Failure is an option

Most of the time, baseball batters strike out. Many football passes end in incompletions and sometimes interceptions. Dunks sometimes bounce out. Goals get scored past goalies. Yet the players still remain on the field. That's because without the possibility of these failures, they wouldn't be able to make great plays. The lesson is that the players on the starting squad aren't there because of their lack of failures, but rather, because they make enough outstanding plays to make up for their comparatively infrequent failures.

So why is it that we tend to expect that our research scientists (and professors) be infallible? Except for public performances (like when we are teaching or lecturing), we do have the opportunity to edit and refine our work before it is embedded in the literature thereby avoiding some failures. Nevertheless, typos, misplaced theories, erroneous results, incorrect analyses, and other such failures manage to be written by us. But this is not the worst offense. I would put forth that the biggest problem is that we don't have more magnificent and more frequent failures. After all, such bright failures can only arise if scientists launch truly ambitious programs that just went too far outside the box. But the risks are too great for most scientists to make such bold leaps. If she or he fails, then there will surely never be funding for another idea (no matter how conservative.)

The trouble with highlighting examples to give this blog topic substance is precisely the fact that failures are not  reported and the victors rarely want to discuss the torturous path it took them to get there. Here lies the fundamental problem inhibiting the next generation of truly innovative research. At present, the funding models are too conservative. Review panels focus on preliminary results —read several papers already published— and proven accomplishment —read established lab with over 10 years of operation. It's hard to fault them because the risks for both the individual researcher and the individual sponsor are great. It's simply too risky to include failure within the realm of possible outcomes even when the potential is high. The true loser of this game is society because the growth of science is partly stunted. The solution has to be for institutions and funding agencies to provide a safety net for researchers that stray far outside the box. And failure has to be an option.

Seeing chemistry through an Olympic lens and beyond

If science were an athletic pursuit, then chemistry would be a sport. Each of our chemistry departments would be like a team in the Olympics (think Nordic skiing). In chemistry departments, each faculty member competes in a given event such as organic chemistry (think biathlon), analytical chemistry (think cross-country) or computational chemistry (think jumping). To be successful we must conduct our scientific programs to be world (or better, international) class. The commitment that each faculty member must put in towards success is priceless. She or he must work countless hours, read and write papers, read and write grants, and sharpen their skills to see what has never been seen before. Scientists don't do this alone, of course. They build research groups of students and professionals that are critical to doing the work and advancing the ideas while at the same time they are being trained towards their own career objectives. The sacrifices are consequently not borne exclusively by the principal investigator. Looking at the winter Olympics over the past couple of weeks, it is clear that while any given athlete wins a medal, there is a corresponding team of people that is essential to the success and who share in the excitement of victory.

Just like Olympic events, some areas of chemistry are more "exciting" than others at any given moment. From time to time, new events such as materials or sustainable chemistry come along and they receive special attention (both in terms of funding and presence in the hot journals). That means that depending on your event (or research area), there are varying amounts of support available. But you can't work any less hard if you are to be the best in any given event. And there lies the problem. You have several teams of chemists in a department, all undertaking world-class research, but some have more money than others to do it. It's clear that Olympic sporting committees face the same problem. A few figure skaters, for example, are pulling in millions of dollars in endorsements while some of the bobsledders practically had to pay their own way to Sochi. So in the Olympic spirit, it is essential to look for ways to fund all the scientific events and their "athletes" well so that we are competitive across the board. The payoff for investing in science (and chemistry in particular) goes beyond the medals as the solutions that we create literally transform the human condition.

Are you a spectator or a runner(in #chemistry)? #peachtreeroadrace #ajcprr

At the end of the Peachtree Road Race, the USA 10km Road Race male champion, Matt Tegenkamp, said on air that the event was great, in part, because it included 60,000 spectators. The thing is that the Peachtree Road Race (which doubled as the USA 10 km Road Race Championship) is famous for being the largest 10 km race in the world with 60,000 registered runners. Tegenkamp's slip was that he downgraded the registered runners to spectators because evidently if you can't run like an elite (which is indeed really fast at sub five minute miles!), then you are simply a spectator of the race. While there may be some truth in that, I can tell you that all 60,000 individuals (including me) ran or walked those same 10 km. We also didn't have a chance to see any of the elites who started before us while we hung out in the corrals waiting to start our race. Indeed, if you are talented enough to be a world-class runner, it's a great privilege to get to do it in front of 60,000 people (by whatever name). But you can't forget that all of them did some kind of running.

Similarly, nearly everyone has done some chemistry in their lives. Many of them remember, not so fondly, the labs they did in high school or college. Those labs generally didn't work as expected. Truth is that's the best kind of experiment (because you can learn from it). You've also done chemistry every time you've lit a match, cleaned your contact lenses, turned on your TV, and the list goes on. In this sense, we are all chemists, but only a few of us are lucky enough to do it for a living. Nevertheless, like in running, we need everyone to support chemistry. Otherwise the elites—that is, the basic researchers who are advancing the forefront of chemistry—won't have a chance to set the stage for technological advances driving humankind. So whether you consider yourself a chemist, a spectator or someone in between, we need your support and we appreciate it!

Iron Man & Scientists...

Lately, it seems that being a scientist is cool. This has been a seesaw over the years. Everyone wanted to be a rocket science during the space race. On the other hand, no one dreams of being Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, or Dr. Strangelove. Engineering of the type that produces 007 gadgets has certainly been popular. But lately it seems that advancing fundamental knowledge about nature—science—is being recognized as a critical driver for technology and our economy. That is scientists aren't far from the über cool title of entrepreneur. To wit, in the make-believe world that appears to form our culture's reality, Tony Stark is able to keep himself alive in Iron Man II because he discovers how to create a new high-energy containing element. It's fiction, of course. Nevertheless, it illustrates the present positioning of science in a critical role for advancing/saving our world from the current challenges in the environment, energy and health sectors. It also says that being a scientist is cool again.

Unfortunately most scientists don't have Tony Stark's resources, and they need money to pay for the experiments and the highly-trained human capital required to run them. Meanwhile the nation's science budgets are being cut. So how can we leverage the nation's recognition that science is a critical economic driver to affect our nation's scientific policy and its level of investment therein? Equally importantly, how do we articulate the need for continual investment in such long-term payoffs in favor of say, balancing the budget today? A key idea lies in the fact that today's solutions come from investments made years ago. So those solutions won't be there in 20 years if we don't make the investments now. Again, this is very convincing to a scientist, but how convincing is it to a member of Congress who is looking at reelection in two years?! Sadly, the analogy to Iron Man also holds true here because the fictional politicians are often equally unconvinced...

Politicians don't do science, Scientists do (#NSF #FundScience)

As reported in ScienceInsider, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) would like to draft the "High Quality Research Act" that would rewrite the criteria that the National Science Foundation (NSF) uses to assess research grants. (Look also at an op-ed in the Huffington Post.)  The proposed language suggests a desire for immediacy to the impact of a given scientific effort directly on the public as well as a lack of flexibility in the degree to which the research may be pursued. Moreover, his recent actions also suggest a desire to have a political review of research grants beyond the traditional merit review performed within the scientific community. The NSF has necessarily responded to this political attack by countering with political tactics such as stonewalling. One of their main arguments has been that the review criteria just adopted in the past 6 months had gone through significant vetting, and therefore should not be reconsidered at this time. The NSF is also arguing that piecemeal reevaluation of individual grants by politicians undermines the peer review process, not to mention that they would require Congressional oversight at a microlevel that Congress has presumably empowered the NSF to act on. Clearly such review would be at best pennywise and certainly pound foolish.

To most scientists, such discussion is opaque because it seems to be directing the focus of the discussion from a fundamental academic point. That is, the progress of science is not a straight line. It's a highly connected (likely scale-free) network with new discoveries often dependent on advances in distant arms of science. That's the reason why we need to allow for science discovery broadly rather than attempt to pre-select the winners today. For example, medical schools decades ago would not have funded and did not fund the development of lasers by chemists and physicists or the development of control theories by mathematicians and engineers. Without such advances, we wouldn't have refractive eye surgery or laser scalpels. That is, if we use the current dogma to pick the best new science with immediate impact, we will never break from its paradigm. The fact that this intellectual argument doesn't win with some politicians is simply a reflection that scientists don't do politics.

The irony in all this is that basic science is working for our country. The return on the investment of basic science is at worst even (dollar-for-dollar) and as much as a factor of 100 in GDP per $1 spent on the NSF, depending on how the ROI is calculated. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) specifically states that "federal spending in support of basic research over the years has, on average, had a significantly positive return, according to the best available research." The science in universities is generating countless companies. (For example, according to this Boston Magazine article the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well at universities like MIT which is among the leaders of the digital age. According to Forbes Magazine, my own institution is in the top 10 of incubators as well!) The rest of the world, particularly China, has noticed this, and several countries are increasing—if not outright outspending the U.S.—their investments in basic research (in terms of percentage of their GDP). It's often quoted that peer review is not ideal (and this is particularly true when the system is stressed to funding levels well below 20%), but that it's the best system we have. It's hard to argue against this given our track record for driving the economy.

So please tell politicians to keep doing the politics and to keep funding scientists to do the science. Our nation will continue to advance much better that way!