Saurabh Jha (@RogueRad) speaks with Professor Jeffrey Flier who was the 21st Dean of Harvard Medical School, on wide ranging topics including growing up in the Bronx, reproducibility crisis, research fraud, health policy, and intellectual diversity.
Professor Flier went to Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and completed his training in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. He moved north, and became Chief of Diabetes Unit at Beth-Israel Hospital, Boston, spearheading their research. He was Dean of Harvard Medical School between 2007 and 2016.

A prolific scientist, Professor Flier has contributed extensively to metabolic research in diabetes and obesity. He has also written about health policy. He supports intellectual diversity in universities, often leading by example. He has contributed to the literary online magazine, Quillette. He’s also famously known in medical Twitter as the dean who tweets and engages all sorts of tweeps. As one tweep once privately remarked to me “OMG, the dean of Harvard Medical School just responded to my tweet! That’s made my day.”