Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 9
INTO THE UNKNOWN
Scientific Questions
W
E LIVE IN AN AGE
of instant answers. I googled this question: How do we know the
earth is round? In less than one second, I had 168 million results at my fingertips. If I
spent one minute on each, it would take me 320 years to get through them all.
?
We live in an age of assertion. I can fire off a tweet or post an opinion, no
matter how accurate or incendiary, and get the attention of the crowd, maybe
even go viral. Politicians throw out untruths or half-truths and, even when
proven wrong, they will double down and assert again. In 2015, Representative
Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, declared authoritatively that climate data clearly showed “no
warming” for the past two decades. He didn’t back down even though 14 of the
15 years from 2000-2015 logged in as the hottest on record, according to data
from NASA. Truth is often eclipsed by attitude.
Instant answers and easy assertion populate our digital information age. I can
surround myself with friends and associates, virtual or real, who will be my echo
chamber, ratifying my ideas and validating my logic. I can live in a media
universe where everyone will agree with me, and my social media tribe will
cement my certainty.
How do we slow it down?
Can we allow ourselves to be wrong?
Can we ask in a different way?
Up to now, my quest to understand how we ask more of ourselves and one
another had taken me through several lines of inquiry, each connected to its own
distinct outcome, each calling for its own unique approach. In all of them, the

---

artful question leads to information and awareness, understanding and answers.
But there’s a line of inquiry characterized by the slow question, the one that
doesn’t yield an immediate answer and dares you to embrace uncertainty. I
wondered, can the slow question, the kind that requires painstaking work and
enduring patience, where you try to prove yourself wrong in order to see if you
might be right, be a viable alternative in our world of instant answers? Can it
prove to be a reliable path to truth?
The answer, of course, is yes. The slow question exists with a distinctly
different approach. It is expressed through the inquisitive lens of science, which
ventures into the unknown, seeking to explain the mysteries of the physical
world. This questioning method represents a way of asking that recognizes the
vastness and uncertainties of the unexplored. The method builds logically from
the ground up.
Observe a problem, frame a question. Take what you see or know to be
objectively and measurably true from the real world and ask a question. What’s
going on here? What’s causing this?
Offer an explanation. Based on your observations, your experiences, and the
facts and data that exist, put together a clear hypothesis that could explain the
situation.
Put your hypothesis to the test. Experiment and measure over time. Try to prove
yourself wrong. What else could explain this situation? What did you miss?
What could be wrong with your approach and your data? If your hypothesis
holds up, you are making progress.
Share. If you think you’re onto something, shop it around and show it to other
knowledgeable people. Let them review it. Do they see something that you
didn’t? Do they have any problem with your data or your methods? If not, you
might just have a theory you can act on.
Scientific questioning drives a process that revolves around data,
experimentation, and observable fact. It is a method that tackles a daunting quest
and challenges attention spans in an instant-answer world. The discipline this
line of questioning imposes makes for better inquiry and better decisions across
the board. Think back to a choice you made or an action you took that didn’t
turn out the way you hoped. Ever wonder how different things would have been

---

if you had more information or looked at what you did have a bit more
skeptically? Have you ever worked off an untested instinct or an unchallenged
belief and then wished—knowing what you know now—that you could do it all
over again, or that you could have road-tested your hunch before you acted on
it? How would things have been different if you could have been more scientific
in selecting the car you bought or the business you invested in? What if you
could turn your search for answers into a science?
The Doctor’s Quest
I wondered: Can we inject a little scientific method into the questions we
confront every day? How can scientific questioning be useful to the rest of us?
First, I had to see how it works. I went to the sprawling campus of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) just outside Washington, D.C., to speak with one of
the country’s leading scientists. He’s worked all his life trying to figure out the
unknown, in a world where research is subject to criticism, hypotheses exist to
be disproved, and answers leads to more questions.
The world of science in Bethesda, Maryland, stands in jolting contrast to the
political world of Washington just down the road, where people expect questions
to be answered quickly and decisively. But unlike the political world, science
celebrates discovery and the unknown represents a challenge, not a weakness. In
science, facts are things to be learned, not exploited. Data, not opinion, holds
sway.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases for more than three decades. In a town where everyone picks sides,
Fauci has mostly stayed out of politics. He sees himself as “an honest broker of
science.” He gives little credence to political labels and has no patience for
ideology that obscures discovery or stands in the way of cures. Fauci deals with
medical fact and the painstaking, meticulous research of biological science. His
questions grow out of his observations and insatiable thirst for research and for
cures to disease.
Fauci greeted me outside his spacious office a few minutes after 7 a.m. This
wasn’t his first piece of business for the day; he’d been at his desk since 6. He
had a reputation as a workaholic, a nonstop guy. A small, super-fit man in his
seventies who never lost his Brooklyn accent, Fauci still ran and worked
marathon days. His suite of offices was crammed with books and journals and
offered a gallery of his life. Pictures with patients, presidents, doctors, and

---

researchers from around the world hung from the walls. They highlight Fauci’s
work against killer diseases: HIV/AIDS, SARS, malaria, Ebola, and the Zika
virus.
Fauci was especially proud of one picture. Taken around 1989, it shows him
with President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, sitting in a crowded
semicircle with researchers and AIDS patients. President Bush had just approved
a large increase in AIDS funding that Fauci had sought. It was a sharp turn from
Bush’s predecessor, Ronald Reagan. The funding opened a research pipeline that
led to effective treatments for HIV/AIDS and brought dramatic and desperately
needed breakthroughs. They came, however, only after years of suffering,
controversy, and research.
A Mystery Killer
I first encountered Fauci in the early 1980s when he briefed on a mysterious
ailment that seemed to be targeting gay men. The disease didn’t even have a
name yet. I was covering the White House, where President Reagan was
reluctant even to talk about it. He and his wife, Nancy, had plenty of gay friends
from their days in California. The actor Rock Hudson, the first major celebrity to
die of the disease, had attended a state dinner hosted by the Reagans just three
weeks before he was diagnosed. But the ailment, with its implications of
homosexuality, was a taboo subject in politics at the time.
Fauci had always been a questioner, an explorer. Like other scientists and
researchers, he would see a problem—a disease or an illness—become
fascinated by it, and turn it into a research question, derived in some fashion
from the most fundamental question in the universe: