The Science Factory

30 November 2009

By Nick Dickens

My recent move into the field of parasitology and Alistair Muir's post "Work-Life Balance”  made me think about research funding again and how the model might be failing innovative research.  On Friday I learnt about the discovery some of the drugs that are used to treat sleeping sickness.  One of the parasitology professors was discussing how the  drugs were actually discovered as anti-trypanosome (the organism that causes sleeping sickness) treatments.  There are four main drugs, all with a similar story, but the most famous being Salvarsan discovered by Paul Ehrlich (also used to treat syphilis) in the 1900's.  Paul Ehrlich was studying medicine and using dyes to stain different tissues noted that certain dyes only stained certain types of tissue, including bacteria and trypanosomes.  By looking at the chemistry of these dyes and the hypothesising that you could attach toxin compounds to the molecules (in this case arsenic) that the toxic part could be specifically targeted at a type of tissue or organism.  This was the start of research into the medical "magic bullet" (something that we are still trying to perfect a hundred years later).  This discovery was based on good scientific research and creativity, but was a deviation from the original remit, I wonder that if Paul Ehrlich had been working on a 3-year contract, with clearly defined goals then maybe he wouldn't have been able to essentially play around with the chemistry and pursue this idea.

This is the way that I would like to do science and, when I was young and naive, how I used to think that science really worked.  But I've written a couple of project proposals and been involved with a couple of big grants and this is not the case at all, in fact quite the opposite.  If you don't have strictly defined and measurable outcomes at the end then you are unlikely to get funding for your project. I should also say that I am sure that this isn't unique to science, but I can only write about my personal experiences. 

Science (research) is not a factory, you can't manufacture your product (results/papers) to strict guidelines with quotas and regular submissions.  Sometimes the experiments (research questions) just won't work, or they need a stack of other work, and I don't want to sound like a broken record talking about fixed-term contracts but three years just might not be enough.  A lot of the major breakthroughs have been driven by chance discoveries that have been seized upon and developed or have been driven by necessity (usually a war).  But in the necessity situation there are often compromises on either scientific rigour or  safety, so we are left with chance. There needs to be more funding for 'blue skies' research, to let good researchers just do what they want with the money - I don't mean that it should be wasted, especially in the current financial climate, but the pressure to publish can take precedence over the science.

I don't know that we can change the way that science (research) is funded, and our factory-style output of I will produce x papers in 3 years, but do try and play with research, enjoy it and use your experience to explore other avenues of research (while churning out the papers).

“In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.” Louis Pasteur, 1854