Revitalizing Science in a Risk-Averse Culture: Reflections on the Syndrome and Prescriptions for Its Cure
G. H. Pollack. 2005. Revitalizing Science in a Risk-Averse Culture: Reflections on the Syndrome and Prescriptions for Its Cure. Cellular and Molecular Biology 51, 815-820
Gerald Pollack is Professor of Molecular Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in the Dept. of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle WA
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Abstract
This paper considers problems with the scientific culture and granting systems, the most important of which is an aversion to risk. Grant awards tend to be “safe” rather than bold. This discourages the fresh approaches that may bring important breakthroughs. The paper then suggests remedies that could restore the scientific enterprise to one that is friendlier to fresh thinking.
Preface
The thoughts contained herein arise in part from my experience as a frequent dissenter from prevailing orthodoxy, and in part from my experiences attending workshops convened to address problems with granting systems. Inevitably, such experiences generate ideas. In this case, they have brought modest insights into how granting systems might better serve transformative approaches that challenge the status quo. At present, such approaches have little chance of success. Yet they are the very ones that could bring spectacular advances.
Here, I outline the problems as I see them with today’s system of doing science, and their etiology. I also suggest remedies that could enhance scientists’ natural proclivity to seek the truth. Some of these thoughts have been passed on to the funding agencies in the context of campaigns designed to make the peer-review system more responsive to highly innovative, “out of the box” approaches.
Has the Scientific Enterprise Gone Away?
A half-century ago, breakthroughs were fairly common events that could be counted on to occur from time to time on an unpredictable but not infrequent basis. Pioneering such breakthroughs were scientific heroes – legendary figures such as Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Richard Feynman, James Watson, Francis Crick, and others, names familiar even to lay people.
But things have changed. While the past 30 years have brought a great outpouring of scientific results, breakthroughs are less common. Modern equivalents of Pauling, Salk, and Watson-Crick are not easy to identify. Considering the massive investment in science today, why is it that scientific heroes have become so scarce? Why so few conceptual breakthroughs? I refer to realized breakthroughs such as the biochemical nature of heredity or the polio vaccine, not incipient breakthroughs whose realization seems always just around the corner. Can you name more than a handful of realized breakthroughs that have come during the past three decades?
Some argue that this settling down is all but inevitable. After all, science today is far more complicated than it has been, often requiring teams of investigators and large groups to pursue effectively. Others argue that there is simply not much more to be discovered – that the breakthroughs have had their heyday and we need content ourselves with merely filling in the gaps. Thus, breakthroughs might not be expected to occur on an everyday basis.
Perhaps some of this is true – but a significant role may also be played by another factor: the growing aversion to risk taking. Although funding agencies have much to be proud of for past achievements, it is broadly perceived that they have become less agile in dealing with proposals that dissent from orthodoxy. Challengers of the status quo rarely succeed in today’s scientific climate. Hence, those approaches most apt to generate conceptual breakthroughs are throttled before they can emerge from the scientific womb. …
Toward a Solution
The proposed solution has three components:
i) a program designed to support credible approaches that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy;
ii) a program designed to launch promising schools of thought into the mainstream; and
iii) a program designed to free the scientific culture from the yoke of excessive conservatism. …
i) A New grant-award system for ideas that challenge conventional views
I propose a new scheme that works in parallel with existing schemes. To work effectively, the power of experts to quash dissenting or challenging proposals in their field should be curtailed. Inadequate attention to this issue may well have been what compromised previous attempts to promote transformative, paradigm-shifting proposals. This is not an argument against knowledge, but against impediments to change. Experts need not be eliminated from the review process, but the system design must ensure that their self-interest does not dominate. …
ii) Bootstrapping promising schools of thought
While program outlined above is designed to support individuals who challenge the status quo with potentially better alternatives, something more is needed to support evolving schools of thought – ways of thinking that have gathered strength and now pose a tangible challenge to orthodox thinking. I am referring to so-called “minority” views. …
iii) Removing the yoke of conservatism from the scientific enterprise
Programs (i) and (ii) deal with the practicalities of launching promising alternatives. It does not deal with the scientific culture, which has become conservative.
At present, members of the scientific community are obliged to profess adherence to some widely accepted frame of interpretation in order to prosper. The burden of forced acquiescence has become a habit. For many, it has evolved into a natural way of life. Young scientists must learn that the ultimate objective is not to get funded (although that is obviously important), but to pursue truth even if it means challenging some prevailing orthodoxy.
Through training grants, as well as research grants that come with an obligatory training component, the granting agencies could leverage educational programs designed to reinforce students’ natural sense of curiosity. …
Conclusion
… By adopting measures such as these, the granting agencies have an opportunity to restore their vaunted roles as the drivers of cutting-edge science. But they need to proceed with caution. Previous programs designed to bolster proposals that dissent from orthodoxy have not been as successful as hoped, and if any one is to succeed, inadvertent design flaws need to be avoided. I believe that this is best achieved through cooperative effort between grant-system administrators and those scientists who have been impacted most by system conservatism. These scientists know the obstacles very well. They stand to gain the most from a grant system that works effectively, and are therefore motivated to ensure that any such design is successful. Absent their input, I predict that future remedial measures may be as unsuccessful as those of the past.
