There is an interesting
conjunction of articles in this week’s NATURE. One opinion piece from an idealistic young graduate
student deplores that fact that scientists must promote their work as being
medically, economically or socially relevant, to an extent verging on ‘hype’ (1).
In the same issue a news feature reports that the NIH is considering
verification rules for some of the research it supports partially because of
many comments from the pharmaceutical industry that much academic research
cannot be reproduced (2). Finally, the issue contains an obituary of the Nobel
prize winning physicist Kenneth Wilson (3).
Here is what relates these
three articles- two are examples and one a counter example of the consequences
of the overexpansion of contemporary science. Scientists oversell the pragmatic
ramifications of their work largely because funding agencies require them to do
so. For example, all biomedical investigators must deal with the NIH requirement
for explaining the ‘significance’ of projected research as well as with the
agency’s current emphasis on ‘translational’ research. Other funding entities in the US have similar
stipulations and the situation may be even worse in Canada and the UK where
there is increasing emphasis on the commercial ramifications of research.
However, as has been shown by many historians of science, the greatest impacts
often flow from unfettered basic research rather than from work intended to
address specific medical or technical problems. The career of Prof. Wilson is a
good example of this. After being hired by Cornell in 1963 he did not publish a
paper until 1969. Then in 1971 he published theoretical work that
revolutionized areas of physics ranging from sub-atomic particles to fluid
mechanics, thus earning himself the Nobel. Today it is hard to imagine anyone lasting
for six years in an academic position without multiple publications (preferably
‘translational’ ones!).
Delving further, why are the
funding agencies so insistent on research that claims to have immediate
pragmatic ‘significance’. The reason is that the agencies must drum up
political support for their enormous budgets, and it’s much easier to sell a
Senator or Congressman on curing say prostate cancer than on elucidating some
obscure molecular interaction. While society should generously support
fundamental scientific research, both for its own sake and for its long term
practical benefits, the level of support must be ‘right-sized’ to the state of
the economy and the level of development of science itself. If maintaining
public support for science means a constant process of overselling its
short-term payoff, then perhaps the bloated science establishment needs some
trimming.
One of the major problems,
however, is that universities have used the relatively generous science budgets
of the last few decades to train an enormous cohort of Ph.D.s who now must struggle
for research funding. The current rather obscene degree of ultra-competition
drives investigators to publish results prematurely leading to increasing
concerns about reproducibility. As discussed previously on this blog (4) curtailing
the production of Ph.D.s would be immensely helpful in obtaining the right
balance between reasonable levels of publically supported science funding and
the size of the scientific work force. Fewer, better quality Ph.D.s may
actually produce a greater amount of high quality science than hordes of
ill-trained Ph.D.s, many from 3rd rate institutions.
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