Fooling everyone, including ourselves

Science is mighty clever. For a discipline that prides itself in having objectivity and brutal honesty, Science has a lot of dirty little secrets.

Consider news reports that come out -- "Scientists discover X may be linked to Y!" -- and instantly a series of articles state the seemingly indisputable claims that accompany the headlines. Famous researchers go on TV programs, touting the revolutionary results they have obtained, and people marvel at the progress and excitement such work generates.

Beneath the surface, however, is something far more sinister. I will say, and object as you wish (please comment as you see fit) that many of these Amazing Discoveries were a foregone conclusion even before the experiments were done. The answer has a lot to do with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Consider how the NIH gives out funding -- it requires that researchers have interesting questions, capable of extensive investigation. Of course they also require that a huge opus of work has already been done on a topic. In so many cases, the finished product is close in sight, and the $1 million + of an RO1 grant rewards the background work much more than it motivates researchers to uncover new, surprising, shocking findings. Being bold - trying outlandish experiments - requires the all-too-rare funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, or from small "seed grants" from the NIH. I don't propose how this gets fixed, but I see a problem in how hard it is to be bold.

I recall a conversation I had with a research mentor early in my training during my undergraduate days at Pomona. I complained that, because I wasn't clear what the point of my research was in a particular area (I was attempting to look at oxygen toxicity in obligate, anaerobic hyperthermophiles - you can understand the contradiction in terms), I probably wouldn't see meaningful results. He explained, "It's easy to obtain and publish results when you know what you're looking for. It's much harder (and braver) to ask questions that no one has ever asked before and then attempt to make sense of experimental results...such results have no real context, but that's real science." I think I understood his point -- the real richness of science is in the truly uncharted, the rarefied air, the untasted vintage. But is such risk-taking conducive to the present world, where we are so pressed for time and money? That I cannot answer. And yet I suspect the scientists who really "get it" (the nobel laureates, the inventors, the pioneers) probably think that there is no other way to do science in spite of every imaginable obstacle convincing them they need not be bold. Maybe.

Returning to the concept of "clarity v. opacity," I think I can claim clarity on one issue: I refuse to submit to a career in either science or medicine where I cannot be bold in my approach and vision. I won't just sit in a lab, with a series of predictable and interesting projects and RO1s to get funded. I refuse. I won't just sit in the hospital or clinic and see patients every day without some sense of adventure or risk-taking. I don't want to do "translational" research if all it means is that target X that we study is related to disease Y. That's not translational. It's correlative and it's pandering. It's like saying, "Well since LA is next to Mexico, everyone who lives in LA has foreign policy experience." Translational research, for which I have a passion, must transcend the traditional boundaries of science and medicine. It must have an infinite growth mindset. It can't just answer the associative question of, "is this applicable to that?"

Research, for me, has to be bold: for it to survive in my restless soul, it must ask new and unheard-of questions. It must, or I will find another way to channel my creativity. Because writing RO1s, sitting in a lab, and pondering how to squeeze more money out of the NIH is not my idea of a career. It's just a less lucrative way of selling out.