Is There a Creativity Deficit In Science?

nerdyalien writes with this story that explores the impact of reduced science funding on innovation in science. "There’s a current problem in biomedical research,” says American biochemist Robert Lefkowitz, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. “The emphasis is on doing things which are not risky. To have a grant proposal funded, you have to propose something and then present what is called preliminary data, which is basically evidence that you’ve already done what you’re proposing to do. If there’s any risk involved, then your proposal won’t be funded. So the entire system tends to encourage not particularly creative research, relatively descriptive and incremental changes which are incremental advances which you are certain to make but not change things very much."...There is no more important time for science to leverage its most creative minds in attempting to solve our global challenges. Although there have been massive increases in funding over the last few decades, the ideas and researchers that have been rewarded by the current peer-review system have tended to be safer, incremental, and established. If we want science to be its most innovative, it's not about finding brilliant, passionate creative scientists; it's about supporting the ones we already have.

Re:evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

It might, however, take millions of years...

Re:10,000 Leagues

[NoOneInParticular]

Well, for starters, 10,000 leagues is a quite a bit over the circumference of the earth, so being so far under the sea is just simply impossible. If this Verne character is serious about his scientific ambitions, he shouldn't be three to four orders off with his approximations.

Seven days then an uncharging eternity

[dbIII]

I'll bite since you are using this to push your petty little political barrow of dismantling the secular state for a theocracy of lay preachers and the catamites they lay with. You've got it backwards and are railing against people that do not feel constrained by a dumbed down version of Genesis and an even more ridiculous extrapolation from it and instead take a look at the world for themselves.