Is There a Creativity Deficit In Science? 203
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.
affirmative (Score:4, Informative)
yes
Tenure-hunting discourages risk (Score:5, Informative)
I have been working in research (chemistry) for 10 years, half in academia and half in industry. In my time in academia, it was all about putting together enough results to scrape a paper together, nevermind whether the "promising results" were benchmarked against shitty "state-of-the-art".
In my current industry job, I have been asked to prepare a 5-year plan with high ambitions, and I am free to explore any path to the final goal without (reasonably at least) restrictions.
Unfortunately until non-tenured researchers will need to publish as much as possible without actually delivering important results, this will not change.
In my opinion the peer-review system is not perfect, but it's the best thing we have. I have found many reviewers whose comments have been genuinely beneficial to making my papers stronger. Others barely read the manuscript and rejected it because it encroached on their turf, or didn't cite them enough.
In my opinion the peer-review should be changed to a double-blind system: the reviewer should not see name and affiliation of the authors, and judge the work as it would grade an undergrad paper (i.e. harshly). Like this I believe the signal-to-noise ratio in journals would increase, and only good papers would get published. At that point, I'd be willing to accept impact factor as a measure of worthiness of a publication. Until then, it's just friends judging friends, with nobody wanting to piss off anybody else. Minor revisions, congratulations, you're published.
The Trouble with Physics (Score:4, Informative)
Lee Smolin's brilliant book The Trouble with Physics [leesmolin.com] discussed this issue eight years ago. The book also includes the best introduction to string theory for a scientifically oriented non-physicist I have ever seen.
Smolin concluded the "trouble with physics" is the problem discussed in the article: the current system rewards small incremental steps over creative leaps. He discusses the risk to payoff ratios. He says the current system drums out most truly creative people.
maybe it has just moved out of university (Score:5, Informative)
I work in biomedical research and yes - a lot of money is diverted into research with incremental benefits - me-too drugs.
remember that big pharma spend more on marketing than on research.
The interesting stuff has effectively been outsourced to start-ups that find compounds, do some basic work and then sell to a pharma to commercialise. That way at least the people doing the creating get some benefit.
What hasn't happened in its stead is any good research at delivering and applying a lot of the knowledge/ practice we do have, and this is where we could get a lot of bang for our buck and we could be a lot more creative - just by doing what we know works correctly.
This is particularly true in fields where there is not currently much research (because there is no big drugs market)
Re:affirmative (Score:5, Informative)
It's not as bad as all that, but it's still not great.
Basically the way it works is this:
A young, energetic research employed on grant A burns themself out moonlighting on project B.
They then present the complete B as a proposal which might get funded.
B gets funded and they use the money for B to work on C.
Risky stuff does get done, and using exactly the same money but the funding bodies are entering into the fiction that they're involved in the risk. Of course they are since the money has to come from somewhere. It also involves a shitty life for the early career researcher.
So, the funding bodies are idiots, but pretending risky stuff doesn't get done does a great disservice to those who actually do it.