new treatments for obesity and diabetes — would surely have wide public appeal.  Not only was Larry exceedingly welcoming to us – access is the sine qua non of documentary filmmaking – he was young, good-looking and articulate – and so were the students who were working for their PhD degree in his lab.  We returned to shoot them again, and again, and again, and then edited for another year, until we felt the story was told.

Audience reaction
Fast forward four years. The film finished, we screened it first at home base, Columbia, apprehensive about how a packed auditorium of scientists, Larry’s colleagues, would receive it.  We were more than surprised by the peals of laughter that erupted when a student clumsily dropped a reagent on the floor.  Or the deep sighs over failed experiments. Or the roll of applause that greeted a technical breakthrough.  We understood that it wasn’t only the science that was grabbing this audience. It was empathy — a word bandied about a lot these days. Empathy for the gamble of science; empathy for how one learns to deal with failure; empathy for the total commitment that science demands. A comment from one member of the audience summed it up: “Finally someone has told my story, and it feels good.”

Richard Rifkind
Co-producer, co-director
Naturally Obsessed: the making of a scientist

The Directors with Rob and Kil, featured Naturally Obsessed scientists, on opening night.

Check out Dick’s response to Laura Meckler in the Wall Street Journal

Dick Rifind, Director of Naturally Obsessed, responded to Laura Meckler’s March 24 article in the Wall Street Journal, “Obama’s Mission: Serving Faithful and Nonbelievers Alike” Check it out here!

DICK’S COMMENT

Why is the Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler perplexed that President Obama, despite being a deeply religious person himself, declares his reliance on science to support decisions in his administration? (Wall Street Journal, March 24, “Obama’s Mission: Serving Faithful and Nonbelievers Alike.”) The role of science is to answer questions on how nature works; science does not deal with questions on why nature works. It all comes out in my documentary film, “Naturally Obsessed: the making of a scientist”. See www.naturallyobsessed.com . In the film, a young scientist-in-training is blocked in his attempt to understand how a particular human metabolic control protein works. But he resolves his dilemma by delving into what he calls “nature’s notebook” — a record of the increasingly complex form of the protein over the many millions of years of evolutionary history. Finding a primitive, and so simpler, version of his target protein in yeast cells, he is able to produce a stunning three dimensional visualization of the arrangement of the thousands of atoms that constitute the protein. It happens on-screen, so that the viewer of the film can see the actual physical evidence for the continuity of genetic information from the time of our most remote ancestors! The proof, as the adage goes, is in the pudding, and depends in no way upon one’s personal believer or nonbeliever status. This is why our president functions equally well both with his personal religious beliefs and with science as his tool for progress in governance of our great nation.

Are Scientists Born Documentary Makers? We Want to Hear From You!

Scientists should be natural documentary filmmakers.  How so?  The process of making a documentary is in many ways exactly what scientists do all the time — only the tools are different. Science starts with a question and curiosity. That is the first step in documentary filmmaking.  Science continues by collecting data that pertain to the question.  So does a documentary.  Only for a doc the data are collected either on film or on video tape, whereas for science, there are myriad forms of data collection.  Then, both docs and scientific research face the problem of finding the story that resolves the original question and relieves your curiosity – at least for the time being.  For the scientist that story is hidden somewhere in the data and for the documentarian somewhere in the collected hundreds of hours of film or digital media.  Editing means finding the story.  The last step for both is finding someone to share the story with — publishing or screening.  There you have it. So, why don’t more scientists make documentaries?  Tell me!

Richard Rifkind, producer/director, Naturally Obsessed: the Making of a Scientist