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Are scientific mavericks, such as the flamboyant and brilliant bongo-playing Richard Feynman, an extinct product of the 20th century? And is science today relatively too staid and constrained to deliver the great breakthroughs such mavericks used to make? In a letter to the Guardian on Tuesday, UCL scientist Donald Braben and a list of co-signatories, including a few Nobel laureates, say they think so.
Although there is no doubt that science has changed enormously over the years, have these changes really been that detrimental? For starters, science has morphed from a pursuit of the relatively privileged few into a vast, professionalised global army of millions of researchers. The ranks are swelling with people burning with curiosity and eager to make discoveries – as indeed the job comes with few other incentives. The profession is now open to those whose upbringings are modest and who are not just white males. A diverse group brings with it diverse ways of defining and tackling problems. It also brings competition, which can help bring the best ideas to fruition the fastest.
I believe that some of the base assumptions behind this letter are flawed.
Have there truly been fewer breakthroughs after 1970, when scientists began to have to compete more seriously for funding? I am not so sure. We are only 40-plus years past this boundary, and it can take a generation to develop an obscure (possibly maverick-led) discovery into the sort of life-changing application that, in retrospect, we recognise as stemming from an inspired, off-the-wall breakthrough. How many other crazy ideas fizzle out – those we’ve heard about (cold fusion, arsenic life) and the thousands we’ve not? And there have been many amazing breakthroughs since 1970 that have or someday will revolutionise our civilisation: the world wide web, major cures for viral diseases, the discovery of telomerase, cloning mammals, the stem cell revolution, the sequencing of the human genome, the detection of dark energy, and the first successful attempts at productive nuclear fusion just last month, to name a few. Hindsight will surely reveal many, many more as their implications and practical offshoots fall into place.
And – while not belittling any of the amazing findings of the past – it should not be forgotten that a lot of the low-hanging fruit has now been plucked. The more we push back the boundaries of knowledge, the harder it becomes to find something new and earth-shattering.
Does the current method of funding researchers truly stifle maverick tendencies and crazy new ideas? Again, I am not convinced. Most scientists win major funding based on solid, well-grounded proposals, but this does not mean that they have to stick religiously to the script. I do not know any researchers who do not dabble around the edges of their proposals, following hunches and taking forays into areas just to see what might happen. Once the major funding and infrastructure are in place, it is in many cases cheap to try out new ideas alongside the established ones. Successes can be worked into new proposals – the many failures can be quietly swept under the carpet.
And does peer review really suppress crazy ideas? Again, not necessarily. There is a particular type of high-profile journal that loves publishing a crazy idea, provided it is sufficiently supported by evidence. In fact, you could argue that it is their preferred form of science. Nature, for example, famously published the most outrageous piece of maverick science proposed in decades (water memory, said to be the basis for homeopathy). The paper went through rigorous peer review and no faults were found with the paper, so it was duly published. Later its findings were discredited, but the fact that it ever saw the light of day is thanks to the open-mindedness of editors keen to showcase the unusual and original. If your extraordinary claim is backed up by extraordinary evidence, there will be no shortage of grant funders or journals eager to support you and bask in the potential reflected glory. Meanwhile, peer review helps to get rid of a lot of duff ideas – we cannot deny that there are grants that should never be funded in an era when funding is scarce and there are so many good ideas out there.
Finally, I’d say that the notion of a lone maverick is a little bit of an outdated concept. Science progresses by small increments, fed by many tiny cogs in a vast knowledge machine. We are all of us in the research community standing on the shoulders of midgets, putting together little pieces into an intricately beautiful puzzle. In my current research I’ve been riffing off obscure old papers that no one gave any credence to at the time, and that took decades to click into place with the shifting context of knowledge. There will always be a place for eureka moments and individuals of extraordinary insight and talent – but although they are not as sexy and celebrated as Richard Feynman, the rank and file are just as important.
Jenny Rohn is a cell biologist at UCL, and is not (yet) a maverick. You can follow her on Twitter @JennyRohn
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