Research Direction
From Chapter 25:
Speaking of research direction, we are not that free to really discover the world around us. There are research areas that are grossly underfunded even though the disease is out there. An example would be lung cancer. While breast cancer is the most funded cancer field, the few researchers in the lung cancer field may start wondering if they should just change the focus of their research instead of wasting time and energy on trying to improve their situation. This is similar to the trendiness I wrote about earlier, but the difference is that a big discovery in the lung cancer field does have the potential for publication in top-tier journals, yet the funding situation may prevent it from happening. What is going on with lesser-known diseases? Simply put, those people are usually screwed. It makes sense that resources are used for what the largest part of the population needs. Judging by the current standard when it comes to cancer research, people are most concerned about breast cancer. What most people are concerned about is not necessarily the easiest thing to solve, while something that is currently neglected could be dealt with much less resources. Well-known scientists emerge as “key opinion leaders”. The herd follows them. Well, the key opinion leaders are heavily influenced by big pharma. There is a whole system in place and even a job description that is created around influencing the people whose words are heard far in the scientific community. Sometimes, when you hear them, keep in mind it could be big pharma speaking. If this system was in place in the 50’s and it was applied to the electronic industry we would most likely still be using cathode ray tubes. That would make an interesting iPhone. Back then, the funding situation was not as bad as it is now, so there were some weirdos doing research on something called semiconductors. In a situation with limited funds like today, research would be directed toward improving cathode ray tubes and no one would be able to spend money on researching then-irrelevant semiconductors. On top of that, imagine a situation where the electronics industry has people called “Electronic Science Liaisons” whose job was to “work” with key opinion leaders, but, in reality, the goal would be to influence well-known researchers to work on cathode ray tubes only. This way, the company would influence the direction of research overall. This is a clear example of how directed efforts are not necessarily the most fruitful. Currently, big pharma has Medical Science Liaisons, who, among other duties, are trying to influence key opinion leaders in the direction favorable to the companies. The funding situation is worse than in the 50s, so the environment preventing spontaneous scientific progress is in place. Fearful researchers will not propose ideas that are conflicting with the current research direction, will not have the funds to do research on what is not currently considered important and, finally, they will not have the time to do science properly. Research direction should not be set in stone. Science is unpredictable. Besides semiconductors, the discovery of penicillin comes to mind. Keeping an open mind and following the experiment is going to advance science further than meeting deadlines and self-assigned goals from the grant proposal by manufacturing redundant data for the next grant review. The pace is so much faster now, but the quality may not match that pace. Many people have noticed the spontaneous dying of cells grown in vitro while working hard to “finish the project.” Being accustomed to the “directed effort” approach, they didn’t give it much thought. The truly curious ones investigated the phenomenon further and discovered apoptosis. So many people now say “I saw that happening, but we would just throw away the cells and start with a fresh batch.” Well, those are not real scientists, just people who happened to build their careers playing the broken system. The system has rewarded them with their current position and regrets in the future, once they retire and have plenty of time to rethink their careers.
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