2007 06 Circular Science

Circular Science

Run electricity through wires wrapped in circles around a coil. Who would have thought in advance that could create a powerful motor? Yet that simple concept propels our cars, our computers, our toothbrushes, yea, even our economy. A brilliant mind made that connection. How is it that science moves forward?
Most scientists today live on grants. The cycle goes something like this:
Do new science…write the grant. Do new science…write the grant.


Do
New Science
Write the
Grant


The problem that this circle represents is that the grant givers want to receive credit for having funded scientific discoveries. Because they are interested in success, the circle often goes backward. The science is done first, then the grant is written to prove what has already been proven. So the scientist uses the money to do something other than what the grant was for. It also gives more credit to outstanding grant writers than to outstanding scientists. I’ve often wondered if there isn’t a better way to make this process work..
When I was in Junior High School, one of the things we were expected to do was enter the school science fair. We students were asked to dream up an experiment which would prove something using the scientific method. Hypothesis, test...hypothesis, test. Neither of the two projects which I remember earned any prizes. Both proved a hypothesis which was fairly obvious. But today, almost fifty years later, they do serve to illustrate the point I’m trying to make about how much of our science is conducted.
The first experiment I devised was to determine heat absorbtion of different colors. I built a box with a light bulb at one end and a thermometer at the other end. In between I put cloths of various colors to see how much energy was conveyed through the cloth if it was black or white or some other shade. I charted the results and found indeed that the black cloth absorbed more heat than the white cloth. The other experiment was more of a psychology test. Could it be that distractions affect your ability to think clearly? I took a simple wooden jigsaw puzzle (about ten pieces) and practiced completing it until the completion time was consistent within a limited time range of a few seconds. Then I asked someone else to distract me while finishing the puzzle to see if the completion time varied. Distractions ranged from calling out my name to wearing clothes pins on my ears and nose. The clothes pins hurt so much that I was brought to tears. And yes, the hypothesis was proven…Distractions do slow down the completion of simple tasks.
Yet the best science is done when the conclusion is a surprise, the scientist recognizes the surprise in the data and interprets the result in a new way—counter to the accepted wisdom of the era while concurrently accepting the possible risk of ridicule by peers. And the grant giver gains notoriety along with the scientist as having contributed to the new discovery.
If we really want to try new ways of looking at things, it would make sense that the failure rate is the important measure of success in scientific exploration. The best grants should be given to the scientists that try the most out-of-the-box thinking. That way the unlikely hypothesis will gain traction and new territory in thought will be uncovered. So a high rate of failure is better than a low rate.

The Scientist’s Dream

If you measure success
By how much you fail
You have to confess
That thought makes you pale.

So endeavor to fail
To be a success
So a college like Yale
Will let you profess.


©Frank Bliss 2007 All rights reserved
June , 2007