Is There a Creativity Deficit In Science?

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.

Comments

Re:It All Comes Down to FAT CATS

[Anonymous Coward]

On the left side, we have the dim-wits -- sure, some average, but trending to moronic. These are the republicans. On the right side, we have Non-dim-wits

Actually, libertarians tend to be smarter than either traditional Democrats or traditional Republicans.

Democrats tend to pay more lip service to science, but they really understand it just as poorly as Republicans.

Note just biomedical research

[cold fjord]

The described state of biomedical research doesn't sound terribly different from descriptions of the state of climate science I've read. The funding process tends to assume global warming and therefore the funding channels research along those lines. A similar thing goes on in space science. The big assumption is dark matter is the key and alternative approaches wither on the vine for lack of funding needed to flesh them out or work through problems.

I wonder if we wouldn't be better off with a 90/10 or 80/20 where the 90 or 80 is the percentage of resources devoted to mainstream ideas and the remainder goes to alternatives or groundbreaking stuff. Of course I wonder how many researchers would line up to pursue possible dead-ends or unusual lines of investigation? Competition for academic or research positions can be pretty tough and there might be a prejudice against that sort of thing and taking time away from the mainstream.