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Science and Coaching

Yesterday, I attended the celebration of the scientific career of my PhD thesis advisor, Dr. Howard Fields. I reconnected with old colleagues, learned about the brain’s pain and pleasure circuits, and heard wonderful stories about one of my most beloved mentors of all time.


So much of how I think about scientific inquiry—and about brain and behavior—was shaped by this man. And so many of those lessons still apply today, not just to science but to life and leadership. This post shares three enduring lessons from my time in Howard’s lab.


Photo 1: July 2003, Howard and I a year after I graduated. Look how young and foolish I look!
Photo 1: July 2003, Howard and I a year after I graduated. Look how young and foolish I look!
Photo 2: July 2025, Howard speaking at his celebration yesterday.
Photo 2: July 2025, Howard speaking at his celebration yesterday.

STORY:  Science and Coaching

Enduring lessons from my time in Howard's lab.

READ MORE: Additional Resources. A few resources that expand on these ideas.

BOOK STUFF: Book Club and Book Update. Our July/August book is The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. A gem of a reframe: When people do things you don’t like, let them. When life surprises you, let it. What if surrender could be a strategy?

GOING FURTHER: Additional ways to connect in the Inquiring Minds community



STORY

Do you remember learning the five-step scientific method in middle school?


Let’s be honest. It’s bullshit.


That’s just not how actual science works. In the lab, there’s no tidy checklist—☑️ question, ☑️ hypothesis, ☑️ methods, ☑️ results, ☑️ analysis. Nor is science conducted in isolation, alone in an ivory tower. Nor is it just a static collection of facts and vocabulary to memorize.


No.


I had some sense of scientific inquiry from my undergrad and master’s research at Stanford, but it wasn’t until I joined Howard Fields’ lab at UC San Francisco that I truly began to understand what science really is—how it works, why it matters, and what makes it so exhilarating.


And even after I left research to become a science educator and leadership coach, those lessons from Howard’s lab stayed with me. They’re lessons I return to often. Here are the top three.


Lesson 1: The Inquiry Process

If science isn’t a five-step method… what is it?


I think of science as a verb, not a noun. Not a fixed body of knowledge, but an evolving, collaborative, creative process—one that’s beautifully summed up by Mark Watney in The Martian:

“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”

Science begins with questions. It’s fueled by curiosity, tested through experiments, shaped by hard-earned data, and refined in community. Yes, there are steps—ask questions, try something, collect data, make sense—but they’re rarely linear. The path winds. It loops back. It surprises you.


Sometimes, a serendipitous data point leads to an entirely new question. Alan Basbaum, pain researcher and Chair of Anatomy at UCSF, shared yesterday how a 90-degree rotation error in a brainstem sample sparked one of the biggest discoveries in the pain field—impacting everything from opioids to acupuncture.


Sometimes, making sense leads directly to a bold new experiment. Howard shared how insights from studies on conditioned place preference led to the realization that pain and pleasure have opposite effects on behavior—opening the door to studying addiction alongside pain.


Sometimes you cycle round and round between trying something and collecting data a dozen times. I did that for two years perfecting a troublesome technique that failed to work in my hands.

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Science, at its heart, is a process. If I were to be able to go back in time to early human civilization – Chinese, Egyptian, or Greek – and give them just one thing, I’d give them the scientific process because that, as a way of understanding the world, will eventually lead to all other knowledge.


Howard carried an infectious sense of wonder into every conversation. Especially in lab meetings, where he’d light up over new data or an intriguing paper, ask a dozen probing questions, and help us turn a finding inside-out until the full picture emerged. He was like a kid in a candy shop—wide-eyed and thrilled—and that energy was contagious.


Since then, I’ve made it my mission to live out the value of scientific inquiry with that same sense of wonder. I see life and leadership as a grand experiment, full of curiosity and learning.


Ask a question → try something → gather data from lived experience → make sense of it.

Maybe that’s why I love coaching so much. Maybe that’s why I love life so much.


Because life is the greatest scientific experiment of all—something to do, not just to know.


Lesson 2: The Importance of Saying Something

At the celebration, Peggy Mason—one of Howard’s former postdocs and now a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago—said something that stopped me in my tracks.

She shared how Howard taught her to ask questions with boldness.

“One thing that sets Howard apart is his willingness to commit to a testable hypothesis. He says, ‘Here’s a theory about how the brain works. Let’s test it.’ It’s a mark in the sand, a declaration.”

I nodded vigorously. Yes.


The courage to say something—even if it might be wrong—is what separates great scientists from average ones. It’s a boldness rooted in curiosity, but tempered by humility. Say what you believe. Be ready to be proven wrong. That’s the heart of science—and leadership.


Howard embodies that bold spirit. Yesterday, he spoke candidly about the threats facing the scientific enterprise today—funding cuts, attacks on universities, challenges to academic freedom. He reminded us that scientific research, world-class education, and freedom of speech were foundational to this country—and to its progress.


From Howard, I learned how to take a stand.


I grew up in an Asian American household where the message was: “If a tree stands taller than the rest, the wind will break it first” (木秀于林，风必摧之). In other words—keep your head down.


But in Howard’s lab, I found my voice. I learned to share my work, to teach others, to stake a claim—like forming a hypothesis—and trust that the evidence would carry me forward.

I even learned how to influence people far more powerful than I was. Once, I had an idea for an experiment that Howard initially dismissed. But I knew it had promise.


Instead of arguing, I circled back. I dug up the original paper that inspired the idea, wrote in the margins: “If this model is true, then we could test it by…” and casually dropped it on Howard’s desk.


Two weeks later, he came to me and said, “I have an experiment idea you should try.”

Now, this isn’t just a lesson in how to make someone think it was their idea. It’s about understanding how to speak in their language, how to frame an idea in a way that resonates with their core values. For Howard, that meant framing the experiment as a testable hypothesis.


I share that story often with clients trying to influence a board, a boss, or a funder.

It’s not just about speaking up. It’s about saying something in a way that lands.


Lesson 3: A Multidisciplinary Team Approach

The third lesson I carry from Howard was beautifully articulated by Dr. Mike Rowbotham from UCSF’s Center for Pain Medicine.

“Howard takes a multidisciplinary team approach.”

Science is, at its core, a team sport. We ask questions together. We make sense of data together. Research teams, peer reviewers, collaborators—every step is done in community.

Howard lived this truth more than most. His lab was a mosaic of perspectives: neuroscientists, biophysicists, MDs, psychologists, and more. People studying pain and pleasure at every level—from molecules to whole humans. His philosophy? The more diverse the data, the more robust the discovery.


And I’ve taken that lesson to heart in leadership.


The more cognitive diversity in the room—different lived experiences, different ways of thinking—the better the outcomes. Diverse teams outperform. Full stop.


Deloitte found that companies investing in inclusion boast 2.3x higher cash flow per employee and are 1.7x more likely to be innovation leaders. Another study from Kellogg and Stanford found that while less diverse teams felt more confident, they were more often wrong.

It’s not just about feeling good. It’s about doing good science. Making better decisions.


Creating more just, resilient, and innovative systems. That finding aligns closely with extensive research by McKinsey showing that greater diversity on a board or executive team results in better decision making, financial growth, greater social impact, and happier workforces.


Read More

Here are a few resources that expand on these ideas:

  • I love this story from a PhD molecular biologist on why traditional classroom science fails to capture what science really is—and how the new science standards aim to fix that.

  • If you’re a science educator, check out Composing Science, a book I co-authored with Leslie Atkins and Kim Jaxon to help bring authentic inquiry and writing into the classroom. [Lesson plans and resources available here.] My favorite… a completely non-traditional and authentic way to set up scientific notebooks!

  • Curious about how diversity drives performance? This piece from the Greater Good Science Center is a great place to start.


Book Stuff

📚 Our July/August book is The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. A gem of a reframe: When people do things you don’t like, let them. When life surprises you, let it. What if surrender could be a strategy?


Join us Thursday, July 31 at 4:00 PM PST to share highlights, sticky notes, or just show up as you are.


Want in? Make sure you’re on the Inquiring Minds list or message Tessa for the Zoom link.


Going Further

The best science—and the best lives—aren’t done in isolation. They’re done in community.

If something in this post stirred you, here are a few ways to stay connected:


So go ahead. Ask the next question. Try something. Gather your data. Make sense of it.

I’ll be here to support you.

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