In Defence of Curiosity Driven Basic Scientific Research

FEATURE ARTICLE In Defence of Curiosity Driven Basic Scientific Research

Felix Bast

curiosity, wondered what causes UST take a look at products ray. Faraday’s and Thompson’s them to fluoresce, which ultimately that we take for granted – seminal discoveries opened up led to the development of the Green the mobile phone, computer, the whole vista for the subsequent J Fluorescent Protein (GFP). Most of internet, electricity, GPS, radar, radio, development of electronic gadgets. these products were the resultants of television, air conditioner, X-rays, Albert Einstein’s theory of decades-long collaborative research. aircraft, lasers, electric engines; even relativity is used in today’s GPS The promises of overnight success vaccines, antibiotic drugs, advanced devices. The internet and the World deliverables by applied utility-driven genome-editing tool CRISPR/CAS9 Wide Web was the result of a curiosity- research is nothing but mere myth and Velcro. The list is endless. A vast driven idea to support a network of like those purported panaceas of majority of the products including all particle physicists. Alexander Fleming pseudosciences. tech gadgets comprising the modern did not develop penicillin in some Science in its purest basic form consumerist lifestyle were developed target-oriented applied research; he is indeed driven by human being’s by the Western or Japanese scientists. serendipitously discovered a clear innate desire and curiosity to know halo around fungal contaminations in But without an application- the wonders of nature. This scientific discarded petri-dishes. oriented, agenda-driven research curiosity is akin to a child’s curiosity. those commercial blockbuster products Nature continues to pique A child might ask questions like would never have been developed, curiosity and inspire engineers to ‘why we yawn’, ‘why plants don’t right? The so-called pure or basic mimic it (the discipline is called get cancer’ and so on. Once we grow scientific research is nothing but biomimetics); examples include bird- up, our priorities drastically change squandering our resources, mere trash, inspired “ornithopter”-the prototype of (and some philosophers say our isn’t it? the first flying machine by Leonardo innocence changes too!). Instead of Not at all. Each one of those Da Vinci, and even Velcro, the such curiosity-driven questions, adults aforementioned products was reusable Nylon fastening strip. Velcro would ask ‘how to earn more money’, developed by curiosity-driven basic was developed by the Swiss engineer ‘how to treat cancer’ and so on. researchers. Consider electricity. It George de Mestral who was curious The difference is obvious; was serendipitously discovered by to see how burdock seeds get clung to curiosity-driven questions arise in Michael Faraday when he moved a the fur of his dog and his coat when response to an observation of nature small magnet through a copper coil he took his dog for walks in woods. or an innovative idea, while utility- out of pure curiosity. The electron The Japanese scientist and Nobel driven questions arise in response to was discovered by JJ Thompson when Laureate Osamu Shimomura, who a need or problem that humans face. studying the properties of the cathode noticed glowing Jellyfishes out of Curiosity-driven research might have

February 2020 | Science Reporter | 21 Courtesy: www.researchgate.net journal of plant taxonomy, Botanical Journal of the Linnaean Society, has only 2.2 Impact Factor, which is rather a mediocre score compared with journals in pharmaceutical sciences, cancer biology, or any branches of experimental biology. A 2001 correspondence in Nature, “Impact factors aren’t relevant to taxonomy”, highlights several of these issues. Applied sciences are considered more rewarding, as career and funding opportunities are far more there compared with curiosity-driven basic research. For all those reasons, high- impact utility-driven trendy fields these days outcompete the curiosity-driven “blue-sky” research. A question today’s students often face while defending their master’s thesis and PhD viva-voce is about the no immediate applications to humanity, driven research has no clear goal or potential applications of the achieved while utility-driven research is all about agenda as well. Some examples of results: what benefits does the research applications and product development. curiosity-driven questions include: bestow? Research grant applications ‘what is the evolutionary purpose of Some examples of curiosity- also ask about the potential applications; hiccups’, ‘why polar bears despite driven research include Evolutionary unless the scientist justifies that the high blood cholesterol levels and biology, Taxonomy, Ecology, proposed research is utility-driven and sedentary lifestyles never develop Astronomy, Exobiology, could lead to some applications or social coronary artery diseases’, ‘how bizarre Quantum physics, Mathematics, and economic benefit, it is unlikely to miniature insects called tardigrades can Logics, Geology, Paleontology, get financially supported. Biogeography, Animal behaviour, survive in space amidst vacuum and Theoretical chemistry, Theoretical extreme radiations at -200°C and even physics and Ecology. Of course, all at +150°C and ten times hydrostatic of these disciplines encompass the pressure that of the deepest point of basic or foundational realms of the ocean’. knowledge tree; roots, main trunks, Only the sub-branches and terminal branches and so on. branches that lead to the leaves of the Curiosity-driven research usually tree of knowledge encompass super- has no prior scientific hypotheses to specialised fields – many of which were test upon. The research is observational developed solely with the utilitarian or exploratory in nature rather than mindset, the “applied” or “translational” experimental. Oftentimes, curiosity- sciences. Examples include agriculture, medicine, pharmacy, food technology, engineering, biotechnology and so on. These disciplines are nowadays regarded as ‘high-impact’ and influential fields, receiving financial support through research grants from governments as well as private firms. Journals based on these utility- driven disciplines tend to have far higher Impact Factors (a measure that takes into account how many times a journal’s papers are being referred by other journals). For example, consider the discipline of taxonomy. The top

22 | Science Reporter | February 2020 Impact Factors and Patents decide their tenures and promotions. Peer pressure to publish in high Impact Factor journals is extreme, so is filing a patent. Instead of curiosity-driven basic research, scientists are forced to turn to utilitarian research. Indian science’s original forte had been curiosity-driven blue-skies research. The curiosity-driven science ruled throughout the classical and medieval India; examples include Linguistics, Logic, Mathematics, and Astronomy. All the discoveries of ancient Indians including that of zero It is often missed out that history’s higher than the others who couldn’t that still makes us proud happened most renowned scientists did not have resist the temptations. Students who due to basic scientific research. All to justify their research as application- resisted the temptation also had better the science Nobel laureates that India oriented. When Charles Darwin health later in their lives as indicated has ever produced were champions embarked on his voyage on board HMS by BMI (Body Mass Index), and of curiosity-driven scientific pursuit. Beagle in 1857, he was merely curious. better academic performance (Mischel However, since the late 20th century we Newton, Einstein, Marie Curie, JJ Walter, Shoda Yuichi, Rodriguzez are mimicking the west, our priorities Thompson, Niels Bohr, CV Raman, Monica L, 1989, «Delay of gratification have changed to encourage utilitarian Max Planck… the list of curiosity- in children». Science. 244 (4907): research. driven scientists is endless. 933–938). Utilitarian science in India has not Why did curiosity-driven science Most of us cannot resist the been too successful. An exception is the lose its sheen? Perhaps this can be traced temptation of immediate gratification country’s space programme that has been to two cognitive biases: hyperbolic and prefer it to delayed gratification. largely successful with rocket launches discounting and anthropocentrism. Psychologists call this cognitive bias and satellite technology. Utility-driven An experiment in psychology was Hyperbolic Discounting. This bias is scientists, out of peer pressure arising conducted at the Stanford University the major reason for the current rush out of the ‘publish or perish’ mindset, in the 1960s, now famous as the towards application-driven research. often publish their preliminary findings “Stanford Marshmallow Experiment”. Scientists and funding agencies need in predatory journals, or resort to The researchers placed a sweet treat (a immediate applications and products scientific misconduct to increase their marshmallow, a cookie, or a pretzel) to substantiate their research. Impact Factors. each in front of children. Researchers Today’s scientists and academicians There are many researchers with then announced that those students live in a “publish or perish” world; more than 500 peer-reviewed papers, who refrain from eating these sweets for the next 15 minutes when the researchers were gone from the room, would get a second helping of the same treat. However, those students who can’t wait are free to eat the treat instantly, but they won’t get the second serving. Many students ate the sweet treat instantly, but some resisted the temptations and earned double the treat. Interestingly, the Stanford researchers followed each of these students for the rest of their lives. Those students who resisted the temptation and earned the double treat grew up to be significantly smarter and earned much

February 2020 | Science Reporter | 23 cumulative impact factors more than 500, H index more than 50, yet after their death, the papers become quickly forgotten. American scientist Paul Erdos had well over 1500 highly cited papers (total citations: 73,117, H index: 116) and made several contributions to the field. Those papers have been quickly forgotten after his death, because almost all were mediocre ones. Keith Simonton, a Harvard psychologist, in 1977 postulated the “Equal-Odds Rule” regarding the true impact of scientists’ papers. The rule can be stated as: “the average publication of any particular scientist All of the world’s major religions Despite continued neglect and does not have any statistically different are based on the myth that the world extremely limited funds, curiosity- chance of having more of an impact was created for the sole benefit of driven basic research in modern than any other scientist’s average human beings. Similarly, all utilitarian times has brought disproportionate publication.” That means any scientist scientific fields in one way or another laurels to Indian science. Examples is equally likely to publish real lean to this mythical proposition; be it include discoveries of a number of breakthroughs that cause paradigm medicine, pharmaceuticals, agriculture new species (especially plant and shifts, as well as mediocre ones that or engineering, the key question is how amphibian species that have grabbed are quickly forgotten. the research is beneficial for humanity. international media attention), discovery Systematic experimental research The human - centric of a new supercluster Saraswati by a (screening for bioactivities of natural (anthropocentric) concept was team consisting of astronomers from products or synthetic organics, for challenged by Darwin ever since the Kerala, discovery of 25000-year-old instance) will lead to highly cited, publication of his Origin of Species in ostrich egg fossils from India, discovery high Impact Factor publications and which he substantiated his claims that of Rajasaurus – the dinosaur that once inhabited Indian subcontinent, and the patents, that might lead to tenure and we are merely one species among the 2018 discovery published in the journal promotions for scientists, but are countless number of other species in the Nature by a curiosity-driven team of unlikely to create long-lasting legacies giant tree of life. Ironically, scientific archaeologists from Tamil Nadu on in the field. What most of today’s research since the Darwinian revolution the existence of human beings in India researchers and authorities fail to took largely a utilitarian course. All of 385000 years ago (a true paradigm shift understand is that patenting is not a the applied fields of today suffer from in the field of anthropology and human measure of scientific accomplishment. anthropocentric bias as the motive of evolution). Any design or molecule that is novel their scientific pursuit is merely for the Curiosity-driven research continues and non-obvious can be patented, even betterment of human beings. to pay dividends over a long period, if the design is entirely mediocre and The incessant pressure and where utility-driven applied sciences potential applications are negligible. immediate priority for these disciplines often fail to make major impact. Albert Often a number of patents are are farming and agriculture sectors, Einstein said: “I have no special talent, filed and granted expecting that the public health, army and defence, and I am only passionately curious.” government would regard this number factories and industrial output – all the And as Carl Sagan said: “Cutting off as the objectively assessed metric of drivers of the nation’s economy. fundamental, curiosity-driven science is scientific productivity! Most such During times of economic distress like eating the seed corn. We may have patents are never commercialized. often as part of austerity measures a little more to eat next winter but what Often the winners in this patenting governments target curiosity-driven will we plant so we and our children will game are rich nations especially blue-skies research that is regarded as have enough to get through the winters patenting offices in the US, Japan and not of much use. However, most of the to come?” EU, as filing and maintaining these life-changing scientific turning points – patents is quite expensive. the British philosopher Thomas Kuhn Dr Felix Bast, Department of Plant Sciences, Yet another cognitive bias called them Paradigm Shifts – were the Central University of Punjab, Mansa Road, responsible for the decline of curiosity- products of curiosity-driven research – Bathinda-151001, Punjab. Email: felix. driven research is anthropocentrism. the pursuit of basic knowledge. [email protected]

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