textfiles/bbs/KEELYNET/UNCLASS/risky1.asc

 

    February 25, 1990

                      Risky Science by Tom Siegfried
                            Dallas Morning News
                                 02/12/90

                    Scientific research is often risky.

    Experiments with poison  gas,  for  example,  are not exactly free
    from danger.  But there's another  kind  of  risky science that is
    not at all dangerous in the ordinary sense.  It's  science fiction
    on the edge,  on  the  frontier,  where the most productive course
    isn't clear.  The risk is in the odds against success.  The danger
    is in the damage that unsuccessful  high-risk  science can do to a
    scientific career.

    On the other hand, the payoff from success in risky science can be
    great.  But there can be no payoff unless somebody  is  willing to
    invest in such risky research to begin with.

    A growing number  of scientists have begun to express concern that
    federal funding agencies are not  interested  in  giving  money to
    scientists who take   risks.    Funders  prefer  "safe"   science,
    mainstream research that  is  all  but guaranteeed to deliver some
    small increment to  knowledge  in  a  specific  scientific  field.
    Grant proposals that  stray  too far from well-trodden  scientific
    paths seldom survive.

    It is the common practice in Western countries - the United States
    and Great Britain, for example - for scientists seeking funding to
    send a grant  proposal  to  an  appropriate  funding  agency.  The
    agency seeks judgments on such proposals  from  scientists who are
    themselves experts in  the  field - peers of the people  proposing
    the research.

    If the peers  give a proposal a favorable review, it stands a good
    chance of getting funded.

    Of course, bad reviews can scuttle  a project.  That can be good -
    nobody wants to wast money on bad research.  But sometimes, a good
    idea can get bad reviews - especially an idea on  the frontiers of
    research where experts  disagree on what the next best step should
    be.

    Ironically, in the  Soviet  Union   -  long  known  as  a  country
    afflicted by a  lot  of  bad  research  -  some innovative,  risky
    projects are more readily funded.  At certain research institutes,
    the institute itself  gets  research  money  and  its  own members
    decide what staff scientists are allowed to do.

    Some of the benefits of such an approach  were  described recently
    in the journal NATURE by earth scientists George Fisher, Priscilla
    Grew and Bruce  Yardley,  following  a visit to the  Institute  of
    Experimental Mineralogy at Chernogolovka.

    "The Soviet and  Western  styles  of  supporting  science are very
    different," they wrote.  "In some  respects,  the Soviet system is
    effective and flexible.    As  the  West  rethinks   its   funding
    practices in this  era  of  serious  budget constraints, there are
    important lessons to be learnt from the Soviet Union."

    In particular, the  funding  of  institutes instead of individuals
    has clear advantages.

    "The Soviet system  tolerates  some   routine  work  in  hopes  of
    nurturing a new  and  unexpected discovery that  will  open  up  a
    totally new view  of  a  subject,"  the scientists wrote.  "In the
    West, on the other hand, we are so  preoccupied with ensuring that
    no funds are wasted on unpredictable...research that we often fail
    to support truly innovative work."

    At the mineralogy institute, many innovative projects  were  under
    way.

    "We saw several  innovative  projects  that would almost certainly
    fail to survive the peer-review  process  in  the United States or
    Britain," the earth  scientists  reported.   "During  the  1980's,
    increased competition for  a  diminishing  budget  has  meant that
    proposals need almost unanimous approval from reviewers.  In
    the process of  weeding  out  pedestrian   projects,   the  system
    eliminates almost all of the really innovative projects, which are
    often too controversial  to  generate  universal  approval.   Most
    proposals that attract funding are those which take just one small
    step down a  path that is currently recognized by the community as
    'opportune', 'important' or 'timely.'"

    They might have added "cheap."   Sometimes  expense  is a critical
    aspect of evaluating  how  risky research is.  Computer  scientist
    Alison Brown of  Ohio  State  University,  for example, points out
    that the high expense of supercomputer  time squeezes out a lot of
    important "high-risk" research.

    "That's clearly a  big  impediment  to advances in  science,  just
    plain raw power  available  cheap  enough,"  she  said in a recent
    interview.  "The problem is, if you  can't  get cheap computing at
    the high end, you stop letting people do risky projects.  And it's
    usually the risky  projects that pay off.  But when  computing  is
    really expensive, it  gets  rationed  very carefully, and since it
    gets rationed by  peer review....you  end  up  funding  mainstream
    stuff.

    "So the guys at the edges who are probably the guys that are going
    to win the  Nobel  Prizes  and make the breakthroughs,  they  just
    don't get it.   You  can  no longer afford adventure, and that's a
    real bad thing in science."

    Of course, not all risky science  is good science, nor does all of
    it pay off  in  revolutionary  discoveries.  In fact,  most  risky
    science goes nowhere.    But   well  traveled  roads  rarely  lead
    anyplace new, either.