Return of the lone genius could rescue science tied up in knots
As research teams fail to make ground on the big questions, it may be time to give the outsiders’ ideas a chance, Robert Matthews writes
It’s a classic Hollywood plot line: the lone hero emerges from nowhere to pull off a daring rescue. Now there is talk that such a figure is needed to rescue science.
The idea of science being in trouble may seem hard to square with the steady flow of advances making headlines each day. But these mask an inconvenient truth: that they’re mostly pygmy steps dressed up to look like giant leaps.
From medicine and public health to particle physics and cosmology, answers to big questions raised decades ago remain as far away as ever.
Despite intense research, the global pandemics of obesity and Alzheimer’s disease continue unabated, while the “genetic revolution” that promised cures for major diseases has failed to deliver.
Meanwhile, scientists trying to fathom the mysteries of the cosmos remain lost in space. They know the universe is expanding, but not what is propelling it. They suspect it is filled with invisible stuff called dark matter, but they don’t know what it is made from.
The leading contender was a so-called super-symmetric particle, expected to turn up in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator near Geneva. But it does not seem to exist.
This month a team using the most sensitive detector ever built to identify dark matter said they had come up empty.
Scientists in many areas are growing increasingly worried that without some breakthroughs soon, budgets will be cut and jobs axed.
The dark clouds are already gathering. The leading science journal Nature says plans to build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider in Japan are being scaled back and it is now unlikely to be built before 2030.
It is hard to escape the suspicion that over the last few decades, the scientific enterprise has taken a wrong turn.
Many blame the rise of the “publish or perish” syndrome, which encourages scientists to focus on ho-hum problems with a high chance of giving
The focus is on whole teams of researchers working to crack problems, but some say that led to stagnation
publishable results and thus more funding.
But now one researcher is proposing a way to break the impasse. The scientific community, he says, should pay more heed to lone researchers with radical ideas.
Describing his proposal in the current edition of Big
Think Edge, Harvard-trained mathematician and economist Dr Eric Weinstein argues that science stopped believing in the fabled lone genius after Einstein died 60 years ago.
Ever since, the focus has been on teams of researchers working to crack problems. But Dr Weinstein says that has also led to group-think and stagnation.
Ironically, these blights on creativity are particularly prevalent in the quest to solve cosmic problems Einstein left for future generations, which remain as baffling as ever.
“The question is should we be looking more to the heterodox, running the risk of craziness and cranks, or should we be looking more to the traditional community, which seems to have gotten itself into a cul de sac?” Dr Weinstein says.
He has scientific history on his side. Many of the biggest breakthroughs have come from outsiders.
Charles Darwin, founder of evolution theory, was trained as a doctor and used his private wealth to fund his studies.
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and the nature of genes, was a physicist who thought biologists were not bold enough to find the secret of life.
Einstein was a patent clerk with no academic connections when he put forward his theory of relativity.
Yet lone voices often struggle to make themselves heard in scientific debates, as Dr Weinstein knows. Having left academia to work in finance, he has been working on his own cosmic theories and has given invited lectures to physicists at Oxford University.
The reception has been anything but warm. While some critics of his ideas have focused on genuine questions about his ideas, others seem
simply to resent an “outsider” wading in to their field.
It is a common experience, even for scientific celebrities who dare to question accepted wisdom.
Despite winning the 1999 Nobel Prize for physics, the Dutch theorist Gerard ’t Hooft has also gone on record about his struggles to get his theories of the cosmos taken seriously.
Nor is physics alone in having problems coping with radical ideas. For years, some medical scientists have harboured doubts about the standard explanation for Alzheimer’s.
According to this, the dementia is the result of a build-up of a sticky protein called amyloid-beta, creating so-called plaques and tangles in brain cells, which then malfunction and die. Yet not one of the dozens of different therapies based on this idea has worked.
For more then 25 years, Dr Ruth Itzhaki, a former physicist, has been gathering evidence that Alzheimer’s may be caused by a virus in the brain.
Last year the highly respected Journal of Alzheimer’s
Disease published an editorial signed by dozens of researchers calling for the idea to be taken more seriously.
Yet despite this, and the abject failure of the standard theory to produce results, Dr Itzhaki has been repeatedly denied funding for clinical work.
Cynics say there is more at stake here than loss of face among established researchers. If the virus theory wins support, or worse still positive results, it could mean the end of funding for their own research.
Some researchers also point out the difficulties of getting funding for rival theories when the approval committees for grants are dominated by advocates of the standard view.
Clearly it is neither rational nor possible to take every maverick idea seriously. But at the same time, it makes no sense to reject ideas simply because they come from outsiders.
The real litmus test of theories worth taking seriously is whether they make testable predictions. And there are plenty that do.
It is hard to imagine much harm would be done by spending some of the vast sums lavished on today’s faltering theories on testing promising alternatives. The chances of success may be low, but the payoff could be cosmic.